Viewpoints: PEPFAR Has Been A Success And Must Be Restored; Health Care Workers Have A Choice To Make

The Baltimore Sun: US Must Restore Vital AIDS Relief Saving Lives In Africa
As American doctors working in southern Africa for the past two decades, we vividly recall our first days caring for patients dying from AIDS. Though we were working in different countries, our experiences were strikingly similar: patients with withered limbs, emaciated frames and little hope. At the time, new lifesaving antiretroviral medications called ARVs were making HIV a manageable condition in the United States but were priced far beyond reach for most African patients. (Cassidy Claassen and Michael Herce, 2/11)

Stat: American Medical Workers Must Become Rule-Breakers 
A medical school scrubs mention of gender and racial health inequalities from its websites. A city health system advises its workers not to use their legal rights to protect patients or co-workers but to instead cooperate with ICE raids on hospitals. A university hospital instructs its physicians to stop providing gender-affirming care to their trans patients. Actions like these have been rapidly multiplying across the United States’ most prestigious hospitals, universities, and research foundations. (Eric Reinhart, 2/11)

The New York Times: The Pharmaceutical Industry Heads Into Elon Musk’s Wood Chipper
In a month of one bombshell after another (and many all at the same time), it can be hard to track the damage that the Trump administration is inflicting. But unlike attacks on predictable issues like D.E.I. and foreign aid, the announcement on Friday that the National Institutes of Health would slash funding for medical research doesn’t make even cynical political sense. (Zeynep Tufekci, 2/11)

Stat: Why Did HHS Settle Its Lawsuit Against Gilead? 
On Dec. 19, 2024, we joined other professors of law, medicine, and public health to file an amicus brief in support of the U.S. government in the government’s landmark patent lawsuit against leading HIV drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc. On Jan. 15, 2025, the U.S. government and Gilead announced a settlement of the suit that — at least based on what’s been made public — allows Gilead to expropriate publicly funded, publicly owned patents essentially without recourse. Unless the Department of Health and Human Services commits to asserting its patent rights vigorously in the future on behalf of the public, this settlement could disturb the model of public-private partnership that sustains many of the United States’ most important medical breakthroughs. (Christopher Morten, Ben Anderson, Charles Duan, Gregg Gonsalves, Cynthia M. Ho, Amy Kapczynski, Jordan Paradise, Reshma Ramachandran, Joseph S. Ross, Michael S. Sinha, Anthony D. So and Liza Vertinsky, 2/12)

Stat: What It’s Like To Be A Scientist With Autism
I was the “different” kid. I had intense interests that I went on monologues about, I missed social cues, and I checked out of conversations to stare at the wall while my mind wandered. Later, when my kids were small, they used to wonder why I watched the television without turning it on. But it wasn’t until I was 53 that I was officially diagnosed with autism. Increased rates of autism diagnosis — now 1 out of 36 children in the U.S. — are due to a redefinition of the autism spectrum and a welcome recognition that autism has been underdiagnosed and underaccommodated. (Holden Thorp, 2/12)