Currents: What's Worth Your Attention This Week

A guide through the noise—on science, censorship, and why direction matters now more than ever.

There’s so much happening right now across healthcare, science, and policy that it feels nearly impossible to keep up—unless you’ve made it your full-time job. The headlines are coming fast: budget cuts, court rulings, institutional shake-ups, and political pressure touching nearly every corner of medicine and research. It’s overwhelming, even for those of us working inside these systems.

As I’ve written here before, we can’t track everything. But we can choose where to focus. That’s what I’m trying to do each week in this space—cut through the noise and highlight the stories that matter, the ones that are already starting to shape how we diagnose, treat, and understand health in this country.

Here’s what I’m paying attention to this week.

What We Risk Losing at the NIH

This past week I had a chance to speak with a colleague at the NIH, and what I learned made me realize things are even worse than what the press—whose coverage I’ve been closely following—has let on. During the most recent wave of layoffs, entire units within the agency were dismantled. In some cases, it’s not clear how the work they were responsible for will continue at all.

For example, in addition to the recently announced 35% cut to NIH contract spending, the staff responsible for issuing contracts—and even paying out on existing ones—were let go. All of them. No guidance has been given about how payments will be processed starting in June. The contract cuts themselves will be damaging enough to the programs they supported, but now it’s unclear how even the remaining funds will be disbursed. In the name of “efficiency,” we’ve created more inefficiency, not less. The staff who remain are doing what they can under incredibly difficult conditions, but morale is understandably low.

At the same time, a federal judge issued a permanent injunction blocking the administration’s attempt to cap indirect cost rates at 15%—a change that would have drastically reduced the operational funding research institutions depend on to keep the lights on and labs running. While the ruling offers some temporary relief, it simply clears the path for an appeal. This issue isn’t resolved—it’s just paused.

And now, we have the leaked 2026 draft budget proposal, which outlines a 40% cut to the NIH’s total budget and a dramatic consolidation of its structure—from 27 institutes to just 8. Entire programs focused on global health, minority health, nursing, and environmental health would be eliminated. One of the strengths of NIH’s current structure is that each institute has program officers with deep expertise in their field—people who know the science and the scientists. That structure allows for attention to be paid to rare diseases and under-resourced areas that don’t always get industry attention. If those specialized institutes disappear, so does that expertise—and so do the research priorities they’ve helped protect.

This isn’t just a difficult budget cycle. It’s the dismantling of one of the most successful public science institutions in the world. And if we care about what science—and healthcare—look like in this country in five, ten, or twenty years, what’s happening at the NIH right now should be getting all of our attention.

Universities Under Siege: Academic Independence on the Line

Elite universities are under siege—not just rhetorically, but through direct federal actions that threaten their autonomy and the future of academic medicine.​

Harvard University has become a focal point in this conflict. After refusing to comply with a Trump administration letter demanding control over hiring, admissions, and curriculum, Harvard faced severe retaliatory measures: over $2 billion in federal funding was frozen, its tax-exempt status was threatened, and its ability to enroll international students was called into question. Although the administration later claimed the letter was sent without formal authorization, it doubled down on its demands, intensifying the standoff.

Other universities who have also received funding freeze notices include Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton, and University of Pennyslvania. Columbia responded by implementing policy changes, including revising its disciplinary processes and increasing campus security measures, to regain access to the funds but so far this hasn’t been enough.

In response to these challenges, Harvard seemingly overnight launched a new website showcasing the real-world impact of its research. The main landing page now highlights how Harvard’s work advances medicine, technology, education, and business, underscoring the university’s role not just in discovery, but in solving problems that matter to people’s lives.

But the stakes here go far beyond one institution. If academia loses its autonomy, we don’t just risk silencing uncomfortable ideas—we jeopardize the systems that fuel biomedical innovation, evidence-based policy, and the training of future scientists and clinicians. The long arc of progress in this country has depended on universities asking hard questions, challenging assumptions, and generating knowledge independent of political interference.

Harvard’s resistance has sparked a broader conversation about what’s worth defending. Whether that turns into a unified defense of academic freedom—or a slow unraveling of institutional independence—remains to be seen. But make no mistake: what happens to universities in this moment will shape not just the future of science, but the future of the country.

