The Associated Press: State Appeals Court Reinstates California's Right-To-Die Law
A state appeals court has reinstated — at least for now — California's law allowing terminally ill people to end their lives. The Fourth District Court of Appeals in Riverside issued an immediate stay Friday putting the End of Life Option back into effect. The court also gave opponents of its decision until July 2 to file objections. (6/15)

San Jose Mercury News: Judge: Californians Can Once Again Use Aid-In-Dying Drugs – East Bay Times
“I am thrilled and relieved,” said Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, who co-sponsored the legislation that led to the Act. “This decision will offer reassurance and certainty, for now, to any terminally ill patient who feared that their end of life options had been curtailed.” A flurry of rulings in May created confusion among patients, their families and doctors regarding the status of the Act, a law that allows a terminally ill adult with a six-month prognosis to obtain aid-in-dying drugs from a physician, subject to numerous safeguards. (Krieger, 6/15)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: California Appeals Court Reinstates Law Allowing Terminally Ill Patients To End Their Lives 
Last month, Judge Daniel A Ottolia ruled the law’s passage was unconstitutional because the Legislature approved the law during a special session dedicated to healthcare issues and this law wasn’t a healthcare matter. Several attorneys and organizations such as the Life Legal Defense Foundation sued to have the law overturned. (Bermudez, 6/15)

The Associated Press: California Moves To Clear Coffee Of Cancer-Risk Stigma
California officials, having concluded coffee drinking is not a risky pastime, are proposing a regulation that will essentially tell consumers of America's favorite beverage they can drink up without fear. The unprecedented action Friday by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to propose a regulation to clear coffee of the stigma that it could pose a toxic risk followed a review of more than 1,000 studies published this week by the World Health Organization that found inadequate evidence that coffee causes cancer. (6/16)

The New York Times: Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Indicted On Fraud Charges
Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, the lab testing company that promised to revolutionize health care, and its former president, Ramesh Balwani, were indicted on Friday on charges of defrauding investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars as well as deceiving hundreds of patients and doctors. The criminal charges were the culmination of a rarity in Silicon Valley — federal prosecution of a technology start-up. This one boasted a board stacked with prominent political figures and investors, and a startling valuation of $9 billion just a few years ago. (Abelson, 6/15)

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Files Criminal Charges Against Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, Ramesh Balwani
The indictments of Ms. Holmes and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, Theranos’s former president and chief operating officer who was also Ms. Holmes’s boyfriend, are the culmination of a 2½-year investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in San Francisco, sparked by articles in The Wall Street Journal that raised questions about the company’s technology and practices. (Carreyrou, 6/15)

The Associated Press: Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes Charged With Criminal Fraud
Holmes, who was once considered a wunderkind of Silicon Valley, and her former Chief Operating Officer Ramesh Balwani, are charged with two counts conspiracy to commit wire fraud and nine counts of wire fraud each, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California said late Friday. If convicted, they could face prison sentences that would keep them behind bars for the rest of their lives, and total fines of $2.75 million each. Prosecutors allege that Holmes and Balwani deliberately misled investors, policymakers and the public about the accuracy of Theranos' blood-testing technologies going back to at least 2013. Holmes, 34, founded Theranos in Palo Alto, California, in 2003, pitching its technology as a cheaper way to run dozens of blood tests. (6/15)

San Jose Mercury News: Theranos' Holmes Indicted By Feds Over Blood-Test 'Fraud'
The fall of Holmes represents a cautionary Silicon Valley tale, demonstrating how a charismatic tech industry leader making grandiose claims about a disruptive new product can attract massive investments while allegedly bamboozling investors, consumers and a high-profile corporate partner. Before Theranos’ claims unraveled — starting with a Wall Street Journal exposé — Holmes had been widely praised as a Silicon Valley wunderkind pushing forward technology’s cutting edge. (Baron, 6/15)

Los Angeles Times: Scant Abortion-Related ER Visits Suggest There's No Medical Basis For Restrictive Laws, Study Says
Abortions send women to hospital emergency rooms at lower rates than such routine procedures as colonoscopies and surgeries to have wisdom teeth removed, new research has found. In fact, for every 100,000 abortions provided, about 108 women sought out emergency care for what they thought was a complication of the procedure. (Healy, 6/15)

