Supreme Court preserves access to mail-order mifepristone

Charlie Riedel/AP

Mail-order abortion pills are legal — for now.

Three days after extending its own timeline for making a decision, the Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a federal appeals court’s ruling that women seeking abortions must visit a doctor in person. The court’s decision yesterday isn’t the end of this head-spinning legal saga, but it does guarantee access to mifepristone while the lawsuit plays out. The justices ruled 7-2, with Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting; the latter suggested that mailing mifepristone is a “criminal enterprise.”

If you’re confused about this case, which has had many twists and turns, and its larger implications for drug regulation, you should read Theresa’s story from last week.

Global health

Africa CDC declares Ebola outbreak in DRC

African health officials confirmed on Friday an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ituri province that has already caused 246 suspected cases and 65 reported deaths.

Early testing results suggest the outbreak is being caused by an Ebola species other than the Zaire strain, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said. The only licensed vaccines protect against Ebola Zaire, though there are experimental immunizations against other species.

Africa CDC said sequencing was ongoing to determine the strain.

The agency outlined a number of reasons for concern, including spread taking place in urban areas, people moving around the area for work, and regional insecurity and conflict, on top of infection prevention and control challenges. The outbreak is taking place close to the borders with Uganda and South Sudan.

Africa CDC said it was convening a meeting today with global and regional health authorities, vaccine and drug developers, and others, including charitable groups.

Ituri was one of the provinces affected by a 2018-2020 outbreak of Ebola, the second largest on record. — Andrew Joseph

RESEARCH

The violent fallout from Trump’s cuts to foreign aid

In the week after President Trump took office for a second time, his administration swiftly dismantled the United States Agency for International Development, one of the world’s largest international providers of aid, much of it health aid. The legacy of this withdrawal has been extensively documented, but a new Science analysis has added to the what we know: regions that received more USAID support have dealt with more violent conflict since the agency’s dissolution.

The areas receiving the most U.S. aid showed a 6.5% greater probability of experiencing conflict compared with regions that received no aid from the United States, according to a new study published yesterday. That included a roughly 10% increase in riots and battle-related fatalities. Read more about the study here.

EDUCATION

What is a ‘qualified’ medical school applicant?

The Department of Justice sent a letter to Yale’s School of Medicine yesterday, alleging it was illegally discriminating against applicants who are not Black or Hispanic. It’s the latest move by the Trump administration to curb DEI efforts to diversify the scientific workforce, but experts say it is inadvertently relitigating arguments about what it means to be a qualified physician.

The saga started after a 2023 Supreme Court ruling prohibited the use of affirmative action in admission decisions, but the Trump administration accused medical schools of continuing discriminatory practices, citing differences in average test scores and GPAs between students of different racial groups over the past three admissions cycles. The DOJ also sent a similar missive to the medical school at the University of California, Los Angeles, last week.

Read more about the fallout from these letters from STAT’s Anil Oza.

STATUS REPORT

Why isn't alcohol seen as a public health emergency?

Alex Hogan/STAT

We’ve already brought you several stories from STAT’s newest series on how alcohol is driving an epidemic of injuries, illnesses, and deaths in the United States. Alex Hogan talked with the series’ authors, Lev Facher and Isabella Cueto, about their biggest takeaways from months of reporting. Watch here.

SCIENCE, SHATTERED

MIT losing research funds, grad students

MIT’s research enterprise has shrunk 10% from a year ago as the university grapples with federal funding shortfalls and policy changes, according to President Sally Kornbluth, who also warned of a persistent drop in graduate admissions in a video posted to YouTube yesterday.

Kornbluth pegged the challenges on the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to reshape higher education, increased taxes on large university endowments, and changes in immigration policies that have discouraged international students from applying to the school. MIT faces a $300 million deficit that has already shuttered libraries and reduced undergrad admissions.

Read more about the significant headwinds being faced by MIT.

FIRST OPINION

The hole in the Craig Venter tributes

Two weeks ago, genomics legend Craig Venter died. The self-styled maverick was unquestionably one of the most important scientists in the 20th century. Obituaries flooded in, including a poignant reflection from STAT’s own Matt Herper. But there’s something these obituaries are missing, writes Zach Utz, the former archivist of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH.

When Venter’s company Celera announced in the 1990s that it would beat the publicly funded Human Genome Project in the race to generate the first sequence of the human genome, using a whole-genome shotgun method, it was billed as a race between a hotshot private scientist and a slow-moving bureaucracy. The stories in the wake of Venter’s death have repeated that false dichotomy.

To learn about how Celera’s moonshot was only made possible with public data from the NIH, read more from Utz.

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