Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as U.S. Withdraws Support; The New York Times, June 25, 2025

Stephanie Nolen , The New York Times; Promise of Victory Over H.I.V. Fades as U.S. Withdraws Support

"This was supposed to be a breakthrough year in the 44-year-long struggle against H.I.V.

Decades of research and investment produced new approaches to vaccines that were going into their first significant clinical trials.

The hunt for a cure was homing in on key mechanisms to block the virus, which can lurk dormant and near-untraceable in the body for years.

Most critically, a breakthrough preventive drug, lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injection that offers total protection from H.I.V., was to be rapidly rolled out across eastern and southern Africa. The main target: young women. About 300,000 of them were newly infected with the virus last year — half of all new infections worldwide.

Every one of these plans has been derailed by the Trump administration’s slashing of foreign assistance."

“The Handmaid’s Tale” had a remarkable ending — for real-world reasons; CNN, May 28, 2025

Brian Stelter, CNN; “The Handmaid’s Tale” had a remarkable ending — for real-world reasons

"The show’s producers leaned in. They didn’t hesitate when asked about real-world comparisons to the radicalism portrayed on screen.

“We’re on a very, very slippery slope toward Gilead,” executive producer Warren Littlefield told me back in 2019...

“In early Handmaid’s days,” Littlefield said, “we present a world that was too preoccupied staring into their phones to see Gilead coming until it’s upon our characters and taken over their lives.”

Over the years, many reviewers have pointed to that as one of the enduring takeaways from the show.

“Handmaid’s” “showed the ease with which the unthinkable can become ordinary — a lesson crucial in the age of the Big Lie,” The Atlantic’s Megan Garber wrote in 2021...

One of the showrunners, Yahlin Chang, posited in a recent interview with TheWrap that the show “kind of failed” to serve as a cautionary tale, “or we didn’t caution enough people.”

“It’s shocking to me, when I think about when I joined the show, I had more rights as a woman than I have now,” she said...

The final episodes manage to be uplifting, at least in part, and Littlefield said, “Our message this year, in hopefully a compelling dramatic way, continues to be — like June, don’t give up the fight.”"

How a Drug Maker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising H.I.V. Therapy; The New York Times, July 22, 2023

 Rebecca Robbins and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times; How a Drug Maker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising H.I.V. Therapy

"Gilead, one of the world’s largest drugmakers, appeared to be embracing a well-worn industry tactic: gaming the U.S. patent system to protect lucrative monopolies on best-selling drugs...

Gilead ended up introducing a version of the new treatment in 2015, nearly a decade after it might have become available if the company had not paused development in 2004. Its patents now extend until at least 2031.

The delayed release of the new treatment is now the subject of state and federal lawsuits in which some 26,000 patients who took Gilead’s older H.I.V. drugs claim that the company unnecessarily exposed them to kidney and bone problems."

Chinese scientists ask for patent on US drug to fight virus; Associated Press, February 6, 2020

Joe McDonald and Linda A. Johnson, Associated Press; Chinese scientists ask for patent on US drug to fight virus

"China has the right under World Trade Organization rules to declare an emergency and compel a company to license a patent to protect the public. It would be required to pay a license fee that is deemed fair market value. 

The government might be able to avoid that fee if the patent were granted to the Wuhan institute, part of the elite Chinese Academy of Sciences. 

The institute said it applied for a “use patent” that specifies the Wuhan virus as the drug’s target. Gilead’s patent application, filed before the virus was identified, cites only the overall family of coronaviruses."