In other women's health news —

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: North Bay Fires’ Effects On Pregnancy, Babies Studied
Researchers at UC Davis’ Environmental Health Sciences Center are looking for new mothers and pregnant women who experienced the North Bay fires to serve as subjects for a new study on the potential effects of exposure to toxic smoke and ash on expectant mothers and their infants. Participants in the Bio-Specimen Assessment of Fire Effects Study, or B-SAFE, must have lived or worked in areas affected by the October 2017 fires — including Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake, Napa, Solano, Nevada or Yuba counties. They also must be willing to provide test samples of their blood, hair and breast milk, their babies’ saliva and the placenta and umbilical cord blood of women who have not yet given birth. Scientists from Davis will make home visits to collect the samples and will compensate participants for their time. (Callahan, 6/15)

KQED: California Is Expanding Care Options For Boomers With Dementia — But Still Falling Short Of The Need
For low-income seniors who can’t afford care at home and don’t want or need the full medical services of a nursing facility, the state’s few options aren’t enough to meet demand. A middle-ground choice — assisted living — requires special permission under government rules and is available to fewer than 4,000 Californians, although state health officials and lawmakers are both proposing increases. (Gorn, 6/15)

In other public health news —

San Francisco Chronicle: San Mateo County Schools Step Up Suicide Prevention Efforts
A health simulation company called Kognito developed the program as training for teachers in middle schools to recognize at-risk behavior, and it’s one of several new tools being used by Bay Area schools to combat teen suicide since the passage of AB2246. The bill, which has been implemented over the past school year, requires school districts to adopt suicide prevention plans and policies for grades seven through 12. (Ravani, 6/18)

The San Diego Union-Tribune: Legal Tangles Keep Tri-City Medical Office Building In Limbo 
Five years after it was declared “substantially complete,” the newest building on Tri-City Medical Center’s Oceanside campus remains empty. Though its tinted windows have become a familiar sight just north of Highway 78 where Oceanside bleeds into Vista, no one has ever used the medical office building for its intended purpose. A temporary chain-link fence still surrounds the three-story facility built in one of the hospital’s outlying parking lots. No one desires this continued vacancy. Since 2010, when construction began, Tri-City Healthcare District has had big plans to fill the building with doctors’ offices and other personnel necessary to remain relevant in a quickly changing and highly competitive local health care market. UC San Diego, at one time, planned to lease a whole floor of the 60,000-square-foot building. (Sisson, 6/18)

In other news from across the state —

Ventura County Star: Ventura County Home Care Workers To Get 9 Percent Pay Increase
About 6,000 home care workers in Ventura County are eligible for a wage increase of $1.14 an hour under an agreement OK’d this week. The three-year contract contains pay raises of 9 percent, bringing wages from $12.50 to $13.64 an hour by 2020. From that point on, the workers’ pay will always stay 64 cents above the minimum wage, said county officials and the Service Employees International Union, which represents the employees. (Wilson, 6/15)

The Associated Press: California ER Doctor Seen On Video Mocking Patient Suspended
A Northern California emergency room doctor has been suspended after cursing and mocking a man who said he had an anxiety attack. The San Jose Mercury News reports that Dr. Beth Keegstra, a contract doctor with El Camino Hospital in Los Gatos, was suspended after she was recorded on June 11 questioning whether 20-year-old Samuel Bardwell was sick or just looking for drugs. (6/17)

Bloomberg: The Dark Side Of The Orgasmic Meditation Company
OneTaste is a sexuality-focused wellness education company based in the Bay Area. It’s best known for classes on “orgasmic meditation,” a trademarked procedure that typically involves a man using a gloved, lubricated fingertip to stroke a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes. For Michal, like those at her wedding, OneTaste was much more than a series of workshops. It was a company that had, in less than a year, gained sway over every aspect of her life. ...But many who’ve become involved in the upper echelons describe an organization that they found ran on predatory sales and pushed members to ignore their financial, emotional, and physical boundaries in ways that left them feeling traumatized. (Huet, 6/18)

