Just in time for Pride month, President Donald Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have apparently decided it’s a good time to sentence more people to death in the future. That will be the result of the administration’s $258 million cut to HIV vaccine research, according to experts in the field.
“The HIV pandemic will never be ended without a vaccine,” Cornell University researcher John Moore told the New York Times, which broke the story of Trump’s funding cuts on May 30. “So, killing research on one will end up killing people.”
The National Institutes of Health notified scientists at the Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development (CHAVD) last week that funding for its vaccine research programs was being terminated, effective immediately.
The CHAVD is a consortium of specialists at Duke University and the Scripps Research Institute. Dr. Dennis Burton, an immunology professor at Scripps, said, “This is a decision with consequences.” He predicted that HIV vaccine research will be set back by at least a decade.
The goal of the scientists working at CHAVD is to develop an HIV vaccine that can be used around the globe and hopefully bring an end to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has plagued the world since the first case was reported on June 5, 1981.
Since then, at least 42 million people have been killed by AIDS, and another 39 million are estimated to be currently infected with HIV.
The research at CHAVD consists of multiyear investments in advanced HIV vaccine technologies, but it has also already yielded improvements in treatment of other conditions, including COVID-19, snake bites, and a number of autoimmune diseases that share some similarities with AIDS.
Burton said that he and his colleagues were beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel after many years of research. “This is a terrible time to cut off” funds, he said.
Duke Professor of Medicine Dr. Barton Ford Haynes said the timing of the move by Trump and Kennedy could not have come at a worse time. “HIV has established roadblocks to us fighting it off, which are unparalleled in vaccinology. We’ve had to learn what each of the roadblocks are and devise ways to overcome it. This virus mutates so quickly.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, Emily Hilliard, claimed that “critical HIV/AIDS programs will continue” under Kennedy’s “Administration for a Healthy America.” The first problem with that story? The Administration for a Healthy America doesn’t exist, and details and timelines are vague as to when it will even be established.
As a stopgap measure, some are now pinning hopes on a new medication called lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable drug that prevents HIV transmission. The Food and Drug Administration is due to decide whether to approve it for the market by June 19. Studies have shown lenacapavir to be up to 100% effective at stopping transmission, and its development was an outgrowth of earlier NIH-funded research like the programs that were just cancelled.
Even if lenacapavir gets the green light from the FDA, though, access will remain a big question mark. The drug is being brought to the market by pharma giant Gilead Sciences. There are concerns that only those with expensive insurance plans or subsidy schemes will be able to access lenacapavir, leaving the poor and working class—both in the U.S. and abroad—unable to afford it.
A similar story has played out with already-available drugs—like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) prevention medications such as Truvada and Descovy, and antiretroviral therapies which control viral loads and lower risk of transmission among those who already have HIV.
Relying on current prevention strategies alone, as the Trump administration suggests, won’t end the HIV/AIDS crisis. Just as masks alone weren’t enough to control the spread of COVID-19, experts say ultimately stopping the disease will require immunization.
One NIH official who spoke anonymously to CBS admitted as much. “The only way of ending the HIV epidemic in the U.S. and the AIDS pandemic worldwide” is with a vaccine, they said, disagreeing with the arguments of NIH leaders.
Termination of funds for CHAVD isn’t an isolated incident. Killing off funding and support for HIV and AIDS initiatives has been a hallmark of Trump’s second term. Separately last Friday, the NIH also ended funding for clinical trials of another HIV vaccine made by Moderna.
But the pattern stretches all the way back to Trump’s inauguration.
Almost immediately after taking office, the president signed an executive order freezing almost all foreign aid, which included HIV/AIDS programs overseen by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
Access to PrEP—a highly effective medicine that prevents HIV prevention—was cut for vulnerable populations, particularly LGBTQ people, who had benefited from the USAID programs.
Then, in March, the NIH killed funding for several grants that had expanded access to PrEP among U.S. youth, who account for nearly a fifth of new HIV infections in the country. More than 230 HIV-specific NIH grants were cancelled that month, with programs for or involving transgender persons being the first on the chopping block.
Rumors are now circulating that the White House is considering completely abolishing the HIV prevention division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If that happens, the U.S. government would essentially be surrendering to HIV/AIDS, waving the white flag and leaving other countries and private corporations to come up with ways of fighting the pandemic.
Resources that help members of the public educate themselves about the virus and the disease are being scrubbed. People’s World surveyed the Department of Health and Human Services’ HIV.gov website and found several pages—especially those detailing the risk profiles for particular populations—have been disabled.
A few pages which had earlier been deleted but have reappeared now carry a notice announcing that the page only exists because a court ordered the Trump administration to restore it. Appended to it is an anti-trans message declaring that any health information “promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female.”
These moves are obviously anti-LGBTQ, as gay, bisexual, other men who have sex with men (MSM) are the populations most affected by HIV in the U.S. But the cuts are also racist: Black Americans and Latinos are disproportionately impacted compared to their share of the population. In fact, Black women are the fastest growing group experiencing infection in the country. And heterosexual people in general, but particularly those from minority groups, are the least likely to know their HIV status.
At the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, Marsha P. Johnson said there can be “no pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” Pride month has always been about resistance and solidarity. It’s in the interest of all Americans—no matter their HIV status—to unite and resist these latest death sentences being imposed by Trump and Kennedy.
As with all op-ed and news-analysis articles published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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