politics
At HHS, mRNA has fallen out of favor. What’s next?
The Alliance for mRNA Medicines has been a fast-growing industry group, now including 77 companies and institutions pushing mRNA therapies forward. After the announcement from HHS that the government’s emergency preparedness agency will no longer fund work on messenger RNA vaccines, alliance members were, “frankly, in disbelief,” a spokesperson for the organization said. Many of its companies were specifically named in the announcement, which could result in close to a billion dollars lost, per the spokesperson. STAT’s Marissa Russo reached out to the affected companies as the news settled in. Read her story about how people in the field are reacting to such a direct assault from the U.S. government.
For those who weren’t named in Tuesday’s announcement, there was only a semblance of relief. One of the most promising avenues of cancer immunotherapy research are vaccines — but many of those therapies, designed to prompt an immune response against a patient’s tumors, rely on the same mRNA technology that built groundbreaking Covid-19 vaccines. If mRNA overall has fallen out of favor, the impact could be wide-reaching.
“If the general dictum from on high is vaccines are bad or, in this scenario, that mRNA is ‘suspect’ then it may make it more difficult for these products to get FDA approval,” cancer vaccine researcher Ryan Sullivan said. “That would be awful.” Read more from a team of STAT reporters, led by Angus Chen, about how the cancer community is interpreting the move.
one big number
53%
That’s the average percentage of all calories consumed that American adults got from ultra-processed foods between 2021 and 2023. It’s a decrease from the nearly 56% of calories that ultra-processed foods made up in 2013 and 2014, according to new data from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. For people under 18, ultra-processed foods made up almost 62% of their calories between 2021 and 2023 — a significant decrease from 2017-2018, when it was almost 66%. It’s unclear why these decreases might be occurring. Got an idea? Send tips to STAT’s Sarah Todd.
first opinion
Can doctors ever ethically perform fake CPR?
I didn’t even know this was a thing, but apparently it’s called a “slow code.” In a new First Opinion essay, two bioethicists explain that a slow code is essentially a half-hearted attempt at CPR, where doctors aren’t actually trying to resuscitate the patient. Instead, what they’re focused on is limiting any prolonged suffering for patients in a situation with dismal odds of survival, while also avoiding conflict with grieving families who struggle to accept the inevitable.
For decades, bioethicists have called this malpractice. But the essay authors contend that perhaps the field put the question to bed too early, “trading the moral complexity of the hospital wards for rhetorical clarity in the academic journals,” they write. Read more on why some people say in some circumstances, slow codes aren’t just ethical — they’re essential.
