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good morning. Yesterday was the hottest spring day here in Boston in over 100 years. I feel really good and normal about it. Across the country, our colleagues in San Francisco hosted summits that produced great news. Scroll down to catch up.
USAID cuts leave Democratic Republic of Congo unprepared for Ebola outbreak
The Democratic Republic of Congo is in the midst of the third largest Ebola outbreak on record. For years, the United States has sent hundreds of millions of dollars to African countries for infectious disease prevention and control programs. But in the months before the outbreak began, the Trump administration cut aid. A new report by STAT’s Daniel Payne suggests that this move likely hampered the ability to detect and respond to outbreaks.
“Politicians control budgets, and budgets control lives. That’s the painful reality,” said one person who has worked in the region and asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
Daniel researched government disclosure and funding databases and interviewed six people with local public health experience. Read more about the deadly ramifications of aid withdrawal. The kicker of this story is truly poignant.
For the latest information on trends, stay up to date with Helen Branswell. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that an American doctor who contracted Ebola in an endemic area was flown to Germany for treatment on Tuesday. Satish Pillai, the CDC’s incident manager for the outbreak, said at a news conference that five other people who may have been infected with the virus — his wife and children — also plan to travel to Germany soon. Pillai said the United States is working with authorities in the Czech Republic to bring in a seventh infected person, a doctor who was also at high risk, for surveillance.
Breaking news and tears at the summit
The summit was also a success. Some of the highlights:
- 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki announced that the company will be adding the ability for customers to add medical records to their profiles. This is the first major change since Wojcicki’s foundation acquired the company. read more.
- Former Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne has responded publicly for the first time to the allegations in a new book in which he says he was forced to resign from the university because of the way he handled controversies, as well as shortcomings in oversight of scientists. Read more about what he said.
- When STAT’s Katie Palmer spoke with the Krause family and Mayo Clinic physician Whitney Thompson, there wasn’t much of a dry eye in the room. “Our child has a second chance at life,” said Joanie Krause, mother of 2-year-old Jolie. Jolie was born with an extremely rare disease and has been treated through a pioneering program that combines genome sequencing and AI to discover drugs. Read more about their life-changing experiences.
- With the FDA in turmoil, former Commissioner David Kessler said he hopes the new acting commissioner, Kyle Diamantas, will serve as a stabilizing force. “People are going to need him to do the job. They’re going to have to come together to make the agency successful,” he said. Read more about the conversation.
There is also a lack of leadership at the NIH.
A health leadership vacuum exists within the Trump administration. Neither the CDC nor the FDA has a director, a Surgeon General has yet to be confirmed, and HHS’s top spokesperson just resigned. Amid the turmoil, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and his representatives appear relatively stable. But as STAT’s Anil Oza reports, there are still 15 institutional units headed by acting directors.
“I think there’s a lot of interference going on,” said a former senior NIH official who served on several of the institute’s director’s research committees. Read more from Anil about what’s going on.
State files lawsuit over new professional education loan rules
Yesterday, 24 states and Washington, D.C. filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education, challenging the Trump administration’s new rule that lowers the limit on federal loans for some graduate students, including those training to work in the medical field. The rules, finalized earlier this month, allow students pursuing “professional” degrees to borrow up to $200,000 in total, while all other students are capped at $100,000. Advanced nursing degrees and degrees for physician assistants, social workers, and other health care professionals are excluded from the specialization.
The rule was originally approved by Congress last summer as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” However, the Trump administration introduced a new definition of what constitutes a “professional” degree later in the fall. States argue that the post-hoc definition is arbitrary, illegal, and potentially harmful amid a shortage of health care workers. The Washington Post has an article detailing the lawsuit.
“At what point will we be seen as a completely stable and secure people?”
That’s Patricia Bencivenga, special project manager for the rational prescription project “Pharmed Out”, who talks about how women are considered unstable and unstable at every stage of life. “When you’re in adolescence, you’re unstable and unreliable, and then you lose control of your hormones again when you have PMS, and you lose control of your hormones again when you’re on your period, when you’re wiping, and then again during pregnancy, postpartum, or perimenopause or menopause,” she told STAT’s Tory Bosch on this week’s episode of the First Opinion Podcast.
She joins Torie, along with Pharmed Out colleague Adriane Fugh-Berman, to talk about one of the hormonal life events that has been getting a lot of discussion online lately: menopause. Listen to their conversation about what’s wrong with perimenopausal exercise and why it’s dangerous.
what we are reading
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Smoking is incredibly difficult to ban, The Atlantic
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The backward logic of the chickenpox party, Wired
- Canadian Medical Association lacks adequate conflict of interest policy, study finds, STAT
- Military bases are full of “eternal chemicals.” New Mexico wants to wipe them out, New York Times
- This spinal surgery typically costs $1,400. Arbitration under the Anti-Surprises Act? $34,000, Status
