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Good morning. Might I suggest you order yourself a delicious sandwich for lunch today and join Office Hours with Isa Cueto and Lev Facher, who will be discussing alcohol consumption as a public health crisis, the industry’s lobbying, and potential policy solutions. 1 p.m. EDT. Questions encouraged!
For Fauci’s testimony, keep these questions in mind
Anthony Fauci will appear before a Senate committee this morning to answer questions, again, about the Covid pandemic. The nation’s former top infectious disease expert was subpoenaed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has previously clashed with Fauci in hearings and repeatedly called for his imprisonment.
In anticipation of such political ire, former President Biden preemptively pardoned Fauci before leaving office. But both Paul and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have suggested that today’s testimony could create new opportunities for criminal charges. Some questions on our minds here at STAT: How cautious will Fauci be answering Paul’s questions? Will his temper trip him up? And how will Democrats position themselves here? Read more from a great team of STAT reporters on what to expect.
How a fugitive made a career in biotech
While politicians call for Fauci to be jailed, STAT’s Adam Feuerstein has an extensive follow-up story on biotech’s most-wanted fugitive. In the wake of a 2005 sexual assault conviction, Ronald Fischer used an alias, fake CVs, and his sailboat to escape persecution and keep working for more than 20 years.
“He wasn’t very nice,” recalled an industry recruiter who spoke to Fischer about multiple job openings. “When I started to probe his oncology credentials to see if he’d be right for the position, he got very pissed off at me and said, ‘Have you seen where the f— I went to school?’” Read more from Adam on how the convicted assailant hid in plain sight.
How visa time limits could impact American science
This year, the Department of Homeland Security is eliminating a decades-old policy that allowed international students to stay in the country for the duration of their education, regardless of how long it took. The new policy will require students on nonimmigrant visas to petition DHS for an extension after four years — a particularly vexing interval for biomedical Ph.D. students, whose training typically takes five to six years.
The Trump administration claims that the change is necessary to weed out fraud in the form of “forever students.” But immigration experts, academics, and advocates for students and postdocs told STAT’s Jonathan Wosen that the stricter policy will harm the nation’s scientific standing. “These people are already the most regulated population of nonimmigrant visa holders in the country,” said immigration attorney Elizabeth Goss. “I just think it’s an excuse.” Read more on the potential impact.
Can doctors trust clinical AI? Should they?
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. doctors use clinical large language models from companies like OpenEvidence, Doximity, and UpToDate as an alternative to the mainstream, hallucination-prone models. But as STAT’s Katie Palmer reports, few studies have actually pitted the clinical tools against the general Big Tech models. This summer, researchers at NYU did a head-to-head study. The results, as Katie put it, rang out like a gunshot.
“Some of the tension that’s going on right now in the industry is not even between companies,” said Daniel Nadler, OpenEvidence’s founder and CEO. “It’s between academia and doctors.” The stakes are high, and the debate around the study’s results have reflected that. Read more on what the data really tell us.
A neglected issue in pedestrian, biker deaths
In 2024, more than 9,000 pedestrians and cyclists were killed on U.S. roads — a 65% increase from 2010. A July report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office pointed to the increased size of passenger vehicles and the blind spots created by common design features as potential risk factors affecting driver visibility. The congressional watchdog recommended that the Department of Transportation create a method to analyze visibility in passenger and commercial vehicles, then specifically analyze and address any accompanying risks.
The agency agreed with the first recommendation, but not the second. Transportation secretary Sean Duffy has adamantly opposed what he called “DEI bike lanes,” and his agency has removed references and tools regarding bike safety from federal websites.
Here in Boston, where cyclist and bike safety advocate Louisa Gag was recently killed by a truck, blind spots were an early point of debate before more details about the collision emerged. “As a driver of a car, I am well aware of the right-turn blind spot, so I double- and triple-check before making a right turn,” one Boston Globe reader wrote to the paper. “I’m scared to death of hitting a cyclist I cannot see.”
What we’re reading
- A for-profit hospital slashed costs. Then a patient froze to death on its roof, Mother Jones
- Opinion: Prolonged hospital stays can leave children isolated. It needs to change, STAT
- FDA official says food supply is safe as cyclosporiasis cases climb, New York Times
- American Diabetes Association, facing calls for resignations, asks for patience, STAT