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Ulrich Baumgarten\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n On Wednesday, <\/span>the Food and Drug Administration approved a highly effective, injectable drug to help prevent the transmission of HIV, according to its manufacturer, Gilead Sciences. The drug, lenacapavir, will be sold under the name Yeztugo.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a historic day in the decades-long fight against HIV,\u201d Gilead CEO Daniel O\u2019Day said in a press release<\/a>. \u201cYeztugo is one of the most important scientific breakthroughs of our time and offers a very real opportunity to help end the HIV epidemic.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, in clinical trials, lenacapavir showed stunning efficacy<\/a> as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, blocking infection in 100 percent<\/a> of participants who\u2019d received it in one trial and 99.9 percent<\/a> in another.<\/p>\n But Yeztugo\u2019s approval also comes at an unfortunate time\u2014amid the Trump administration\u2019s drastic cuts to efforts to fight AIDS across the globe.<\/p>\n That includes, as my colleague Sam Van Pykeren and I reported in March<\/a>, the gutting of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an agency tasked with fighting diseases like AIDS worldwide; kneecapping PEPFAR, the US President\u2019s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a program that\u2019s saved an estimated\u00a026 million lives<\/a> since its founding by President George W. Bush in 2003; and shutting down several high-profile HIV prevention studies. Take, for instance, the MATRIX study, halted in response to a January executive order<\/a>:<\/p>\n One set of trials known as the MATRIX study,\u00a0<\/strong>a $125 million endeavor funded by USAID, was designed to evaluate new HIV prevention products for women, including a dissolvable vaginal film, a dissolvable vaginal insert, and a vaginal ring meant to prevent pregnancy and HIV transmission. Dr. Catherine Chappell, an assistant professor and OB-GYN at the University of Pittsburgh who helped lead the trial for the vaginal ring, says Trump\u2019s order meant her phase I clinical trial was abruptly ended mid-data collection. \u201cWe had participants in South Africa that still had these [placebo] rings in their vaginas,\u201d she says. Chappell worries that dropping the study midway through could have \u201cirreparably damaged\u201d researchers\u2019 relationship with the community. \u201cIt is just completely unethical,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Researchers at USAID had also planned further clinical trials for lenacapavir. \u201cAll of that\u2019s just been cut off,\u201d a former USAID analyst told us in March<\/a>.<\/p>\n In other words, as we argued<\/a>, the historic arrival of lenavapavir (aka Yeztugo) as a form of PrEP makes now a uniquely bad time to walk away from HIV research and aid<\/a>:<\/p>\n In short, after decades of research, science delivered the most effective preventative HIV drugs the world has ever seen\u2014and the US is throwing up its hands and abandoning efforts to share them with those most in need. That isn\u2019t just a moral failing, experts say, but also goes against the country\u2019s self-interest. For decades, officials have seen foreign disease prevention as a form of \u201csoft power\u201d\u2014it engenders trust within the global community while ensuring fewer infections both abroad and, ultimately, at home.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n As Mitchell Warren, the executive director of the international HIV prevention organization AVAC, told the New York Times<\/em><\/a> on Wednesday, \u201cWe\u2019re on the precipice of now being able to deliver the greatest prevention option we\u2019ve had in 44 years of this epidemic. And it\u2019s as if that opportunity is being snatched out of our hands by the policies of the last five months.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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