The Hill: Doctors Group Warns Of Health Risks For Migrant Children Separated From Parents 
Medical experts are cautioning that there are long-term health risks for migrant children who are separated from their parents, including "irreplaceable harm" to those children's lifelong development. “[It can] cause irreparable harm to lifelong development by disrupting a child’s brain architecture,” American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) President Colleen Kraft told BuzzFeed News this week. “Immigration has become so politicized. We would really like people to sit back instead and think of the health of these children.” (Sanchez, 6/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Policy Of Separating Migrant Families Threatens To Engulf Immigration Talks
The administration is facing increasing pressure on existing facilities, even without the possibility of new facilities to detain families together. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement is adding bed space after eclipsing more than 11,000 children in its custody. A temporary, soft-sided structure has been erected in Tornillo, Texas, near El Paso, as part of that expansion. Eric Hargan, deputy secretary of HHS, said in a statement Sunday that the agency had welcomed lawmakers’ tours and that the semi-permanent structures—including at Tornillo—had ventilation and cooling “to ensure appropriate temperature” for the minors placed there, who, he said, were all teenagers. (Radnofsky, Hackman and Caldwell, 6/17)

Politico: 'Grim Sight': Migrants Await Uncertain Future At Strained Border Patrol Facility
The family separations that stem from the Trump policy add a new burden. On top of overseeing the welfare of people housed there, staff at the McAllen facility coordinate sending children to detention centers run by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement while their parents head to court. There are only 10 permanently assigned agents at the facility, though officials would not say how many contract or other staff were on site. (Schor, 6/17)

Los Angeles Times: Texas Border Patrol Center Where Immigrant Families Are Separated Draws Lawmakers, Protest
The center costs about $12.1 million to operate annually, compared with the entire sector’s budget of $15 million. Built for 1,500 people, it has held more than 2,000 recently. It has a staff of 10 but due to the influx, Padilla added 300 more, about 10% of his workforce. There’s a medical unit with three paramedics, two medical staffers and space to quarantine those who have contracted chicken pox, scabies and other communicable diseases. There is no mental health staff, and agents have not received mental health training since the Trump administration “zero tolerance” policy was implemented May 6. (Hennessy-Fiske, 6/17)

Los Angeles Times: Was A Breastfeeding Infant Really Taken From An Immigrant Mother? The Answer To This And Other Questions About Families Separated At The Border
This week, Health and Human Services opened what it called a “soft-sided” and “semi-permanent” shelter for 360 unaccompanied minors outside El Paso in Tornillo, Texas. The tents, however, are air conditioned. Immigrant advocates decried the desert shelter as a “tent city.” Similar facilities were erected after an influx of Central American families arrived in the U.S. in 2014, but were later dismantled. Health and Human Services is also considering whether to open temporary shelters at military bases near the border, as it did in 2012. (Hennessy-Fiske, 6/16)

The New York Times: Major Study Of Drinking Will Be Shut Down
The extensive government trial was intended to settle an age-old question about alcohol and diet: Does a daily cocktail or beer really protect against heart attacks and stroke? To find out, the National Institutes of Health gave scientists $100 million to fund a global study comparing people who drink with those who don’t. Its conclusions could have enshrined alcohol as part of a healthy diet. (Rabin, 6/15)

The Associated Press: NIH Ends Alcohol Study, Citing Funding, Credibility Problems
The National Institutes of Health used money from the alcohol industry to help pay for a study that ultimately was expected to cost $100 million. It's legal for NIH to use industry money in addition to taxpayer dollars for research as long as certain rules are followed. The problem: An NIH investigation concluded Friday that a small number of its employees had close contact with industry officials that crossed those lines. Some of those interactions "appear to intentionally bias" the study so that it would have a better chance of showing a benefit from moderate alcohol consumption, said NIH Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak. (6/15)

Los Angeles Times: Ties Between Researchers And Alcohol Producers Prompt NIH To Shut Down Study Of Moderate Drinking
The plan was to enroll 7,800 people ages 50 and up who did not have diabetes. Some of them would be randomly assigned to consume about 15 grams of alcohol per day. The others would be asked to abstain from drinking. Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, along with colleagues in the United States, Nigeria, Denmark and the Netherlands, would then follow these volunteers for about six years to see whether the moderate drinkers developed fewer cases of cardiovascular disease and diabetes compared to their teetotaling counterparts. (Kaplan, 6/15)

