{"id":9276,"date":"2025-04-23T09:01:55","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T14:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9276"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:01:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T14:01:59","slug":"rfk-jr-s-cuts-to-cdc-eliminate-labs-tracking-stis-hepatitis-outbreaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/04\/23\/rfk-jr-s-cuts-to-cdc-eliminate-labs-tracking-stis-hepatitis-outbreaks\/","title":{"rendered":"RFK Jr.\u2019s cuts to CDC eliminate labs tracking STIs, hepatitis outbreaks"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/RFK Jr.\u2019s cuts to CDC eliminate labs tracking STIs, hepatitis outbreaks\">Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The only lab in the U.S. capable of testing for and tracking antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, or \u201csuper gonorrhea,\u201d was effectively shut down by layoffs. Lab scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been analyzing blood samples for weeks to determine how dozens ofpatients across six states had become infected with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2024\/04\/14\/hepatitis-infections-deaths-rising\/\">viral hepatitis,<\/a>&nbsp;a disease that can cause serious liver damage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But their DNA detective work stopped abruptly last week.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2025\/04\/01\/hhs-senior-leaders-put-on-leave-nih\/\">Widespread layoffs<\/a>\u00a0across federal health agencies earlier this month had resulted in the firing of all 27 lab scientists who worked in the only U.S. facility that could perform the sophisticated genetic sequencing needed to investigate hepatitis outbreaks, lab experts said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/health\/2025\/04\/18\/cdc-layoffs-rfk-jr-sexually-transmitted-diseases\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington Post The only lab in the U.S. capable of testing for and tracking antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, or \u201csuper gonorrhea,\u201d was effectively shut down by layoffs. Lab scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had been analyzing blood samples for weeks to determine how dozens ofpatients across six states had become infected with&nbsp;viral hepatitis,&nbsp;a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-headlines"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9277,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9276\/revisions\/9277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}