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Good morning. Here in Boston, yesterday was the hottest spring day in over a century. Feeling really good and normal about that. Across the country, our colleagues in San Francisco hosted an incredible, news-making Summit. Scroll down to catch up.
How USAID cuts left DRC unprepared for Ebola outbreak
The Democratic Republic of Congo is in the midst of the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record. For years, the U.S. sent hundreds of millions of dollars to the African country for infectious disease prevention and control programs. But in the months before the outbreak began, the Trump administration slashed aid. New reporting from STAT’s Daniel Payne shows that the move probably hampered the detection of the outbreak and the response to it.
“Politicians control budgets; budgets control lives. That is the painful reality,” said one person who has worked in the region and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Daniel reviewed government disclosures and funding databases, and he interviewed six people with public health experience in the region. Read more on the deadly ripple effects of withdrawn aid. The story’s kicker is a real gut-punch.
For the latest on the outbreak, we have this update from Helen Branswell: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that an American doctor who was infected with Ebola in the outbreak zone was flown Tuesday to Germany for care. Five other individuals who may have been exposed to the virus — his wife and children — will also go to Germany soon, Satish Pillai, CDC’s incident manager for the outbreak, said during a press conference. The U.S. is working with officials in the Czech Republic to take a seventh individual, also a doctor who had a high risk exposure, for monitoring, Pillai said.
Breaking news and shedding tears at the Summit
Another successful Summit has come and gone. Some of the highlights:
- 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki announced that the company is planning to add the capacity for its customers to add medical records to their profiles. It’s the first major change since Wojcicki’s foundation purchased the company. Read more.
- For the first time, former Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne responded publicly to allegations in a new book that he was forced to resign from the university not only because of flaws in his oversight of scientists but over how he handled the controversy. Read more on what he said.
- There was barely a dry eye in the room as STAT’s Katie Palmer spoke with the Kraus family and their Mayo Clinic physician, Whitney Thompson. “Our kid got a second chance at life,” said Joanie Kraus, mother of 2-year-old Jorie. Jorie was born with an ultra rare disorder and has received treatment through a pioneering program that pairs genomic sequencing with AI to find drugs. Read more on their life-changing experience.
- Amid major tumult at the FDA, former commissioner David Kessler said that he’s hopeful that the new acting commissioner, Kyle Diamantas, will serve as a stabilizing force. “People are going to need to let him do the job. There has to be a coming together in order to allow the agency to succeed,” he said. Read more about the conversation.
There’s a leadership vacuum at NIH, too
There’s a health leadership vacuum within the Trump administration: There’s no director at CDC or the FDA, the surgeon general still hasn’t been confirmed, and the top spokesperson at HHS just resigned. Amid the chaos, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and his deputies seem comparably stable. But as STAT’s Anil Oza reports, there are still 15 agency institutes being led by acting directors.
“I believe that there’s a lot of interference going on,” said a former senior NIH official who sat on several search committees for institute directors. Read more from Anil on what could be going on.
States sue over new professional ed loan rule
Two dozen states and D.C. filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education yesterday, challenging a new Trump administration rule that will lower federal loan caps for certain graduate students, including some training to work in health care. Finalized earlier this month, the rule allows students pursuing “professional” degrees to borrow up to $200,000 total, while others are capped at $100,000. Advanced nursing degrees as well as those for physician assistants, social workers, and other health workers are excluded from the professional category.
The rule was initially approved by Congress last summer as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill. But the Trump administration introduced its new definition for what constitutes “professional” degrees later in the fall. The states claim the after-the-fact definition is arbitrary, unlawful, and potentially harmful amid a health care worker shortage. The Washington Post has a write-up of the lawsuit with more details.
‘At what point are we going to be seen as fully stable and secure people?’
That’s Patricia Bencivenga, a special projects manager at the rational prescribing project Pharmed Out, talking about how women can be seen as erratic and unstable through seemingly every stage of life. “You’re erratic, and untrustworthy when you’re pubescent, and then again your hormones are out of control when you’re PMSing, and then again, when you’re having your period or you’re on the rag, or then again when you’re pregnant, or then when you postpartum, or now perimenopausal or menopausal,” she said to STAT’s Torie Bosch in this week’s episode of the First Opinion Podcast.
She joined Torie, along with her Pharmed Out colleague Adriane Fugh-Berman, to talk about one specific hormonal life event that has garnered a lot of discussion online lately: perimenopause. Listen to their conversation on what the perimenopause movement is getting wrong — and why it’s dangerous.
What we’re reading
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It’s maddeningly difficult to ban smoking, Atlantic
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The backward logic of chickenpox parties, Wired
- Canadian medical societies lack sufficient conflict-of-interest policies, study finds, STAT
- Military bases are rife with ‘forever chemicals.’ New Mexico wants them cleaned up, New York Times
- This spine surgery usually costs $1,400. Under No Surprises Act arbitration? $34,000, STAT