Four questions for today’s Fauci hearing

Anthony Fauci faces Congress, again.

The longtime infectious-disease expert is back on Capitol Hill, though today marks a first: He’s no longer a government official.

The 83-year-old Fauci left the National Institutes of Health at the end of 2022, but he’s remained a target for Republicans — particularly the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, which is running today’s hearing.

The GOP-led panel has been investigating whether federal officials tried to hide U.S. ties with researchers in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak was first detected, and other issues they say were ignored by Democrats.

Fauci has repeatedly denied allegations of a coverup — including in 14 hours of private testimony before the covid panel in January — or any knowledge of a lab leak that sparked the pandemic. Most U.S. intelligence entities probing the pandemic favor the theory that the virus emerged naturally, via animal-to-human transmission.

Here are four questions on my mind ahead of today’s hearing, which is scheduled to start at 10 a.m.:

1. Can Republicans link Fauci to his colleagues’ mistakes? The covid panel has uncovered problems such as EcoHealth Alliance, which was funded by NIH, failing to monitor and report on risky virus research in China. The panel also previously grilled David Morens, a former Fauci deputy who bragged about deleting emails and evading federal records laws. Expect both EcoHealth and Morens to be at the heart of today’s hearing.

The panel has also focused on challenges in the broader pandemic response, such as Fauci’s admission in January that he wasn’t aware of any data behind the six-foot social distancing rule. But the social distancing rule was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite misleading media coverage that has claimed Fauci “made up” the rule.

2. Will Democrats get upset with Fauci? Democrats lashed out at Peter Daszak, EcoHealth’s president, and Morens in recent hearings. But they’ve taken pains to try to protect Fauci himself, saying none of the findings implicate him or confirm a lab leak.

The recent hearing with Morens was “not a breakthrough moment in actually understanding the actual origins of the covid-19 pandemic,” said Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), the panel’s top Democrat.

3. Is this hearing doing any harm? I wrote a long story over the weekend about how panel chair Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) and Ruiz — fellow doctors and the panel’s leaders — were at odds over their investigations. Wenstrup believes there was harm done by belittling the lab-leak theory and other controversial questions; Ruiz believes focusing on officials like Fauci is backfiring by hurting confidence in public health.

The public health community sides with Ruiz.

“Public health officials are public servants, not public enemies, and we must do more to protect and support public health officials at all levels of government,” Joseph Kanter, the CEO of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, wrote to the panel ahead of today’s hearing. More than 90 groups also signed a separate letter warning about pandemic-linked harassment.

4. How much will the broader public even care? Apathy, rather than partisan politics, may be the biggest threat to the covid panel’s work. Polls by KFF, a nonpartisan health think tank, show covid barely rates as an election-year issue.

Some of the covid panel’s own members have also appeared to lose interest. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has skipped seven of the last 10 hearings, by my count. (When I asked Greene about her flagging attendance, she said the panel needed to focus more on vaccines.)

But conservative media, at least, has helped bring covid back in the news. When I stopped by Wenstrup’s office last month, a TV tuned to Fox News was airing a segment about Fauci’s adviser deleting emails — and when I left Wenstrup’s office about 40 minutes later, Fox News had pivoted to another segment on the topic.

Moderna’s RSV vaccine gets FDA nod

The Food and Drug Administration approved Moderna’s shot to prevent the respiratory illness RSV in adults 60 years and older — the first time an mRNA vaccine has been greenlit for a disease other than covid-19, our colleague Rachel Roubein writes.

During the pandemic, Moderna was one of two companies to make coronavirus vaccines using messenger RNA technology, which delivers a strip of genetic material called RNA, encased in a fat bubble, to a person’s cells. Since then, the company deployed the same technology to manufacture an RSV shot.

Last year, two companies — GSK and Pfizer — received FDA approval for their shots for respiratory syncytial virus for older adults, which marked a turning point in a six-decade-long quest to protect vulnerable people against the virus. The Pfizer shot also can be given to pregnant people to protect newborns from RSV.

In other news from the agencies …

The FDA released an independent analysis Friday questioning the benefits of MDMA-assisted therapy for treating post-traumatic stress disorder, The Post’s Daniel Gilbert and David Ovalle report.

