Trump Budget Eliminates Funding for Crucial Global Vaccination Programs

The spending proposal terminates support of health programs that, according to the proposal, “do not make Americans safer.”The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year eliminates funding for programs that provide lifesaving vaccines around the world, including immunizations for polio.The budget, submitted to Congress last week, proposes to eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global health unit, effectively shutting down its $230 million immunization program: $180 million for polio eradication and the rest for measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. The budget plan also withdraws financial support for Gavi, the international vaccine alliance that purchases vaccines for children in developing countries.Overall, the budget request explicitly follows President Trump’s America First policy, slashing funds for global health programs that fight H.I.V. and malaria, and cutting support altogether to fight diseases that affect only poorer countries.“The request eliminates funding for programs that do not make Americans safer, such as family planning and reproductive health, neglected tropical diseases, and nonemergency nutrition,” the proposal said.Many public health experts said that such thinking is flawed because infectious diseases routinely breach borders. The United States is battling multiple measles outbreaks, prompting the C.D.C. last week to warn travelers about the risks of contracting measles. Each of those outbreaks began with a case of measles contracted by an international traveler.“Every single measles case this year is related to actual importations of the virus into the United States,” said Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center and a former director of the United States’ Immunization Program.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Read more →

Trump Rescinds Biden Policy Requiring Hospitals to Provide Emergency Abortions

At issue is a how to interpret a federal law barring hospitals from turning away poor or uninsured patients.The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it had revoked a Biden administration requirement that hospitals provide emergency abortions to women whose health is in peril, including in states where abortion is restricted or banned.The move by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the department led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was not a surprise. But it added to growing confusion around emergency care and abortions since June 2022, when the Supreme Court rescinded the national right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade.“It basically gives a bright green light to hospitals in red states to turn away pregnant women who are in peril,” Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, said of the Trump administration’s move.The administration did not explicitly tell hospitals that they were free to turn away women seeking abortions in medical emergencies. Its policy statement said hospitals would still be subject to a federal law requiring them to provide reproductive health care in emergency situations. But it did not explain exactly what that meant.Mr. Gostin and other experts said the murky policy could have dire consequences for pregnant women by discouraging doctors from performing emergency abortions in states where abortions are banned or restricted.“We’ve already seen since the overturn of Roe that uncertainty and confusion tends to mean physicians are unwilling to intervene, and the more unwilling physicians are to intervene, the more risk there is in pregnancy,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California-Davis and a historian of the American abortion debate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Read more →

As the Trump Administration Slashes Federal Spending, Scientists Consider Leaving the U.S.

Ardem Patapoutian’s story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science.He arrived in Los Angeles in 1986 at age 18 after fleeing war-torn Lebanon. He spent a year writing for an Armenian newspaper and delivering Domino’s at night to become eligible for the University of California, where he earned his undergraduate degree and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience.Listen to our reporter’s commentaryScientists told Kate Zernike that a whole system of science that the United States has built since World War II is at risk.He started a lab at Scripps Research in San Diego with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, discovered the way humans sense touch, and in 2021 won the Nobel Prize.But with the Trump administration slashing spending on science, Dr. Patapoutian’s federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to “any city, any university I want,” he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years.Dr. Patapoutian declined, because he loves his adopted country. Many scientists just setting out on their careers, however, fear there is no other option but to leave.Scientific leaders say that’s risking the way American science has been done for years, and the pre-eminence of the United States in their fields.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Read more →