In other national health care news —

Stat: Drug Maker's Donations Of Overdose Antidote Were Close To Expiring
But STAT found that the auto-injectors donated to some police agencies through the Kaleo Cares program were just months away from expiration. One police department in Massachusetts threw away scores of expired injectors because it couldn’t use them fast enough. An agency in a medium-sized North Carolina city donated expired product to a local nonprofit willing to accept them. In interviews with officers at more than a dozen law enforcement agencies, nine said they had received naloxone anywhere from four to 11 months away from expiration. Fresh off the production line, naloxone typically has a shelf life of two years. Kaleo, for its part, says patients prescribed Evzio can expect to receive auto-injectors with a shelf life of over a year. (Blau, 6/18)

Stat: Exactly Who Is Coordinating The White House Drug Policy?
For at least six months, staffers in the Office of National Drug Control Policy — often political appointees in their 20s — have crossed 17th Street, entered the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, and sat through weekly meetings of an “opioids cabinet” chaired by Kellyanne Conway. Then they have returned to their desks and reported back to veteran career staff — who have listened, often with disappointment, to the ideas proposed by Conway and Katy Talento, a domestic policy adviser. (Facher, 6/18)

Politico: Republicans Give Up On Medicare Overhaul
Republicans on Capitol Hill are giving up on what might be their last best chance to overhaul Medicare, just as they’re losing their leading champion on the issue, House Speaker Paul Ryan. The quiet surrender on a subject that’s energized GOP fiscal hawks for the better part of a decade comes as new projections show Medicare’s trust fund in its worst shape since the recession, partly because of Republicans’ other chief obsession: their sweeping tax cuts. (Cancryn and Ferris, 6/15)

USA Today: Millions Of U.S. Kids Are Growing Up Without A Father In Their Lives
Father’s Day is different when there’s no father around."What do these days mean to children like me who had to grow up without one parent in their lives?" asks Louis Steptoe, 18, who just graduated from high school here. Instead, he celebrates what he calls "Father Figure Day" and honors his godfather, William Ford, who "was always present." Kaylynn Tobin, 12, of Rockville, Maryland, met her father only once, years ago, and barely remembers him. Her sister Aras, 10, has a different father and sometimes gets gifts from him. But she doesn’t have a good relationship with her father. (O'Donnell and Lewter, 6/15)

The New York Times: A Family In Transition
Paetyn, an impish 1-year-old, has two fathers. One of them gave birth to her. As traditional notions of gender shift and blur, parents and children like these are redefining the concept of family. Paetyn’s father Tanner, 25, is a trans man: He was born female but began transitioning to male in his teens, and takes the male hormone testosterone. "I was born a man in a female body,” he said. (Grady, 6/16)

The New York Times: Video Game Addiction Tries To Move From Basement To Doctor’s Office
Video games work hard to hook players. Designers use predictive algorithms and principles of behavioral economics to keep fans engaged. When new games are reviewed, the most flattering accolade might be “I can’t put it down.” Now, the World Health Organization is saying players can actually become addicted. (Hsu, 6/17)

The New York Times: Are Genetic Testing Sites The New Social Networks?
Three years ago Dyan deNapoli, a 57-year-old author and TED speaker who specializes in penguins, was given a 23andMe genetic testing kit for her birthday. Intrigued, she spit in the tube and sent the results to a lab in Burlington, N.C. About two months later she received a pie chart breaking down where her ancestors lived (99.4 percent of them were from Europe). What she was most giddy about, however, was a 41-page list of all the people who had done the test and were genetically related to her: 1,200 in all. (Customers can choose whether their information is shared with others.) (6/16)

USA Today: Therapy Apps: As Suicide Rates Rise, Do Apps Damage Or Deliver?
Following the birth of her third child, Kristin Rulon took a birth-control shot that triggered a wave of depression and anxiety. The 32-year-old suburban Kansas City, Missouri, mother and writer explored natural remedies before joining the millions of Americans who’ve turned to mobile-device apps that offer therapy via text messages. A therapist from the BetterHelp app in early 2016 typically exchanged three to four daily texts with Rulon from morning to bedtime. The access was great, Rulon said, but the $28 weekly charge for unlimited texting not covered by health insurance became too expensive. And Rulon worried that texts could not convey everything she wanted to share. (Alltucker, Connor and O'Donnell, 6/15)