Fauci: The Oracle Who Went Silent At The Wrong Time - Health Policy Watch

Read our review of Kramer/Fauci off Broadway, director Daniel Fish's adaptation of an infamous televised conversation between Dr. Anthony Fauci and Larry Kramer. SummaryKramer/Fauci is a staging of the 1993 C-SPAN debate between Anthony Fauci and Larry Kramer over the AIDS crisis and public healthThe show uses the verbatim transcript of the debate but stages it abstractly, including with a cloud of bubbles as a compelling symbol of the AIDS crisisThe show is recommended for those interested in the history of public health and how events like the AIDS crisis speak to modern-day events like the Covid pandemicFor most people, the name Anthony Fauci will likely inspire strong feelings and memories of Covid briefings. Larry Kramer is likewise a household name, remembered as a famed AIDS activist and sometimes controversial figure. Not many, though, know the pair were frenemies, who had a live conversation, including calls from viewers, on C-SPAN in 1993, 13 years into the HIV/AIDS crisis. It was a clash of titans, a fierce and fiery debate, and in Kramer/Fauci, director/adapter Daniel Fish (Oklahoma!) turns it into an equally fascinating piece of documentary theatre.

When Geraldine Levano, 31, was pregnant with her second son, the acid reflux didn’t alarm her. But it got to a point where “I couldn’t even take the pain,” Levano of Houston, Texas, tells TODAY.com. Working as a medical assistant, she asked her co-workers and OB-GYN if her reflux was normal. “And of course they’re like ... it’s just the baby, you’re fine,” Levano recalls. A few times when the pain became “unbearable,” she went to the hospital. But they just reassured her that her baby looked totally healthy and her symptoms were normal during pregnancy. Medication didn’t do much. “Nothing would help,” she says. “It just felt like like a burning sensation with pain, and I just felt like something was stuck there.” So she toughed it out until early April 2022, about two weeks after her son was born, when she felt a painful lump right under her ribcage on her left side. And he was still having reflux. She ended up seeing the doctor whose office she works in now, who ordered an ultrasound. What should have been a 15-minute appointment quickly turned into an hourslong ordeal as it became clear the doctors needed more imaging. Levano with her husband and new baby.

Bioengineer.org news storyFor people living with HIV, modern antiretroviral therapy can suppress the virus to levels below what standard laboratory tests can detect. Yet some patients on long-term treatment experience a curious phenomenon: a single test result showing a small, transient amount of virus in the blood, followed by an immediate return to undetectable levels. These events, known as viral blips, have puzzled clinicians and researchers for years, raising questions about whether they represent harmless statistical noise, brief bursts of viral production from hidden reservoirs, or early warnings of impending treatment failure. A new nationwide Swedish study, published in BMC Infectious Diseases, offers one of the most comprehensive answers to date. Drawing on the Swedish national InfCareHIV cohort, researchers analyzed data from 4,210 treatment-naïve adults who began antiretroviral therapy from 1 January 2007 onward, with follow-up data extracted through 30 September 2020. The median observation time was 5.5 years, with some individuals followed for as long as 13.7 years.

European Medical Journal news storyPeople living with HIV may experience subtle changes in heart muscle function even when conventional measures of cardiac performance remain normal, according to findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis. Researchers identified significantly impaired global longitudinal strain (GLS) among people with HIV compared with HIV-uninfected individuals, despite preserved left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in both groups. The findings suggest that speckle-tracking echocardiography (STE) could provide additional information about early myocardial dysfunction in this population. Read the full news story here.