The Dangers of Ideologically-Driven Bans on Research…and more ID in the News
Infection Diseases Special Edition spoke with IDSA President Cynthia Sears, MD, FIDSA, and HIVMA Chair, W. David Hardy, MD on the Societies’ recent statement condemning the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to end funding for medical research using human fetal tissue.
“Fetal tissue research has quite simply advanced medical care including infectious diseases and HIV medicine,” Dr. Sears said. “A key example is vaccine development with polio and rubella. We hurt patients with ideologically-driven bans on research.” Dr. Hardy elaborated: “Being a stem cell researcher myself and using stem cell modalities for HIV cure, I can tell you that this policy takes away a unique type of stem cell for research, which is not replaceable by any other type of stem cell modality. It allows us to be able to work with human cells at a point before they have become immunologically committed.”
This is just one of the news pieces that IDSA and our member spokespersons contributed to, in addition to others highlighted below. Follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to see the latest news and opinion pieces featuring IDSA, HIVMA and our members.
- Infectious Disease News: Providing DAAs to PWID in primary care increases uptake, cure rates (Michael S. Saag, MD, FIDSA)
- Infectious Disease News: Urological group’s first-ever recurrent UTI guidelines encourage responsible evaluation, antibiotic, cranberry juice use (Dimitri M. Drekonja, MD, FIDSA)
- Medscape: Ebola Just 'A Plane Ride Away' (Krutika Kuppalli, MD)
- Modern Healthcare: Rockland County hospital tackles measles with pre-hospital triage (Matthew Zahn, MD)
- New York Times: What You Need to Know About Resistant Urinary Tract Infections (IDSA)
- Note: Dimitri Drekonja, MD, interviewed, but not quoted in article
- The Wall Street Journal: Antibiotics Developers Seek a Cure for Industry Ills (Amanda Jezek)