Addiction programs at risk under proposed federal budget cuts
Harm reduction advocates in Nashville are scrambling as proposed federal budget cuts threaten programs that provide life-saving services like Narcan, HIV testing and syringe exchanges. While overdose deaths are declining nationwide, groups like Mending Hearts and HOPE warn that cuts to SAMHSA funding could put hundreds at risk and undo years of progress in addiction recovery.May 21, 2025
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Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Devastating blow in race for vaccine against deadly disease that affects millions
A major US research program to develop a vaccine against HIV has been abruptly canceled by the Trump administration, sparking outrage as infections rise and global prevention efforts stall. The administration's termination of the promising $258million research program stunned scientists, whose years-long project had also benefited the development of treatments for COVID-19, autoimmune conditions, and even snakebite antivenom. Researchers at Duke University and the Scripps Research Institute were informed on Friday that their funding would be cut. 'The consortia for HIV/AIDS vaccine development and immunology was reviewed by NIH leadership, which does not support it moving forward,' a senior official, who asked not to be named, told the New York Times. 'NIH expects to be shifting its focus toward using currently available approaches to eliminate HIV/AIDS.' 'I find it very disappointing that, at this critical juncture, the funding for highly successful HIV vaccine research programs should be pulled,' Dennis Burton, an immunologist who led the program at Scripps, told the New York Times. For decades, the United States has led the world in HIV research, pouring billions into cutting-edge science that turned a once-fatal virus into a manageable condition for millions. American labs were the first to crack the genetic code of HIV, to develop life-saving antiretroviral drugs, and to pioneer global initiatives like PEPFAR that saved more than 25 million lives worldwide. The now-axed vaccine program was another shining example of US scientific leadership, bringing together top researchers from coast to coast and pushing the boundaries of immunology. The cancellation is part of a broader rollback of federal HIV efforts. The NIH has also paused funding for a separate clinical trial of an HIV vaccine developed by Moderna. HIV rates remain high. In 2023 alone, the World Health Organization reported 1.3 million new infections, including 120,000 children. More than 32,000 people in the US contracted the virus last year and there was another 4,000 new cases in the UK. 'This is just inconceivable,' Mitchell Warren, executive director of the HIV prevention organization AVAC, told the New York Times. In some parts of the US, the effects are already being felt. In Texas, the state's Department of Health Services told grantees to pause HIV prevention activities 'until further notice.' In Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, 10 health department staffers have been laid off. Across Africa, several countries are reporting major disruptions in prevention work after delays in US aid. 'The HIV pandemic will never be ended without a vaccine, so killing research on one will end up killing people,' John Moore, an HIV researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College, said. 'The NIH's multiyear investment in advanced vaccine technologies shouldn't be abandoned on a whim like this.' Trial after trial has failed to produce a traditional HIV vaccine, but the Duke and Scripps teams had been taking a new approach: studying broadly neutralizing antibodies shown in animals to protect against multiple strains of the virus. That promising pipeline may now run dry. 'Almost everything in the field is hinged on work that those two programs are doing,' said Warren. 'The pipeline just got clogged.' During his first term, President Trump had supported efforts to curb the HIV epidemic. But in his second term, his administration has slashed prevention efforts, terminated several PrEP-related grants, and shut down the HIV prevention division at the CDC. While officials say the work may be transferred to a yet-to-be-formed federal agency, no details have been shared.
