looking forward
Baby KJ is doing well. Now what?
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
At just 6 months old, KJ Muldoon received a gene editing treatment custom-built to correct his unique mutation. He's not cured, but he has been able to resume a normal diet and is no longer on the path to a liver transplant.
The news could not have come at a more welcome or more jarring time for the field, Jason Mast reports. For three years, gene editing has seemed in free fall, riven by layoffs, closures, shuttered programs and sinking stock prices. The smile on KJ's face (he's pictured above with his father, Kyle) serves as a reminder of what a decade of advances could deliver.
But what comes next? In his latest story, Jason lays out both the optimistic case, and a pessimistic one. The pessimistic case is pretty straightforward: This approach can't be used (yet) for the vast majority of genetic diseases. When it can be used, it's expensive. ("Many millions" was one executive's guess for how much KJ's therapy cost.) Read Jason's story for more details, and for the optimistic view on the future of gene editing.
lawsuits
Point Harvard: Court orders government to restore articles on LGBTQ health
In March, I (Anil) reported on a suit being brought forth by two physicians at Harvard Medical School over research papers of theirs being removed from a government website. Late Friday, U.S. District Court judge Leo T. Sorokin ruled in favor of the Harvard researchers, granting them a preliminary injunction that calls on the federal government to restore articles that were taken down.
The suit was filed over two papers that were removed from PSNet, which posts papers on patient safety, because they included the terms "LGBTQ" and "trans(gender)." The plaintiffs argued that the action violated the First Amendment, as well as the Administrative Procedures Act, which governs the way federal agencies are supposed to proceed when creating or changing regulations.
The decision represents a victory for researchers seeking reprieve from the Trump administration's targeting of research, and particularly research on LGBTQ+ populations, as several cases related to medical research make their way through the court. — Anil Oza
trends
Increasing excess deaths in the U.S. over time
JAMA Health Forum
Over the last forty years, mortality rates in the U.S. have eased at slower rates than in other high-income countries. A new study, published Friday in JAMA Health Forum, illustrates just how wide the gap has become: Researchers found that between 1980 and 2023, there were about 14.7 million excess deaths in the U.S. — meaning that's how many more people died here as compared to 21 other high-income countries with consistently lower mortality rates.
The graph above illustrates how excess deaths in the U.S. peaked during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, but the trend was clear long before that. Study authors pointed to overdoses, firearm injuries, and cardiometabolic disease as likely drivers of the widening gap between the U.S. and other countries. "These deaths highlight the continued consequences of U.S. health system inadequacies, economic inequality, and social and political determinants of health," they wrote.
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