Censorship: The DOJ Targets Medical Journals

In a deeply unsettling development, reports emerged this week that U.S. attorneys have sent warning letters to several leading medical journals including Chest, accusing the editors of spreading misinformation and suppressing opposing viewpoints. You can read the letter for yourself below.

Medical journals operate under a peer-review process, where research is evaluated on methodology, evidence, and scientific merit—not political opinion. The idea that federal authorities would pressure editors to publish content based on ideological “balance” rather than scientific rigor should concern all of us. This isn’t about one article or one journal—it’s about whether the scientific process can still function as it’s meant to.

We’re seeing similar concerns arise inside the federal research system itself. Dr. Kevin Hall, a senior investigator at the NIH and one of its most respected nutrition researchers, resigned this week, citing censorship as the reason. Hall has spent much of his career studying ultra-processed foods—ironically, an area that aligns closely with the public health platform of HHS Secretary RFK Jr.

But in a recent study, Hall found that while ultra-processed foods are undoubtedly harmful, they don’t produce the same addictive neurochemical response as opioids. That nuance apparently didn’t sit well. According to multiple reports, NIH leadership edited his responses to journalists and blocked him from presenting the findings at conferences. Eventually, Hall decided he could no longer do the work under those conditions.

This is not a theoretical issue. The independence of journals—and of the researchers who contribute to them—is one of the last remaining safeguards we have against politicized misinformation. If government begins shaping scientific conclusions instead of simply supporting the process to reach them, we lose something foundational. The integrity of science depends not just on what we study, but on whether we’re allowed to share what we find. If that slips away, so does our ability to speak clearly, publicly, and truthfully about evidence-based medicine.

Collapse of 23andMe

​This story is a bit different than the others, but still important.

23andMe’s bankruptcy is more than a financial story — it's a critical moment for health data ethics. The company’s vast genetic database — with DNA profiles from over 15 million users — is now a corporate asset up for sale, where genetic is up for auction to the highest bidder. Potential buyers include pharmaceutical giants and AI companies, sparking serious concerns about consent, privacy, and the future of health data. Prior to this, a significant data breach in 2023 exposed sensitive information of nearly 7 million users. This incident highlighted vulnerabilities in data security and intensified scrutiny over how such personal information is protected.

Unlike protected medical records, consumer genetic data falls into a legal gray zone. HIPAA doesn’t apply to companies like 23andMe, leaving genetic information vulnerable to commercial exploitation. The absence of comprehensive federal data privacy laws in the U.S. exacerbates the concerns regarding data exploitation. This raises a troubling precedent: Should your DNA be treated like intellectual property or inventory?

Here we reach a dilemma — using AI to enhance personalized medicine is a positive potential outcome, however, selling this data to entities with unclear or profit-driven motives could compromise patient trust, data integrity, and public health. Additionally, concerns arise when we consider that the speed at which generative AI is being adopted in healthcare is outpacing every safeguard we have. Some predictive AI models that are being used in clinical decision making and insurance support are being rolled out without external validation. Without standardized oversight, these tools can perpetuate systemic biases, which further targets the patient populations that are suffering the most.

If you're a 23andMe customer concerned about your data, it's not too late to take action. You can delete your data and request the destruction of your genetic sample by following the steps outlined in this guide.

This episode serves as a poignant reminder: as we harness the power of genetic data for medical breakthroughs, we must also vigilantly protect individual privacy rights.

The Upshot

Taken together, these four stories may seem disparate. But they share a common thread: a growing erosion of the systems we’ve long depended on to safeguard scientific integrity, institutional independence, and public trust. Each of these stories points to a different fracture in the system. But the bigger concern is what they reveal when taken together: the growing fragility of the structures we rely on to move science forward—and protect it from political and commercial distortion.

There’s a difference between reform and erosion. Between accountability and interference. Between innovation and exploitation. We are living in a moment where those lines are starting to blur. We still have tools that can guide us—data, institutions, expertise—but we need to protect them. Not just because they’ve served us in the past, but because we cannot afford what we’ll lose if we don’t.