Reuters
3 days ago
- Reuters
Gilead commits to HIV prevention rollout for low-income countries despite funding uncertainty
May 30 (Reuters) - Gilead Sciences says it still plans to supply its twice-yearly injection for preventing HIV infection in low-income countries if it wins U.S. approval despite funding uncertainty over the Trump Administration's pullback in aid spending. Some AIDS experts, including activists and doctors, say the Gilead drug, lenacapavir, could help end the 44-year-old epidemic that infects 1.3 million people a year and is estimated by the World Health Organization to have killed more than 42 million. An FDA approval decision is expected by June 19 for lenacapavir, which proved to be nearly 100% effective at preventing HIV in large trials. If the Food and Drug Administration green lights the drug, and its view is seconded by the WHO, the shots could start to roll out early in 2026 to at least 2 million people in 18 low-income countries based on Gilead's agreement with the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund, a worldwide partnership targeting HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. Gilead agreed to provide lenacapavir at cost for two-to-three years while six generic drugmakers, which were granted licenses to make the medicine for low-income countries, ramp up production. Experts said a successful launch of a long-acting HIV prevention drug could help stall the epidemic. Until recently, the only pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) options for people at high risk of infection were daily pills, requiring careful adherence to be effective. "You can foresee a day where there are no new HIV diagnoses. It doesn't happen if we only do this in the U.S.," Gilead Chief Commercial Officer Johanna Mercier said. "We need to make sure we have a global approach to this launch." PEPFAR being part of the effort is Gilead's intent and goal, Mercier said. "Unfortunately, if they're not part of that mix, our goal is still to meet that objective of 2 million people getting access." Wall Street has a close eye on lenacapavir, one of the highest-profile drugs to undergo FDA review since President Donald Trump named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary and promised to upend the status quo. Most of the drug's profits are expected in the U.S., with annual sales reaching $1 billion by next year, according to analysts' estimates compiled by LSEG. Whether all of the agreed funding for low-income countries - most of which are in Africa - will come through is unclear. Countries that rely on aid are already reeling from funding cuts by the Trump Administration, including to PEPFAR, and AIDS researchers are bracing for the worst. The United Nations program on HIV/AIDS earlier this month said many HIV prevention programs supported by PEPFAR were stalled, although services for pregnant and breastfeeding women were technically exempt from the cuts. Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund, told Reuters the group intends to fund as much of the lenacapavir rollout as possible, but it will need to start slowly. "It's not just the uncertainty over PEPFAR's funding that's an issue, but the uncertainty over our funding," Sands said, adding that the group's first priority is treating people already infected with the deadly virus. Much will depend on the success of the Global Fund's effort to raise $18 billion to fund its work from 2027-2029. The U.S. is its largest donor, committing $6 billion in the previous funding round. It is unclear what the U.S. may provide this round, or whether other big governments will step up. UNAIDS estimates that the permanent discontinuation of HIV prevention and treatment programs supported by PEPFAR would lead to an additional 6.6 million new HIV infections between 2025 and 2029. The U.S. State Department, which oversees PEPFAR, did not respond to a request for comment. Gilead declined to comment on its manufacturing cost for lenacapavir, whose U.S. price is likely to be on par with current preventive medications at around $25,000 per year. ViiV Healthcare's Apretude, an injection given every two months, costs about 124.20 pounds ($168) in low- and middle-income countries. Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS nonprofit AVAC, estimates the eventual annual cost at $100-$120. The lower the price, the more people who could receive it, he said. Warren said PEPFAR could still participate, and others may come forward. The Gates Foundation and the Children's Investment Fund Foundation are "actively involved in all of these conversations," he said, as is the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Linda-Gail Bekker of the University of Cape Town, who led lenacapavir clinical trials in South Africa and Uganda, said she was elated when she first saw the findings. "The huge feeling I have now is one of incredible dismay," said Bekker of uncertainty over the Trump administration's commitment to PEPFAR and HIV prevention in poor nations. "It felt like the stars were aligning, and one of the stars has fallen out of the sky."
