Report The Panel agreed on the outline of the 2027 IPCC Methodology Report on Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies, Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (Additional guidance) at its 63rd Session held in Lima, Peru from 27-30 October 2025 (Decision IPCC-LXIII-6). The report will be a single Methodology Report comprising an Overview Chapter and six volumes consistent with the format of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. The structure of the Methodology Report is consistent with the 2006 IPCC Guidelines so as to make it easier for inventory compilers to use this Methodology Report with the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. Topics that will be addressed include: Transport, injection and sequestering of CO2 in relation to enhanced oil, gas, and coal-bed methane recovery Production of products containing or derived from captured and/or removed CO2 Carbonation of cement and lime-based structures Soil carbon sinks and related emissions enhanced through biochar and weathering and other elements Coastal wetlands carbon dioxide removal types not in previous IPCC Guidelines as well as additional information on mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrass in coastal waters Durable biomass products Carbon dioxide capture from combustion and process gases Direct air capture Carbon dioxide utilisation Carbon dioxide transport including cross border issues Carbon dioxide injection and storage CO2 removal through direct capture of CO2 from water already processed by inland and coastal facilities; and related elements across the range of categories of the IPCC Guidelines. The national greenhouse gas inventory includes sources and sinks occurring within the territory over which a country has jurisdiction. Over 150 experts are expected to participate in the writing process, which will be completed by 2027. The participants will be selected by the Task Force Bureau taking into account scientific and technical expertise, geographical and gender balance to the extent possible in line with Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work. The First Lead Authors’ meeting will be held in Rome, Italy, in April 2026. Preparatory Work The decision by the Panel to prepare this Methodology Report was informed by the work of experts at the scoping meeting held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 14-16 October 2024. Prior to the scoping meeting, an expert meeting was held at Vienna, Austria 1-3 July 2024. These meetings considered Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) methods mentioned in the AR6 WGIII Report as a starting point for discussion and noted that several CDR activities have been already covered by the existing IPCC Guidelines. More Information The IPCC Secretary has written to national government focal points inviting nominations of authors by 12 December 2025.

Fast Facts Medicaid programs that cover prescription drugs are generally required to cover drugs that are (1) FDA approved and (2) made by a manufacturer that participates in the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program. 13 Medicaid programs didn’t cover Mifeprex and its generic equivalent, Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, when required. These drugs are used for medical abortion. We recommended the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ensure Medicaid programs comply with federal requirements for covering Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg. We also reiterated our 2019 recommendation on Mifeprex, which hasn’t been implemented. White pills spilling from a pill bottle. Skip to Highlights Highlights What GAO Found Medicaid programs that choose to cover outpatient prescription drugs are required to cover all Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drugs for their medically accepted indications when those drugs are made by a manufacturer that participates in the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program (MDRP), except as outlined in federal law. The FDA has approved two drugs—Mifeprex in 2000 and its generic equivalent in 2019, referred to as Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg—for the medical termination of an intrauterine pregnancy, known as a medical abortion. Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro are the exclusive manufacturers of Mifeprex and Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, respectively, and both manufacturers participate in the MDRP. Medicaid programs in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico cover prescription drugs and participate in the MDRP. According to officials from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)—the federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responsible for ensuring Medicaid programs’ compliance—none of the MDRP’s statutory exceptions apply to Mifeprex or Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg. Thus, these 52 Medicaid programs must cover these drugs when prescribed for medical abortion in circumstances eligible for federal funding, such as when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. GAO identified gaps in Medicaid programs’ coverage of Mifeprex and Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg. Officials from 35 of the 49 programs who responded to GAO questions said their programs covered Mifeprex and Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg for medical abortion, as of December 31, 2024. In contrast, officials from 13 programs told GAO their programs did not cover either drug for medical abortion. An official from the remaining program did not specify the medical indications for which its program covered the drugs. Medicaid Programs’ Coverage of Danco Laboratories’ Mifeprex and GenBioPro’s Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, as of December 31, 2024 Note: For more details, see fig. 1 in GAO-25-107911. State officials’ responses to GAO’s questions indicated that some states may not be complying with the MDRP requirements for covering Mifeprex and Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg. However, CMS has not determined the extent to which states comply with the MDRP requirements for these drugs. CMS officials told GAO they were not aware of the following: Nine programs did not cover Mifeprex and Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg for any medical indication, as of December 31, 2024; GAO reported four of these programs did not cover Mifeprex in 2019. Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg was not available at the time of GAO’s 2019 report. Four additional Medicaid programs did not cover either drug when prescribed for medical abortion, as of December 31, 2024. CMS was not aware of these coverage gaps, in part, because it had not implemented GAO’s 2019 recommendation to take actions to ensure Medicaid programs comply with MDRP requirements to cover Mifeprex. CMS also has not taken actions related to the coverage of Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, as of August 2025. Without such actions, CMS lacks assurance that Medicaid programs comply with MDRP requirements and Medicaid beneficiaries may lack access to these drugs when appropriate. Why GAO Did This Study GAO was asked to describe Medicaid programs’ coverage of mifepristone. This report examines Medicaid programs’ coverage of Mifeprex and Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, among other things. GAO reviewed laws and CMS guidance on the MDRP, and coverage of Mifeprex and Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg. GAO also sent written questions to officials from the 52 Medicaid programs that participate in the MDRP regarding their coverage of these drugs, and reviewed officials’ responses from the 49 programs that provided GAO information. Recommendations GAO reiterates its 2019 recommendation that CMS take actions to ensure states’ compliance with MDRP requirements to cover Mifeprex. GAO also recommends that CMS determine the extent to which states comply with federal Medicaid requirements regarding coverage of GenBioPro’s Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, and take actions, as appropriate, to ensure compliance. In response to the recommendation, HHS noted it is reviewing applicable law and will determine the best course of action to address it moving forward. Recommendations for Executive Action Agency Affected Recommendation Status Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services The Administrator of CMS should determine the extent to which states comply with federal Medicaid requirements regarding coverage of GenBioPro's Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, and take actions, as appropriate, to ensure compliance. (Recommendation 1) Open Actions to satisfy the intent of the recommendation have not been taken or are being planned. When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information. Full Report Full Report (11 pages)

05.12.2025 – The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, established under the European Climate Law, will continue to be supported in its second term (2026-2030) by Ottmar Edenhofer. The Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) has now been appointed by the Management Board of the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen for another four-year term on the Advisory Board, beginning on 24 March 2026. Advising EU policymakers on the path to the declared goal of climate neutrality: PIK Director Ottmar Edenhofer. Photo: PIK/Karkow The Advisory Board gives independent advice and produces reports on EU policies, and their coherence with the Climate Law and the EU’s commitments under the Paris Agreement. It consists of 15 high-level scientific experts covering a wide range of relevant fields. Edenhofer is serving as the Advisory Board’s current Chair during its first term (2022-2026). Highlights during this period have included scientific recommendations for an ambitious EU climate target for 2040, an analysis of the action needed to achieve climate neutrality, and a study on scaling up atmospheric carbon removals. “I am very thankful for the great opportunity to continue supporting EU climate policy in this service role for the next four years,” says Edenhofer, who is also Professor for The Economics and Politics of Climate Change at the Technische Universität Berlin. “The European Union has taken some important steps in recent years towards its declared goal of climate neutrality by 2050. It remains important to make climate policy cost-effective, socially balanced and consistent with the requirements of an internationally competitive economy. As a member of the Advisory Board, I will do my best to provide scientific advice to policymakers on this task.” The composition of the Advisory Board for the next four-year term has now been decided through an open, fair and transparent selection process lasting several months. The decision on who will chair the body in future is not expected until beginning of the second term. The other members of the Advisory Board in the second term are: • Annela Anger-Kraavi – University of Cambridge • Constantinos Cartalis – National and Kapodistrian University of Athens • Suraje Dessai – University of Leeds’ School of Earth, Environment, and Sustainability • Laura Díaz Anadón – University of Cambridge • Vera Eory – Scotland’s Rural College • Lena Kitzing - Technical University of Denmark • Kati Kulovesi – University of Eastern Finland • Lars J. Nilsson – Lund University • Åsa Persson – KTH Royal Institute of Technology’s Climate Action Centre • Keywan Riahi – International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis • Jean-François Soussana – French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment • Giorgio Vacchiano – University of Milan • Detlef van Vuuren – PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency • Zinta Zommers – University of Toronto

