Luis Gil Abinader

New research by Pierre Azoulay, Danielle Li, Bhaven Sampat and me.

Earlier this year, the President’s budget proposed a 40% cut to the budget of the NIH. This motivated us to ask: what if the NIH had been 40% smaller?

Law and power in pandemic negotiations: Policymaking via contract in South Africa's dealings with COVID-19 vaccine companies - PubMed COVID-19 vaccine distribution was marked by deeply unequal access for Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This article analyzes negotiations between government and pharmaceutical companies, through the c...

Cool new research digs into 💉 purchasing contracts that pharma negotiated with South Africa

Here's what they found:

@hji-sa.bsky.social‬ @abinader.bsky.social‬ @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social‬

BREAKING: Tesla was just hit with a $329 million verdict in a trial over a fatal crash that a Miami jury found was caused by Tesla's defective autopilot.

Law and power in pandemic negotiations: Policymaking via contract in South Africa’s dealings with COVID-19 vaccine companies COVID-19 vaccine distribution was marked by deeply unequal access for Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This article analyzes negotiations between government and pharmaceutical companies, through th...

Can voluntary deals ensure equitable vaccine access in a pandemic? Our new research w @hji-sa.bsky.social
on South Africa’s COVID-19 negotiations shows no. Major policy made via private contract. Implications for global governance... 🧵
doi.org/10.1080/1744...
@abinader.bsky.social

A major AI training data set contains millions of examples of personal data Personally identifiable information has been found in DataComp CommonPool, one of the largest open-source data sets used to train image generation models.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/18/1...

Another new #NIH Notice published today. In addition to the AI information referenced below, NIH is also instituting a new policy limiting the number of applications that NIH will consider per Principal Investigator per calendar year. It's included in this Notice. #RAdminsky #Research #Medsky

NIH issues new policy stating that it will not consider research grant applications “substantially developed” by AI to be original ideas of the applicant.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Palantir Co-Founder Joe Lonsdale Backs Bedrock Robotics To Automate Construction — Union Leader Calls It 'Misguided' - Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Palantir Technologies Inc. co-founder Joe Lonsdale is backing Bedrock Robotics, a construction automation startup.

The co-founder of Palantir is backing a construction automation startup seeking to build AI powered heavy machinery that doesn't require workers.

The company, Bedrock Robotics, was founded by three people who used to work at Waymo.

www.benzinga.com/markets/tech...

why Purple Patch?

Late disclosures of federal funding in US patents ABSTRACT. Enacted primarily to encourage patents on federally funded inventions, an additional policy objective of the Bayh–Dole Act is to increase visibil

Article by @abinader.bsky.social on the efforts to address late disclosures of federal funding in US patents.

academic.oup.com/jlb/article/...

Independent Articles Global Legal Environment for LGBTQ+ Sexuality and Public Health Matthew M. Kavanagh1,2 , Varsha Srivatsan2, Florence Riako Anam3, Ludo Bok4, Luis Gil Abinader2, Agrata Sharma2 , Catherine Grant4, Yu Wei Chen2 and Sharonann Lynch2 1Georgetown University, Washington, DC USA; 2Center for Global Health Policy & Politics, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Washington, DC USA; 3Global Network of People Living With HIV, Nairobi, Kenya and 4United Nations Development Programme, New York, USA Abstract In 2023 the Supreme Court of Mauritius cited human rights and public health arguments to strike down a colonial-era law criminalizing consensual same-sex sex. The parliament of Singapore recently did the same through legislative means. Are these aberrations or a shifting global consensus? This article documents a remarkable shift international legal shift regarding LGBTQ+ sexuality. Analysis of laws from 194 countries across multiple years demonstrates a clear, ongoing trend toward decriminalization globally. Where most countries criminalized same-sex sexuality in the 1980s, now two-thirds of countries do not criminalize under law. Additionally, 28 criminalizing countries in 2024 demonstrate a de facto policy of non-enforcement, a milestone towards legal change that all of the countries that have fully decriminalized since 2017 have taken. This has important public health effects, with health law lessons for an era of multiple pandemics. But amidst this trend, the reverse is occurring in some countries, with a counter-trend toward deeper, harsher criminalization of LGBTQ+ sexuality. Case studies of Angola, Singapore, India, Botswana, Mauritius, Cook Islands, Gabon, and Antigua and Barbuda show many politically- and legally-viable pathways to decriminalization and highlight actors in the executive, legislative, and judicial arenas of government and civil society engaged in legal change. Keywords: LGBT health; human rights; discrimination; …

Now open access on FirstView: "Global Legal Environment for LGBTQ+ Sexuality and Public Health" by ‪@matthewkavanagh.bsky.social, @abinader.bsky.social, @sharonannlynch.bsky.social and team. The article analyzes politically and legally viable pathways to decriminalization. #LGBTHealth #HIV #LGBTQIA

Memorandum on measures to include data on the costs of trials in ClinicalTrials.Gov - Knowledge Ecology International Clinicaltrials-dot-Gov-HHS-15Sep2023 From the memo: This memo provides a request that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), working through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), use it...

Earlier, 2023, memorandum to HHS on measures to include data on the costs of trials in ClinicalTrials.Gov

www.keionline.org/40783

That's not to say that pharma won't try to - as ever - keep prices secret.

