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Good morning. Glad you’re here. Lots of news dropped over the weekend, so let’s get to it.
Americans believed to be exposed in Congo’s Ebola outbreak
A number of Americans in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are believed to have been swept up in the country’s latest outbreak, with several deemed to have had high-risk exposures and at least one of these individuals may have developed symptoms, STAT’s Helen Branswell reports in an exclusive.
We’re still waiting on test results for the individuals, but the CDC said in a statement Sunday it is assisting partners in “coordinating the safe withdrawal of a small number of Americans who are directly affected by this outbreak.” The outbreak’s toll is climbing: at least 246 cases, with 80 deaths.
The CDC held a news conference earlier in the day on Sunday to discuss the outbreak, which the WHO has declared a public health emergency of international concern. But when asked whether Americans had been exposed to Ebola, the CDC’s incident manager declined to answer. Read more from Helen.
Bye bye, Bill Cassidy
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a key Republican health care leader, will lose his seat after coming in third in Louisiana’s Senate primary on Saturday, STAT’s Chelsea Cirruzzo reports.
Cassidy, a gastroenterologist by training, served for two decades in Congress, first as a representative and then as a senator. His defeat is a win for President Trump and his allies, who have criticized the senator for voting in 2021 to convict the president for inciting the January 6 insurrection. Cassidy later tried to curry favor with conservatives by casting the decisive vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary despite publicly expressing concern about Kennedy’s anti-vaccine statements. The gamble didn’t pay off.
To understand why the “doctor in lawmaker’s clothing” will soon no longer have sway in Washington, you should read Chelsea and Daniel Payne’s excellent profile of Cassidy.
Texas is opening up a detransition clinic
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton secured a settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital that compels the hospital to create the country’s first-ever clinic for people who detransition. (If you don’t know what detransitioning means or entails, this series from The 19th will catch you up to speed.)
The clinic will “help patients reverse the damage caused by ideologically-motivated physicians who harmed patients by performing dangerous medical interventions for the purpose of “transitioning” them,” according to a press release. The hospital didn’t comment on its plans to roll out the clinic, though the settlement ensures that services will be free for the first five years.
It’s unclear if other conservative states will follow in Texas’ wake. The state has already made it illegal for trans kids to receive life-saving gender-affirming care, such as puberty blockers and hormone therapies.
This clinic will purportedly serve kids and adults aiming to detransition, but it’s questionable whether there is even strong demand for such services in the first place. Trans people make up 1% of the population. We don’t have good data on what percentage of this already tiny sliver of the American population actually detransitions, but it’s estimated to be “proportionally rare.” There’s also an ongoing exodus of trans people and their families from Texas to places with more trans-friendly policies.
So, who is this clinic for? Given that trans people are fleeing the state and detransitioners are vanishingly rare, this clinic is on track to be less an attempt to deliver medical aid to a marginalized population, and more a political gesture to an anti-trans GOP.
China — biotech’s friend or foe?
America’s drug business is at a tipping point.
Fledgling startups and pharmaceutical giants alike are addicted to Chinese drugs, spending some $60 billion on Chinese molecules in the first three months of 2026 alone. Meanwhile, in the last decade, the U.S.’s share of the world’s medicine chest fell from nearly half to less than 35%. By pretty much any metric of biotech productivity, China has overtaken the U.S.
So, what should American companies do? Partner with Chinese companies? Or seal the borders and redirect all investment to homegrown efforts?
STAT’s Damian Garde has an excellent look at how China’s decades-long, state-sponsored push to insert its companies in the drug development pipeline is now forcing American biotech companies to make tough choices.
See a doc, save a prostate
Prostate-specific antigen blood testing — a procedure once thought to do more harm than good for prostate cancer — likely reduces the risk of deaths from the disease, according to a new review published Thursday.
The benefits are, admittedly, marginal. The Cochrane review analyzed results from six trials involving 800,000 participants and found that disease-specific death was reduced in about two every 1,000 men screened. But the study upends prior results that indicated the test did more harm than good, leading to overdiagnosis and overtreatment.
If you have a prostate and you’re reading this thinking that you need a PSA blood test ASAP to potentially save your life, I’d pump the brakes. It’s not that simple, as STAT’s Annalisa Merelli explains.
Marty Makary’s ally departs after his resignation
The fallout from Marty Makary’s resignation continues. Tracy Beth Høeg, head of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug center, is also leaving the agency after a rocky tenure.
Høeg, an epidemiologist and sports medicine physician, rose to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic by challenging school closures, mask mandates, and the approval of booster shots for children. She continued to advocate for her vaccine views upon her start in April 2025 before later helming the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. She quickly became involved with drug reviews during her tenure, a process typically handled by career scientists.
Read more about Høeg’s departure from STAT’s Lizzy Lawrence.
What we’re reading
- Native kids with disabilities were held in wooden boxes. Sweeping reforms are coming, NPR
- New FDA leader rushes to reassure anti-abortion leaders. They still have questions., Politico
- The strange alliance trying to remake American psychiatry, New York Times Magazine
- Veterans are facing a hidden psychological wound many still don’t recognize, Military.com