image: Dr. Herdís Steinsdóttir deploying an instrument near the reef in Eilat to record water currents, allowing her to keep track of the direction of sea currents. view more Credit: Photo credit: Jake Stout. A new study shows that coral reefs don’t just provide a home for ocean life, they also help set the daily “schedule” for tiny microbes living in the water nearby. Over the course of a single day, the quantity and types of microbes present can shift dramatically. To see this in detail, researchers took frequent water samples and used a mix of genetic and ecological methods and tools, as well as advanced imaging techniques, to track what was happening hour by hour. They found that reefs can shape microbial communities through natural interactions like grazing and predation, as well as changes in the reef’s close microbial partners. These daily ups and downs offer a fresh window into how reefs work and influence the surrounding environment— and could even point to new ways to keep an eye on reef health. Coral reefs are often described as biodiversity hotspots, but new research shows they also act as powerful regulators of the microscopic life in the surrounding ocean. A new study led by Dr. Herdís G. R. Steinsdóttir a postdoctoral researcher under the guidance of Dr. Miguel J. Frada of the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat and Dr. Derya Akkaynak from the University of Haifa and the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences in Eilat, reveals that coral reefs impose pronounced daily rhythms on nearby microbial communities, reshaping their composition and abundance over the course of a single day. The study, published in Science Advances, tracked microbial populations in waters above a coral reef in the northern Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea, comparing them with nearby open waters across winter and summer seasons. Using high-frequency sampling every six hours, the researchers uncovered previously undocumented daily and seasonal cycles affecting bacteria, microalgae, and microscopic predators. “We found that the reef is not just passively surrounded by microbes,” said Dr. Frada. “It actively structures microbial life in time, creating daily patterns that repeat across seasons and influence how energy and nutrients move through the ecosystem.” The research team discovered that reef waters consistently contained significantly fewer bacteria and microalgae than adjacent open waters, suggesting active removal by reef organisms. At the same time, populations of heterotrophic protists, microscopic predators that feed on bacteria, increased sharply at night, sometimes by as much as 80 percent, suggesting predation as a major force shaping microbial dynamics. One of the most striking findings involved Symbiodiniaceae, the family of dinoflagellates best known as coral symbionts. Genetic signatures of these organisms consistently peaked around midday in reef waters, pointing to daily cycles of release, growth, or turnover that may be linked to light conditions and coral metabolism. “These daily microbial rhythms were as strong as, and sometimes stronger than, seasonal differences,” said Dr. Steinsdóttir. “This shows that time of day is a critical factor when studying reef-associated microbial communities.” By combining genetic sequencing, flow cytometry, imaging technologies, and biogeochemical measurements, the interdisciplinary team provides one of the most detailed temporal views to date of microbial life around coral reefs. The findings suggest that microbial daily cycles could serve as sensitive indicators of reef functioning and ecosystem health in a changing ocean. Journal Science Advances DOI 10.1126/sciadv.ady9534 Method of Research Experimental study Subject of Research Not applicable Article Title Microbial dynamics in coral reef waters: Diel cycles in contrasting seasons Article Publication Date 1-Jan-2026

EfD Discussion Paper 31 December 2025 Yonas Alem , Leulseged L. Woldemichael Abstract We use nationally representative panel data from rural areas and small towns in Ethiopia, matched with fine‑resolution weather data, to investigate the impact of drought on energy poverty. Energy poverty is measured using the Multidimensional Energy Poverty Index (MEPI) and a multidimensional poverty status indicator. Fixed‑effects regression estimates show that experiencing drought in the previous production year increases a household’s MEPI score by 0.019 points and raises the probability of being multidimensionally energy poor by 3.8\%. We further demonstrate that the primary pathway through which drought affects energy poverty is through its adverse effect on per‑capita income: experiencing drought in the previous production period reduces per‑capita income by 33.7\%. In contrast, we find that the energy poverty of households participating in Ethiopia’s major safety‑net intervention—the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP)—is not significantly affected by drought, suggesting that the program effectively buffers participants from these shocks. Overall, our findings contribute to the growing literature on the economic costs of drought and underscore the critical role of well‑targeted safety‑net programs in mitigating climate‑related vulnerabilities. Keywords: Income shock; Energy Poverty; Ethiopia Topics Energy EfD Authors Alem, Yonas Files and links EfD_DP-25-14_0.pdf Country Ethiopia Sustainable Development Goals Affordable and Clean Energy Publication reference EfD Discussion Paper DP 25-13 Publication | 1 January 2026 Facebook Linked in