Monthly re-upping of one of my top 5 favourite papers ever by @cmorten.bsky.social on why trade secret protections are often more vibes than actual law : papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4041556 7/8

We just posted a major new study of AI models and books, showing that some (but not all) models memorize large portions of some (but not all) books after training on the books3 database

With A. Feder Cooper and Amy Cyphert, among others

arxiv.org/pdf/2505.12546

Formalism, Fictions, and Federalism: Post Expiry Royalties Return to SCOTUS by Dennis Crouch I just read Atrium Medical's SCOTUS petition -- asking the court help resolve a circuit split involving …

Patent post expiry royalties return to SCOTUS.

Blog by @denniscrouch.bsky.social with link to the Atrium Medical cert petition: patentlyo.com/patent/2025/...

Symposium Law and Global Governance of Infectious Disease: Access to Medicines on COVID-19, AIDS, and Beyond Matthew M. Kavanagh1,2 , Luis Gil Abinader1,2, Fatima Hassan2 and Eric Friedman3 1Center for Global Health Policy & Politics, Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia, United States; 2Health Justice Initiative, Cape Town, South Africa and 3O’Neill Institute, Georgetown University, Washington, District of Columbia, United States Abstract Scientific advances to fight infectious diseases have been remarkable. International law and global governance have sought, and often failed, to keep pace, secure equity, and stop outbreaks. We trace the law and governance model emerging from early failure in the AIDS response and identify four elements: use of law by national governments to compel sharing; decentralized generic manufacturing; mechanisms for voluntary sharing of patents and technology transfer; international funding. In combination, these created a remarkable new ecosystem. We find that when COVID-19 hit and mRNA vaccines were rapidly developed, global North governments opposed mobilizing this synergistic model. Instead, equity efforts focused on financing purchase of vaccines from originator companies with little use of law. Amidst monopolies and scarcity of doses, vaccine nationalism fatally undermined this effort. Whether more synergistic law and governance emerges from rapidly changing global health law will likely dictate the efficacy of future global infectious disease response. Keywords: COVID; AIDS; health law; intellectual property

Now on FirstView: "Law and Global Governance of Infectious Disease: Access to Medicines on COVID-19, AIDS, and Beyond" by @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social, @abinader.bsky.social, Fatima Hassan, and Eric Friedman.
#COVID #AIDS #HealthLaw
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Abolishing USAID Is Both Unconstitutional and Disastrous The State Department isn’t ready to handle vital disease-prevention efforts worldwide.

The Trump administration's push to dismantle #USAID undermines U.S. foreign policy & global health, argued @matthewkavanagh.bsky.social and @abinader.bsky.social. "This is neither good policy nor legal under the most basic elements of U.S. law and the Constitution.” foreignpolicy.com/2025/02/04/u...

Exclusive: NIH to end billions of dollars in foreign research grants Move by US biomedical agency jeopardizes thousands of projects on infectious diseases, cancer and more.

NIH is ending billions of dollars in foreign subawards, jeopardizing thousands of projects on infectious diseases, cancer and more.

Unless foreign researchers secure funding directly from NIH by October — a tall order for any researcher — clinical trials abroad and other research will shut down.

Preserving Research Ethics Oversight Amid Decimation of the Research Enterprise This Viewpoint examines how research ethics oversight, particularly by institutional review boards, has been affected by expansive federal staffing and budget cuts.

Out today in @jama.com, a joint warning from AEREO, @weareprimr.bsky.social, @aahrpp.bsky.social, and CARE-Q, about how capped indirects and decimation of OHRP risk slowing research and making participants less safe.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

YouTube video by TeachPrivacy Webinar - Privacy DOGE and Trump 2

My panel with @daniel-solove.bsky.social, @mariotrujillo.bsky.social, and @alexreevegivens.bsky.social on DOGE, the Privacy Act, and how to protect privacy in our new authoritarian regime can be viewed here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6eQ...

U.S.-born American citizen under ICE hold in Florida after driving from Georgia Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez is being held even though a county judge found his birth certificate “authentic” and said there wasn’t reason to consider him an “illegal alien.”

ICE is detaining US citizens despite proof of citizenship and despite the law being enjoined already

www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/...

Brilliant essay on the perils of mass layoffs at federal agencies’ FOIA offices, by my friend and frequent collaborator @reshmagar.bsky.social:

This article, along with many others currently available in FirstView, will be in our upcoming issue "Research Integrity and Misconduct."

🚨🚨 Just out - a letter from almost 900 Yale profs to our leaders, urging them to stand with us to defend the values of higher ed - and to resist and legally challenge any unlawful demands: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F.... Please share!

Was great to have my colleagues Alice Kayongo and @abinader.bsky.social and visitor Michael Aboneka in our class on policy analysis for @guglobalhealth.bsky.social focused on advocacy strategies.
Thank you!!

with the u.s capitol in the background, a protester standing on the george washington memorial during the “hands off” march in dc holds a handwritten sign that says “congress, do your job!”

two people in the dc “hands off” march dressed like penguins and holding cardboard signs that say “where the fuck so we even begin?”