POLITICS
RFK Jr. shreds HHS
Credit Alex Brandon/AP
The Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday its plan to fire 10,000 employees and radically reorganize what they see as a bloated federal health care bureaucracy. The moves will save $1.8 billion per year, cut the agency's 28 divisions by almost half, and prioritize reducing chronic illness, according to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The cuts balloon to 20,000 including buyouts and early retirements, but the plan is currently short on details, including who will be laid off and how these reorganizations will shake out. Many high-level officials were left in the dark about the announcement.
The Food and Drug Administration will be hit hardest: about 3,500 employees, or about 19% of the agency's workforce, according to an HHS fact sheet. The document says that FDA cuts will not affect drug, medical device, or food reviewers, nor will they affect inspectors. More details here. The agency's brain drain was not limited to the layoffs. Two key administrators that regulate cancer drugs are expected to step down. Read more about the flood of talent that has fled the FDA in recent months.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will lose 2,400 employees, or about 18% of its workforce. The agency will return to its core mission of preparing for and responding to disease epidemics and outbreaks, though one former HHS administrator questioned this change.
"How progress will be made to reverse the chronic disease epidemic by cutting chronic disease programs from CDC is an open question," said Anand Parekh, chief medical adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Stay tuned for more details about this upheaval and its broader implications for health care in the United States. But for now, here's the scoop. And for the visual learners out there, here's a graph detailing the HHS workforce, compared with other government agencies.
-png.png?width=2880&height=3432&upscale=true&name=DKjew-size-of-the-federal-workforce(3)-png.png)
ETHICS
CRISPR pioneer calls for more guardrails
Keith Joung, an early pioneer of gene-editing technology, admitted Wednesday that scientists still lack the tools necessary for understanding what kinds of risks germline editing poses to future generations of humans — and that this lack of understanding means there is an inherent safety risk to such procedures.
Speaking at a diverse gathering of academics, scientists, disease advocates and religious leaders, Juong and others picked up the long-running debate over how to put guardrails on controversial gene-editing technologies. I always love Megan Molteni's writing, but her readout of the gathering is a particular treat.
RESEARCH
The protective power of gender-affirming hormones, part two
Last week, I (Theresa) wrote in this newsletter about a study that found trans people who receive gender-affirming hormones had a significantly lower risk of experiencing moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms than those who didn't. Yesterday, I published a story about research by the same team, which again found health benefits associated with hormone treatment.
In a study of more than 8,000 trans and nonbinary patients, those prescribed gender-affirming hormones were 37% less likely to be infected with HIV than those who were not taking hormones. And if they already were infected, they were 44% less likely to have transmissible levels of the virus in their blood. Read more about the study, and how future research might be hampered by the ongoing NIH cuts. —Theresa Gaffney
No comments