Jon Cohen

Trump’s plan to slash global health spending rejected by key spending panel House of Representatives committee signals support for HIV/AIDS and other funding

A key spending panel in the U.S. House of Representatives has signaled it sharply disagrees with President Donald Trump’s proposals to cut or totally eliminate funding for prominent global health programs.

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Meet the diabetes researcher behind Barbie’s new pink (insulin) pumps New line of dolls aims to help children with type 1 diabetes feel more included

Barbie's New Pink Pumps

(The headline that didn't make it through the editing machine.)

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‘Something remarkable has happened’: Cancer treatments bolster evidence of a natural HIV cure In exclusive chat with Science, Loreen Willenberg describes remaining HIV-free even after immune-suppressing therapies for brain and lung tumors

"Just remember this: If my purpose is to shine that beacon of hope, then by God, I'm happy to do that," says Loreen Willenberg. Strong evidence suggests she naturally cured HIV infection--and she's now beating lung and brain cancer.

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She's *now* beating...sorry for typo!

Updated with a few new details.

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Countries to budget more for HIV/AIDS measures as U.S. withdraws aid South Africa plans modest spending increase, but shortfalls will limit prevention and treatment

“I just can’t see how they’re going to make it up,” says Jennifer Kates, director of the Global Health & HIV Policy Program at the nonprofit KFF. @kffhealthnews.org

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Exclusive: NIH suspends dozens of pathogen studies over ‘gain-of-function’ concerns Trump executive order leads to pauses on U.S.-funded research into TB, influenza, COVID-19, and other diseases, dismaying some scientists

“NIH has identified 40 projects that may meet the definition of dangerous gain-of-function research.… Erring on the side of caution, all projects potentially meeting the definition are being suspended,” NIH deputy director Matt Memoli wrote to White House. www.science.org/content/arti...

Scattershot vaccination fails to slow mpox spread in Congo Limited vaccine doses weren’t used strategically, WHO analysis finds

“I call it the confetti strategy: You distribute a little bit everywhere,” says Ana Maria Henao-Restrepo, a WHO vaccine specialist who led the analysis.

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WHO panel favors natural origin of COVID-19 virus but decries missing evidence New report doesn’t rule out that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab in China, but says evidence for scenario remains “speculation”

The report faults the governments of the United States and Germany for not sharing more information from their intelligence communities but reserves its strongest criticism for China.

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Catherine Offord's powerful, must-read cover story about the impact of Trump cuts on nutrition programs for children in Nepal. Part 2 in series we're doing with support from the wonderful @pulitzercenter.bsky.social.
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Thanks for the kind words.

The Drug That Could Revolutionize the Fight Against H.I.V. World leaders are dismantling global health programs and cutting back foreign aid. Will an extraordinary new medicine be able to outpace the damage?

Gates Foundation asked me to underscore that its commitment remains steadfast to collaborative effort to make lenacapavir PrEP available to 2 million people in next three years. Question is: Can the collaboration do this without PEPFAR support? www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

Fifty Years After ‘Jaws,’ Shark Science Is Still Surfacing

Jaws' release in 1975 haunted the reputation of sharks worldwide. But a generation of scientists helped turn the tide.

My story for @nytimes.com

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/21/s...

A single shot of a flu drug could outperform vaccines—and protect for an entire season One injection of a long-lasting drug showed up to 76% efficacy in a large trial

“This is one of the most exciting recent advances for influenza prevention." www.science.org/content/arti...

Trump's cuts threaten HIV treatment and research We look into what the Trump administration's latest spending cuts could mean for the future of HIV and AIDS programs and vaccine research, both on an international and local level.

And link is here: www.kpbs.org/podcasts/kpb...

No. First one in a long time. Two in this 1998 issue.

Pleasure to be on the show, and Andrew was terrific.

Always ‘one atom away’: The long, rocky journey to an HIV prevention breakthrough Developing lenacapavir, the drug newly approved to protect against HIV for six months in one shot, took basic science, sophisticated chemistry, and perseverance

“I don’t think there was a lot of confidence we were going to succeed.” Gilead's making of lenacapavir PrEP that last six months with a single shot, approved by FDA June 18.

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The members of RFK Jr.’s new vaccine committee have published little on vaccines Purge at immunization panel represents a major loss of expertise, as measured by scientific papers

How much expertise did a key vaccine panel lose this week when RFK Jr. fired its 17 members and appointed 8 new ones?

@meredithwadman.bsky.social and I looked at their publication records to find out. www.science.org/content/arti...

*winners

I had the great honor and privilege of moderating a panel yesterday with winner's of this year's AAAS Mani L. Bhaumik Breakthrough of the Year award for people who played instrumental roles in developing and testing injectable lenacapavir as PrEP.

African countries fall far short of mpox vaccination targets Continent faces a shortage of doses and distribution challenges

“We are still highly dependent on donation,” says Placide Mbala, an mpox researcher at the DRC’s National Institute of Biomedical Research. www.science.org/content/arti...

Thanks for catching typo. Corrected.

‘Devasting.’ NIH cancels future funding plans for HIV vaccine consortia Researchers decry agency’s decision just as new leads reinvigorate search for long-sought vaccine

Headline says it all.

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Can gene-edited pigs solve the organ transplant shortage? With clinical trials imminent, hopes are rising high for the long-struggling field of xenotransplantation

The longstanding joke about xenotransplantation--it's the future and always will be--may soon lose all its punch. www.science.org/content/arti...

U.S. aid helped two African countries rein in HIV. Then came Trump In Lesotho and Eswatini, treatment and prevention cutbacks are hitting pregnant women, children, and teens especially hard

Many thanks to @pulitzercenter.bsky.social for making this possible. And of course to my fabulous editor, @martinenserink.bsky.social.
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Meet Cathy Tie, Bride of “China’s Frankenstein” The creator of CRISPR babies is flirting again with infamy, this time through a mysterious alliance with an Internet-savvy entrepreneur.

Wow. @antonioregalado.bsky.social
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‘A publicity problem’: New group pushes for microbes to be conserved like other endangered species Science speaks with conservation scientist Kent Redford about why microbes need protection from extinction—and how to achieve it

“Conservation as a practice has traditionally been about trying to keep things the way they are and maybe even the way they were, and microbes are not down with that at all."
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Gold standard or appalling? HHS’s $500 million vaccine bet on inactivated viruses puzzles field Department selected universal flu vaccine work by NIH leaders without “transparency,” some scientists say

“What’s troubling is to have an announcement that this is a revolutionary technology that is going to change the world, and there’s nothing on which to base those statements.”

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Jay B said in statement with accompanying announcement: “As we transition to this new system, NIH will no longer allow new subawards to foreign institutions. As new competing awards are issued or non-competing awards re-issued, NIH will no longer support foreign subawards in them."