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Hello all, this is Allison DeAngelis, filling in for your Morning Rounds maven Theresa Gaffney.
Yesterday, Theresa brought a new issue to light: The potential disappearance of sour cream and onion potato chips. I’m here to burst her bubble. I wanted to indulge a bit on Saturday, and while I was at Walgreens grabbing some household items, I wandered over to the snack section in search of Funyuns. (Don’t judge me. They’ve got a great crunch and flavor.) Come to find my classic Funyuns have been replaced with a sour cream and onion version! Apparently, Frito-Lay recently launched the new flavor.
I hope this hot tip helps you get through your Wednesday. Now, on to the news…
CDC nominee Weldon’s vaccine criticism grew over the last two decades
When President Trump announced last November that he’d tapped David Weldon to lead the CDC, it took some by surprise. Reporting from Sarah Overmohle found that his name rose to the top of the administration’s short list for CDC directors after a push from Robert F. Kennedy’s team.
On Thursday, Weldon will be the first CDC nominee to go through the Senate confirmation process, a new requirement implemented in 2023. The former congressman will face myriad questions about the agency’s future and his long, documented past as a vaccine critic and ideological approach to reproductive and sexual health.
Weldon is a physician who served in Congress from 1995 until 2009, and has kept a low profile since. Documents examined by STAT show how the former representative’s theories about vaccines and autism grew in the early 2000s, and the building pushback he received from health officials and the scientific community.
A once-a-year HIV shot?
It’s possible that HIV could be prevented by an annual shot — at least, that’s what new data from Gilead suggests. The drug company has been developing a new HIV drug called lenacapavir, which until now has been tested just twice a year. Scientists have been tweaking the drug’s formulation and recently found in a 40-person test that one form led to higher levels of the drug in volunteers’ blood streams, lasting at least 56 weeks.
To be clear, the trial didn’t test the new version of lenacapavir’s efficacy in preventing HIV, Jason Mast writes. But it caused a stir, with one expert saying the data “shatter a glass ceiling.”
Gilead is still selecting which version of lenacapavir it will develop further. The company plans to begin a Phase 3 trial of the once-a-year version this year.
Understanding air-borne diseases
STAT’s First Opinion podcast is back for a new season, and it’s kicking off with a conversation with science writer Carl Zimmer.
Zimmer, who is currently a columnist for the New York Times, discusses his latest book, “Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe.” The book delves into Covid and the history of aerobiology, or the transmission of particles through the air. In particular, Zimmer delves into why it’s so difficult to learn how diseases spread this way. “There’s just so much work that has to be done there, and there really isn’t a whole lot of research going on there still, which is with bird flu floating around, that’s kind of striking,” he said.
You can listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
A new kind of doula
Clergy often guide people through many of life’s major moments. In a moving video for STAT produced by Hyacinth Empinado, Rev. Beth Stotts talks about a new way she’s helping her congregants: as an end-of-life doula.
End-of-life or death doulas provide advanced care planning and other non-medical services to support the dying and their loved ones. For Stotts, that means talking about funeral arrangements, counseling family members, tying up loose ends or goals, and discussing small details about their final moments. Do they want music? Maybe a candle? “I think it’s actually very empowering for individuals to be able to say, ‘I don’t want this or I do want that,’” Stotts said. “You feel less of a victim to the end of your life.”
It may be an unfamiliar role today, but end-of-life doulas are becoming more common. The number of certified end-of-life doulas has significantly grown after the pandemic, from about 250 in 2019 to more than 1,500 in 2024.
SAMHSA employees detail an agency in shambles
The Trump administration has cut around 100 employees, or roughly 10%, of the federal agency that oversees mental and behavioral health — a move that could imperil efforts to curb suicides and drug overdose deaths, Rose Broderick reports.
Primarily a grantmaking agency with an $8 billion budget, SAMHSA channels funds and training that the federal government doles out to on-the-ground service providers. The organization deals with “life and death issues,” one former employee notes.
Drug overdose deaths have dropped in recent years, but still top 80,000 annually, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. The country’s mental health crisis is similarly troubling: the suicide rate increased by roughly 30% from 2002 to 2022.
A genetic clue into TB transmission
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have identified genes that the tuberculous bacteria rely on to survive and spread — genes that could be useful in curing the disease or stopping its spread.
Until now, very little was known about how tuberculous bacteria survived temperature changes, oxygen levels, humidity, and other environmental factors during the journey from one person’s lungs to another’s. “Now we have a sense, through these genes, of the tools tuberculosis uses to protect itself,” said Dr. Lydia Bourouiba, who was co-senior author of the paper, which was published in PNAS.
What we’re reading
- His daughter was America’s first measles death in a decade, The Atlantic
- Federal science hamstrung by DOGE’s credit card spending limit, Undark
- The women’s health sector is on the verge of a pivotal transformation, STAT
- RFK says most vaccine advisers have conflicts of interest. A report shows they don’t, NPR
- Will lawmakers let Texas’ maternal mortality committee review abortion deaths? The Texas Tribune