The details: Sponsor Lykos Therapeutics conducted two late-stage clinical trials showing significant improvement in PTSD symptoms among patients treated with MDMA. However, the FDA noted in its review that the psychedelic effects of MDMA probably revealed to participants whether they received the drug or placebo, potentially biasing their expectations and affecting results.

The FDA also flagged safety concerns, including risks to cardiovascular health, liver function and potential abuse of MDMA. And it criticized Lykos for failing to collect data on abuse-related effects like euphoria or elated mood, which could indicate abuse risk.

The view from Lykos: CEO Amy Emerson said the company stands by the quality and integrity of its research and development.

Next steps: The review comes ahead of an FDA advisory committee meeting this week to discuss Lykos’s data on its MDMA-assisted therapy. If approved, the drug would be the first psychedelic treatment to win the agency’s green light.

Texas Supreme Court upholds abortion ban

The Texas Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the state’s near-total abortion ban Friday, ruling against a group of 20 women who say they were denied medically necessary care because of the law.

In a unanimous decision, the all-Republican court upheld a narrow interpretation of the ban, allowing abortions only for pregnant patients facing a life-threatening condition “before death or serious physical impairment are imminent.”

The ruling reversed a temporary injunction issued by a lower court last summer allowing Texans with “unsafe” pregnancies or fatal fetal diagnosis to receive an abortion if their doctor made a “good faith judgment” that it was necessary.

• “Because the trial court’s order opens the door to permit abortion to address any pregnancy risk, it is not a faithful interpretation of the law,” Justice Jane Bland wrote in the majority opinion.

The Post’s David Ovalle sends this note:

Advocacy groups are urging the federal government to approve requests from 19 states to allow Medicaid coverage for medications to treat opioid addiction for jail and prison inmates.

In a letter scheduled to be sent today to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the 97 organizations asked requests be granted “to save lives and help vulnerable communities.”

Key context: Inmates are vulnerable to addiction and overdoses behind bars and after release when their opioid tolerance is low. People with opioid use disorder are often prescribed buprenorphine and methadone, which stave off opioid withdrawals and reduce cravings — but most correctional facilities do not offer the medications.

The Biden administration has moved to expand access to medications. Last year, CMS announced it would allow states to request coverage for eligible inmates who are up to 90 days away from release.

Only California, Washington, Massachusetts and Montana have been granted the expanded Medicaid coverage.­ In April, members of Congress sent a similar letter to CMS urging waiver approvals. A CMS spokesperson said the agency is working with states to review requests.

• World Health Organization member states agreed to amend the U.N. agency’s International Health Regulations to enhance global preparedness for future pandemics. They also extended negotiations for a broader treaty through 2025.
• A district court dismissed a lawsuit by Florida seeking to block federal rules requiring that states provide 12 months of continuous coverage for eligible minors enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
• The federal health department will allow Change Healthcare to notify patients whose sensitive health information was breached following a cyberattack on the UnitedHealth Group subsidiary in February, taking a load off affected hospitals and health systems.

📅 Welcome back, Congress! The House and Senate are both in session starting today. Here’s what we’re watching:

On Tuesday: The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will examine the consequences of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade for abortion access.

On the other side of the Capitol, a House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee will scrutinize the federal government’s 340B drug discount program; the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee will discuss how leaders inside the veterans health and benefit systems improperly handed out almost $11 million in bonuses.

At the agencies, the FDA will convene a panel of independent advisers to review Lykos’s MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD.

On Wednesday: The Senate special committee on aging and the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee will discuss how to improve services for veterans and their caregivers.

On the Senate floor, Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has teed up a vote on legislation that would create a federal right to contraception.

And at the FDA, independent advisers will make recommendations on the selection of the 2024-2025 formula for coronavirus vaccines.

Bed rails can trap seniors. More than a million were just recalled. (By Justine McDaniel | The Washington Post)

Being a patient is getting harder in a strained and complex U.S. health care system (By Tom Murphy| The Associated Press)

Cancer patients often do better with less intensive treatment, new research finds (By Carla K. Johnson)

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