special report
Trump’s immigration policies are fueling brain drain
Laura Weiler for STAT
For most people, coming to the U.S. on a visa has always carried a bit of uncertainty. But as the second Trump administration pushes heightened scrutiny of visa applicants, the process has become both riskier and less predictable. Researchers and lawyers say they’re seeing more delays and roadblocks; Scientists are being asked to show their social media profiles to the government to renew visas and submit additional evidence when applying for green cards.
“We are facing challenges at all phases of the game,” Jenny Bouta Mojica, an immigration attorney who works with academic institutions, told STAT’s Andrew Joseph. In the latest special report based on a STAT survey of NIH-supported researchers, Drew reports on the possibility that America is becoming a less attractive destination for science. Read more.
research
An update on uterine transplant science
Since the first baby was born from somebody with a transplanted uterus in 2014, there have been dozens of similarly successful births worldwide. “It’s a complete new world,” Giuliano Testa, chief of abdominal transplant at Baylor University Medical Center, told me two years ago. Back then, he had just published a study on the first 20 women who received transplants at his clinic. On Friday, he and his team published updated results in JAMA on the first 44 cases.
Out of 44 women who received a transplant at Baylor between 2016 and March 2026, 37 had a viable uterus one month after the procedure. Overall, 31 recipients had 47 pregnancies, with 27 of them delivering 31 babies. (Twelve miscarriages occurred and four pregnancies are ongoing.) There were maternal complications like gestational diabetes and hypertension in 30% of the deliveries and obstetric complications in 45%.
The results demonstrate that transplants can result in live births for women who previously had absolute uterine factor infertility. Recipients are typically healthy, unlike those who receive other types of organ transplants, which the researchers believe may contribute to the success rate. The paper emphasizes the importance of making this option accessible for all types of patients.
counting down
2048
That’s the year that high-income countries around the world will eliminate cervical cancer with increased HPV vaccination, screening, and treatment of pre-cancers and cancer, aa new analysis published in The Lancet estimates. But researchers also found that under the status quo, low- and middle-income countries would only decrease cervical cancer incidence by 23% in the same period.
Already, cervical cancer incidence in low- and middle-income countries is three times higher than in high-income countries; lower access to vaccination and screening are key drivers of that inequity, per the data. Funding cuts by the high-income U.S. last year have further hampered global elimination efforts. If nothing changes, the incidence gap could jump to a 12-fold difference by 2105. Hitting WHO goals for screening and vaccination would help, as would the introduction of universal vaccination, the researchers concluded, while acknowledging the presence of budget constraints and competing health priorities in struggling regions.
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