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good morning. Remember when the roads were covered with snow? Time flies so fast. Here are some news to start a new week.
Annual diabetes conference presentation materials
The American Diabetes Association’s annual conference in New Orleans concludes today after three days of data readouts, presentations and unexpected police interactions. Below are some highlights.
- On Friday, six ADA members, including a former president, were reportedly taken from the convention center for attempting to hand out copies of an editorial criticizing Trump administration policies. The ADA’s media team told MedPage Today that the members violated its code of conduct. You might find it interesting that the editorial in question was published by the ADA’s own Diabetes Care journal.
- That same afternoon, a senior NIH advisor gave the conference’s keynote speech in full support of the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. According to the ADA, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharyya was scheduled to speak, but a substitute was needed at the last minute to meet directly with President Trump. STAT’s Elizabeth Cooney details the speech and the subsequent backlash from attendees.
- As expected, there was some GLP-1 news at the conference. Liz Chen and Elaine Chen gave a quick summary Friday of the drugs that will be discussed over the weekend. Highlights include safety and tolerability data on Eli Lilly’s next-generation obesity drug, detailed data from mid-stage study of the obesity drug Pfizer acquired from Metsala, and new data on Boehringer Ingelheim’s obesity drug.
Department of Justice disciplinary proceedings regarding trans agenda?
Federal courts continue to question the integrity of the Trump administration’s investigation into gender-affirming care for youth. On Friday, a federal judge in Rhode Island referred a Justice Department attorney to disciplinary proceedings after previously criticizing the attorney for giving a “misleading, if not completely false” account of the department’s negotiations with hospitals over subpoenas for gender-affirming care records.
The Justice Department sent its first administrative subpoena to hospitals last summer, requesting extensive records related to transgender medical care. The agency now appears to have opened a criminal investigation with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. District Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee, found that the Justice Department misrepresented information about the Rhode Island case and withheld information from both her court and the Texas court. Two days before she ordered the disciplinary proceedings, the Justice Department issued a statement calling her conclusions “without merit.”
Meanwhile, the legal battle over gender-affirming care continues, with multiple lawsuits challenging Justice Department subpoenas seeking patient information. In New York, two parents told Gothamist that Mount Sinai Health System is working with the Department of Justice to turn over de-identified patient records.
What does “Schedule F” mean and why is it important?
President Trump issued an executive order last week reclassifying thousands of positions within the federal government, including HHS. The policy, known as Schedule F, dates back to President Trump’s first term and creates a new class of federal employees who are not political appointees but can be fired at will. This new designation, without civil service protections, will make workers even more vulnerable to political pressure.
Health policy experts say creating a more politicized workforce is part of the Trump administration’s broader goal of shifting power from Congress to the executive branch. Read more from the STAT reporter team about how this could impact the work being done at the NIH, CDC, FDA, and CMS.
One clinic’s unusual strategy to save limbs
There is no typical day at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Vascular Surgery Clinic, which meets every three months in Boston. The program, run in partnership with one of the city’s well-known mobile clinics for the city’s unincarcerated population, aims to keep patients who don’t have access to proper preventive care out of the emergency room. People come to us with carotid artery blockages, peripheral artery disease, abdominal aortic aneurysms, or infectious ulcers that can lead to sepsis, an overwhelming systemic infection.
Elizabeth Cooney recently visited the clinic. Read her story to understand the doctor’s unique approach to meeting patients where they are. In one case, a surgical resident escorted a patient onto the street to smoke a cigarette, then begged passersby and parked car drivers for lighters.
Two experts on Ebola outbreak response
There are several first opinion essays written by experts with first-hand experience working during the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Please consider reading.
As STAT’s Helen Branswell reported, the US plans to send exposed or infected Americans to facilities in third countries like Kenya. In an essay published Friday, infectious disease doctor and former WHO medical officer Krutika Kupari argued that Americans infected with Ebola have the right to return home. She was deployed to Sierra Leone during the outbreak 10 years ago. “I understood the risks,” she said. But there was also an understanding that if the worst happened, we would take her home to receive the best possible care. “That assumption now appears to be changing,” she writes. And that change will have consequences.
Tom Frieden was the CDC director while Kuppari was in Africa, meaning he was leading the response to the outbreak. It wasn’t perfect, but in an essay published Saturday he recalls the mistakes he made that nearly cost him his job and people’s lives. Still, he insists that the last outbreak “showed us a path to success.” New outbreaks require large-scale, immediate, and careful planning. “The virus has a huge head start and every minute counts.” Read more.
what we are reading
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Scientists edit the genes of human fetuses with surprising precision, The New York Times
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Woman accused of fabricating abortion pill ‘forced’ story allegedly hid text messages and second phone, Autonomy News
- Opinion: American horses are obese too, STAT
- How prediction markets can predict the future of science, Scientific American
- Opinion: $2 million gene therapy treatment needs funding model, STAT