The Guardian
3 days ago
- The Guardian
Walk on the wild side: Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs on their epic hiking movie The Salt Path
'I have played a lot of powerful, well-dressed women in my career,' says Gillian Anderson. They flash before your eyes: Margaret Thatcher (The Crown), Eleanor Roosevelt (The First Lady), Emily Maitlis (the Prince Andrew/Newsnight drama Scoop) – as well as the formidable sex therapist in the Netflix hit Sex Education, a role that led to her being inundated with dildos from over-enthusiastic fans. 'These are all women in control of themselves and their environment. Any time I have an opportunity to steer against that, particularly lately, it's of interest to me.' There is steering in another direction, and then there is the screeching handbrake turn represented by her role in The Salt Path, adapted from Raynor Winn's 2018 memoir of homelessness and hope along the coastline of England's south-west. Playing Winn, Anderson is shown making a single teabag stretch for several cuppas, withdrawing the final £1.38 from her bank account, and warming her blistered feet by a pub fire. A typical day begins with her peeing in the undergrowth. It's a far cry from Agent Scully in The X-Files. Winn's response to a double catastrophe in her life in 2013 was to embark on the lengthy South West Coast Path walk with her husband, Moth. The film's opening scene shows the couple's tent being flooded during a King Lear-level storm. A flashback then reveals how they ended up in this sorry, soggy state. A bad investment left them saddled with crippling debts and the couple lost the farm in Wales where they had brought up their now-adult children. While cowering in the hallway from bailiffs, Winn took inspiration from a cherished book glimpsed among their partly packed belongings: Five Hundred Mile Walkies, in which Mark Wallington recounts the trek he and his dog took around the south-west. He must have miscalculated the journey, however. It is in fact 630 miles, including many steep ascents and descents. And as if penury and homelessness were not challenging enough, Moth had recently been diagnosed with a rare brain disease, corticobasal syndrome, and advised by doctors to rest. Stairs, he was told, would be particularly problematic. Twelve years and those 630 miles later, Moth Winn is, miraculously, still alive. He is played in the film by Jason Isaacs, who sits beside his screen wife today in a London hotel room. Their contrasting body language is instantly revealing. The 56-year-old Anderson, friendly but with a casually authoritative aura, is perched side-saddle in her chair, one leg crossed away from me, so that she seems almost to be looking back over her shoulder in my direction as she speaks. Isaacs, 61, leans forward, elbows on knees, keen to get stuck in. It is as if they are still playing their parts from The Salt Path: Raynor Winn, with her patina of reserve and caution, and Moth, eager to make sure everyone else is comfortable, a people-pleaser even when the people aren't worth pleasing, as some of those they meet on their travels manifestly are not. A passerby berates them for wild camping, beating their tent with his stick. In a scene that hasn't made it from page to screen, Winn is humiliated by a woman who spots her scrambling on the ground for dropped coins and assumes she is drunk. Despite those flashes of conflict, Winn had doubts about how her story would work on screen. 'It's about two people and a path,' she tells me from the home she and Moth now share in Cornwall. 'I couldn't grasp how that could be a film.' But Marianne Elliott, the acclaimed stage director of War Horse, Angels in America, and Company, makes her screen directing debut here and tells me she always saw The Salt Path as inherently cinematic. 'Ray and Moth hardly talk on their walk,' she says. 'They are carrying their trauma on their back, but then they slowly calm down and start to look up and engage with the majestic landscapes. And they are changed by it. It felt like nature was playing with them, like a wild beast – sometimes giving them beauty and wonder, and sometimes battering them cruelly. They were reformed by the elements, if you like.' Playwright and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, who adapted The Salt Path for the screen, says she saw nature as the key to unlocking the film version. 'Any reservations were about the walking,' she says. 'You know: how do we make walking dynamic for that amount of time? It felt like we needed almost to take the weather and the landscape as a character. It needed to be a film with a lot of silence. It's not some chatty, walky comedy.' Watching Isaacs trudging across English landscapes, however magnificent, feels incongruous after all those scenes of him suffering existential despair in luxurious five-star surroundings in the Thailand-set third season of The White Lotus. I assume he will be heartily sick of talking about the series by now, but it is he who brings up the similarity between the characters he plays. 'They're both men who lose everything. And they react in very different ways, which is a measure of who they are.' His character in The White Lotus was prone to suicidal ideations. So, too, was the apparently upbeat Moth. 