Pigs across the Pacific can trace their ancestry to Southeast Asian domestic pigs that accompanied early Austronesian-speaking groups as they island-hopped across the region, according to a new genomic study. For thousands of years, humans have moved animals far beyond their natural ranges – sometimes accidentally and sometimes deliberately, but often with profound ecological consequences, especially on islands. Pigs are a striking example; although their home ranges lie mostly west of the Wallace Line, multiple species are now widespread across the islands of Southeast Asia and throughout Oceania. Archaeological and genetic evidence suggest that pigs were brought eastward more than 4,000 years ago, predating major Austronesian migrations, with later human expansions bringing them farther across the Pacific. However, studies show that endemic pigs in these regions carry a distinctive “Pacific Clade” genetic signature, which is shared by wild and free-living pigs elsewhere across mainland Southeast Asia. This pattern raises questions about the precise nature of the origin and dispersal of pig populations across the Pacific, and humans’ role in it. To trace the origins of pigs across Wallacea, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, David Stanton and colleagues sequenced 117 modern, historical, and ancient pig genomes spanning the last 2,900 years, and analyzed tooth shape data from 401 modern and 313 archaeological specimens. Stanton et al. found that pigs from the Philippines to Hawaii largely descended from domestic pigs brought by Austronesian-speaking groups from Southeast China and Taiwan about 4,000 years ago. Moreover, pigs in Oceania show no genetic mixing with the wild pig species native to islands along the migration route, indicating that the earliest introduced animals remained genetically isolated from local populations. Only later did isolated feral populations interbreed with endemic wild species. According to the authors, this pattern mirrors early, successive human migrations across the region, which likewise involved limited admixture with local groups, suggesting that these pigs possessed domestic traits well suited for transport and husbandry. Repeated island-to-island movement then shaped their evolution through genetic bottlenecks, selective pressures, and later gene flow, helping explain their success in spreading across Island Southeast Asia and the western Pacific. Journal Science DOI 10.1126/science.adv4963 Article Title Genomic and morphometric evidence for Austronesian-mediated pig translocation in the Pacific Article Publication Date 1-Jan-2026

The first Editorial of the year at Science always gives the Editor-in-Chief an opportunity to reflect on notable developments for the Science journals. In this Editorial, Holden Thorp focuses on AI, discussing how it “will allow the scientific community to do more if it picks the right ways to use it.” He revisits the journals’ policies and approaches related to AI. The journals do use select AI tools. Over the past year for example, Science has collaborated with DataSeer to evaluate adherence to its policy mandating the sharing of underlying data and code for all published research articles. “The initial results are encouraging in that of 2,680 Science papers published between 2021 and 2024, 69% shared data.” (A related Science Editor’s Blog post provides additional details for the DataSeer project.) But Thorp notes that “although AI is helping Science catch errors that can be corrected or elements that are missing from a paper […] its use and the evaluation of the output require more human effort, not less.” This is because the reports generated by AI tools must be assessed by people. “As a small family of journals that can put more human effort into each paper,” Thorp writes, “the Science journals are less susceptible—and contribute less—to the accumulation of “AI slop” in the literature, but no system, human or artificial, can catch everything. Potential degradation of the literature by technology reinforces the value of a record maintained with human scientific experience and expertise.” Journal Science DOI 10.1126/science.aee8267 Article Title Resisting AI slop Article Publication Date 1-Jan-2026

For much of human history, infectious diseases were the main causes of morbidity and mortality. The sciences of public health, epidemiology, microbiology, and vaccine and drug development have dramatically reduced the risks associated with these diseases such that life expectancies in high income countries have increased by close to 40 years over the last century, principally due to a reduction in child deaths from infectious diseases. Today, chronic diseases are the main cause of mortality and are expected to increase over time. However, epidemic and pandemic outbreaks still pose formidable risks to human life. The COVID-19 pandemic, for example, reduced life expectancy in the United States by more than 2 years from 2019-21, and increasing population size, dense urbanization, global travel, climate change, and pressure on ecological systems are making epidemic outbreaks more common. Recent studies have