On Unearned Advantage

Over the course of the year, the Trump administration cut billions in funding for the National Institutes of Health, and $500 million worth of mRNA vaccine research. “There has been erosion of trust in science and public health and medicine,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at the Texas Children’s Hospital. “But it’s not random, this occurred deliberately by bad actors for political motivation.” Dr. Francis Collins, the former director of the NIH, said he’s never seen anything like this. Cuts to NIH resulted in the cancellation of 383 clinical trials affecting 74,000 trial participants. “Many of these people very serious cancers for which we don't have a great answer, but maybe we're in the middle of discovering one, and then the trial gets stopped, and all that data is lost, and those people are basically left to drift,” Dr. Collins said. “This is immoral to drop somebody into that space.”

Jailed for three days without an explanation or ability to notify anyone, George Retes argues the only path to healing starts with the government taking accountability for its actions.

Sonya Stokes, an emergency room physician in the San Francisco Bay Area, braces herself for a daily deluge of patients sick with coughs, soreness, fevers, vomiting, and other flu-like symptoms.

The new HHS secretary has made baseless claims that the drugs are addictive and cause violent behavior.