'He laughs all the time, even when he's describing the toll his disease has taken on him. But he felt suicidal on the walk. He and Ray were crippled with shame, and the future was this abyss for them. They hid that from one another. They constantly made each other laugh. Acting is a game of pretend, and that's what they were both doing.' What were Anderson's first impressions of Raynor? 'I was surprised at how guarded she was,' she says. 'Of course, it must be strange: you've got two relatively famous actors who are going to play you showing up at your house. But it was interesting to encounter a certain steeliness. It was informative for me to see that.' 'You can be quite steely,' Isaacs says. 'You've got that in you.' 'Oh, definitely,' she agrees. 'I know that about myself.' Having been surprised when her memoir was optioned, Winn says she was even more taken aback by the casting. 'I remember thinking, 'How is that going to work? How will someone so perfect and glamorous capture me in that raw state?'' Things got even more confusing when she told Moth the news. 'He thought I meant Pamela Anderson.' During the first meeting between the four of them, the Winns explained to the actors the details of how they packed, knowing that they couldn't take more than what could be carried on their backs. 'Then they put the tent up for us right there in the living room,' Isaacs says. 'I'm not sure if I'd … ever … camped … before,' says Anderson, stringing the words out as though anticipating derision. 'You'd never pitched a tent?' asks Isaacs in mild disbelief. 'Not as far as I can remember,' she says. 'I might have pitched one for my kids in the back garden.' Isaacs says he is 'all about climbing things, jumping off things, swimming through things. Canyons and stuff. I like extreme physical experiences. Even at my advanced age, I see something and I think, 'That'd be fun to climb up. Or slide down.' I'm still a 12-year-old boy trapped in a 100-year-old body.' As a child, he went wild camping with his family in Wales. 'We'd get woken by farmers. Or livestock.' Once, they parked in heavy fog on a small hill and pitched their tent. 'You couldn't see your hand in front of you. We woke up to find we'd camped on a roundabout.' Anderson gasps and claps her hands: 'That's such a good story!' The Salt Path began life as a diary that Winn kept on the walk, and which she later wrote up as a gift for Moth – and, more urgently, as a way of preserving the experience for him as his memory began to fade. That diary spawned a Big Issue article and then a book, nominated for the Costa prize in 2018. The judges called it 'an absolutely brilliant story that needs to be told about the human capacity to endure and keep putting one foot in front of another'. The picture will doubtless reignite interest in the South West Coast Path, and attract more walkers after a recent downturn. To anyone tempted to wonder whether walking is having 'a moment', what with the film of The Salt Path following David Nicholls's novel You Are Here (about a friendship that blooms on a 200-mile coast-to-coast hike across the north of England), it is as well to remember that what the Winns did was born out desperation. They found beauty and a kind of salvation, and the walk even seemed to help Moth to defy his doctors' prognosis, but it was often a ghastly, hardscrabble journey. 'They were desperate and lonely and scared,' says Isaacs. 'They wanted to avoid towns because they got treated badly there and they had no money to buy food. They were happier by themselves away from people. They experienced both sides of human nature: tremendous compassion and generosity but also abuse and neglect. They were frightened of the police and of anyone who would come along and dehumanise them just because they were homeless. Though the book itself was a love letter to Moth, there's a marked lack of sentimentality when they speak about what happened. They got all kinds of different benefits from the walk but they still wanted a warm roof over their heads.' One thing that is impossible to capture on screen, he says, is their persistent hunger. 'It colours everything. We do our best to tell the story but that's a physical ache. They would stand at cafe windows watching people eat.' Anderson is nodding along. 'Ray talks in the book about pretending to eat, and how the fantasy of eating, the act of moving the mouth, does half the job,' she says. Winn tells me that living below the breadline has altered her for ever. 'It changes how you feel about material things,' she says. 'Having let go of everything we had, possessions don't concern me in the same way they did before. Anything that doesn't enrich your life just gets in the way. The stuff we gather can easily start to control us.' Winn says her life is much as it ever was, though Moth now tires more easily, and requires extensive physiotherapy. 'Except without the worry of paying the rent.' As the author of several bestselling books, does she allow herself the occasional luxury these days? 'I do,' she sighs. 'Sometimes it's nice to have the whole pasty instead of just half.' The Salt Path is in UK and Irish cinemas from 30 May.
