NIH grants, Covid guidance, pharma tariffs

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Good morning, Jason Mast here filling in for Theresa. The Morning Rounds editor has informed me that she has tired of all this debate over potato chips and the curious case of the vanishing sour cream and onion. Therefore, I will move on to french fries. My personal favorite: Thrasher’s, which can be found along the Ocean City, Md. and Rehoboth, Del. boardwalks. Golden brown but not too crispy, peanut oil glistening, with the perfect touch of salt. Douse in vinegar instead of ketchup. Our health secretary of course prefers Steak ’n Shake and their beef tallow offerings (no one tell him they’re first “par-fried” in seed oil). What say you, Morning Rounds reader? Where do you get the perfect fry? And what, pray tell, are you dipping it in?

A small country tries to save its big pharma industry

Over the last fifty years, Ireland has become an unlikely global capital for the pharmaceutical industry, thanks to generous tax policies and a concerted effort to build up a local pharma workforce. Employment in some towns has boomed thanks to the presence of companies like Eli Lilly, which just spent $800 million expanding a countryside campus to meet burgeoning demand for diabetes and obesity medicines.

Now, the future of that medicinal engine is in doubt, STAT’s Drew Joseph reports in a dispatch from the Emerald Isle. President Trump has threatened tariffs on pharmaceuticals as part of his broader bid to onshore manufacturing plants. He’s singled out Ireland, calling it a “beautiful island of five million people” that  “has got the entire U.S. pharmaceutical industry in its grasp.”

Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis and AstraZeneca have now announced manufacturing investments in the U.S., trying to convince the administration there’s no need for tariffs. In Ireland, local leaders are hoping they can send the same message. Read more.

No old funds and no new funds, either

Universities whose grants have been frozen may now also be unable to receive new ones, according to an email obtained by STAT. The email directs NIH staff not to award new grants to these schools, particularly naming Columbia, Harvard, Brown, Northwestern, Cornell, and its affiliated medical school, Cornell-Weill Medicine.  It also directed staff to not tell schools about this new policy.

The move, apparently coming from the office of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is the latest in a series of efforts to choke off funding from high-profile universities in a bid to force sweeping policy changes on campus. Read more from Anil Oza and Megan Molteni.  

Who needs guidance on Covid treatments anyway?

For most of the last three years, Covid.gov was a go-to site for key information on tests, treatments and vaccines for a virus that once shut down the globe. No longer.

On Friday, the White House updated Covid.gov so it now redirects to the URL, whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19. The site argues, in strident tones, that SARS-CoV-2 emerged out of a Wuhan lab, where researchers were conducting so-called gain-of-function research with taxpayer funds, and that Anthony Fauci and the Biden Administration covered it up. Notes decrying mask mandates, lockdowns, social distancing and Andrew Cuomo follow.

For scientists who had long promoted the lab leak theory, the new website was a long-awaited vindication. But other researchers called it a litany of falsehoods and misleading statements. In either case, any American looking for information on how to protect themselves from a virus that still kills tens of thousands in the U.S. every year will find themselves fresh out of luck. Read more. 

A medical journal receives a troubling missive

The editor in chief of CHEST, the official journal of the American College of Chest Physicians, received an unusual letter this week. It came not from a scientist or physician but from Edward R. Martin Jr, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

“It has been brought to my attention that more and more journals and publications like CHEST Journal are conceding that they are partisans in various scientific debates,” he wrote, before going on to ask six questions, largely about alleged bias in publishing decisions. 

It’s unclear how many other medical journals received this impromptu correspondence from the Justice Department, although MedScape reported on at least two others. One feared these letters could have a chilling effect on scientific debate, while violating the First Amendment. But another argued the effort was so brazen and ham-handed “that I can’t believe anyone’s going to be intimidated.” Read more from Anil. 

Trump cuts threaten crisis services

When Paolo del Vecchio was 23 and on the brink of suicide, he found help thanks to a small, little-known federal agency called the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMSHA. He got treatment, peer and family support, and a reason to live: Helping others recover, too. Eventually, he became a SAMSHA employee and worked at the center for thirty years.  

Now, del Vecchio writes in an opinion piece, he’s concerned others who are in a similar place he was won’t be able to access that same lifeline. The Trump Administration has gutted the agency, originally founded under President George H. W. Bush. It reportedly fired half of its staff and cut $1 billion in funding. A recently leaked White House budget proposal would zero out the agency and cut more than 40 programs. 

These enacted and proposed cuts jeopardize critical mental health and addiction efforts, including crisis services for mothers with children and youth programs, along with efforts to help tribes, the unhoused, and people in the criminal justice system. “We continue to face a mental health and addictions crisis, and the need for effective federal leadership is more important than ever,” del Vecchio writes.  Read more.

What we’re reading

• How to think about Trump’s pharma tariffs — before they hit, STAT

• China’s restrictions on rare earths could hurt U.S. health care, Washington Post

• In three months, half of them will be dead, The Atlantic
• Makary says FDA will remove pharma representatives from advisory panels, STAT
• Signs of life on a distant planet? Not so fast, say these astronomers, Nature