The profound loss of the critical expertise at the Department of Health and Human Services, our nation’s highest office responsible for the health of the American public, will make our country significantly less safe from both chronic and infectious diseases.

A federal judge has ruled that the Food and Drug Administration lacks the legal authority to regulate laboratory-developed tests, handing a victory to clinical laboratories and medical societies, including IDSA, that challenged the agency’s oversight.

Cutting off the funding and the technical assistance that state health departments and community-based providers across the country rely on for HIV education, HIV testing and pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, programs would have devastating health and economic consequences.

Vaccines have been thoroughly researched and administered to large numbers of people of all ages and have been proven to be very safe and effective in preventing the spread of many serious infectious diseases and dramatically reducing deaths.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the HIV Medicine Association will be Standing Up for Science at a rally March 7, 12–4 p.m. ET, in Washington, D.C., and we encourage members to participate in rallies planned in more than 30 cities around the United States.