Trump administration axes key STI lab amid dramatic rise in US syphilis cases

The Trump administration’s cuts to a sexually transmitted infection lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) comes as some states, such as Wisconsin, announce enormous increases in syphilis.Syphilis mitigation is just the latest example of work in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) that will be affected by the lab’s closure, as the Trump administration discards expert leadership and programs that surveil, test and research STIs amid chaotic government cuts.“This is the Cultural Revolution 2.0,” said Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University’s school of public health, about the mid-20th-century political upheaval in China. Gonsalves is an expert in modeling the impact of public policy on infectious disease.Trump White House replaces Covid website with treatise on ‘lab leak’ theoryRead more“The 30,000-ft view is this is not necessarily about HIV and STIs – although it is because they have a particular animus against it – they are lo...