estimated the probability of another pandemic of the magnitude of COVID-19 occurring in the next 25 years to be about 50%. I was thus shocked to see a recent article penned by the director of the National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, and his principal deputy director, Matthew J. Memoli, which proposed a radical new approach to pandemic preparedness that focuses on individual health decisions while rejecting traditional, evidence-based community public health practices. In the article, the authors argue that “a metabolically healthy population, physically active and eating nutritious food, will cope far better in the face of a novel pathogen than a population facing a severe chronic-disease crisis.” They maintain that “simply by stopping smoking, controlling hypertension or diabetes, or getting up and walking more, anything that makes the population healthier will prepare us better for the next pandemic.” Meanwhile, traditional approaches to pandemic preparedness, they write, waste money and create a “false sense of security and empower those who would impose lockdowns, mandates, and other such strategies.” SIGN UP FOR THE SCIENCE eTOC Get the latest table of contents from Science delivered right to you! Sign up As a public health physician, I welcome any initiatives aimed at improving a population’s health status and agree that such practices will likely reduce morbidity, especially from chronic diseases, and may help people recover more quickly from infectious diseases. However, calling for a metabolically healthy population is wholly insufficient as a policy for preparing for future pandemics. While it is true that individuals with co-morbidities such as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes tended to experience worse outcomes from COVID-19, this has not been the case for other infectious threats. The great influenza pandemic of 1918, for example, had particularly high excess mortality rates in the young with more than half of the deaths in young adults 20-40 years of age, including in military recruits at the peak of their physical fitness. And smallpox, which is estimated to have ended the lives of between 300 and 500 million people in the 20th century, killed the non-immune indiscriminately with the vast majority of deaths occurring in unvaccinated infants and children. Better metabolic fitness might have improved outcomes for healthier people relative to those with chronic illness in these cases, but it would not have prevented excess deaths in otherwise healthy individuals. Furthermore, metabolic risk factors are very common in the US, where the prevalence of adult hypertension is 47.7%, obesity is 40.3%, and diabetes is 14.7%. It is thus unlikely that these could be easily resolved at a population level as a pandemic prevention mechanism. Contrary to Bhattacharya and Memoli’s characterization, active surveillance for novel diseases and infectious agents is essential in every country in the world. We do not know where the next epidemic will begin nor with what type of infectious agent. Having a warning system in place will enable early detection, identification, and response, allowing the critical work of producing specific interventions to begin as soon as possible. Systems to produce and deliver medical countermeasures when an epidemic is detected are also vital. Diversifying the manufacturing of countermeasures will help assure access to any therapeutic agents that are developed, while enhancing primary health care systems and assuring access to these systems—even for the most isolated communities—will allow early detection of novel agents. Such systems are also critical for delivering interventions, whether they be health education; non-specific strategies such as masking, handwashing, and isolating ill persons; or the distribution of preventative or therapeutic agents. Most importantly, we need science to continue to improve our prevention technologies, especially the speed with which they can be developed. We live in a world that is at increasing risk of “poly-epidemics”—health crises with many dimensions and exacerbating factors. So, when we face highly lethal threats, such as a fast-moving, high-mortality respiratory epidemic, every minute of improvement in the timeline of development of medical countermeasures counts. Remarkably, we had an emergency-authorized COVID-19 vaccine for general use within 327 days of the SARS-CoV-2 virus being sequenced, primarily because of decades of work on developing mRNA as a platform to effectively deliver antigens. Immunization using mRNA technology is not a silver bullet and may not always be the best approach, but in our current armamentarium, there is no faster way to make a vaccine. The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was designed and delivered to the NIH in a vial 44 days after the sequence of the virus was published online and was injected into the first volunteer 21 days later. It could be done even faster today. And speed needn’t mean compromises in safety. In the case of COVID-19, scientists, industry, regulatory agencies, and 30,000 -40,000 clinical trial volunteers worked together to ensure that the vaccines were tested in large numbers of people and demonstrated to be safe before they were made widely available. NIH funding was crucial to developing mRNA as a vaccine platform, to understanding the structure of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and to determining how to manipulate the vaccine in order to enhance its immunogenicity. Yet without much explanation, the US government abruptly cancelled a $600 million contract to develop an mRNA vaccine for avian flu in May 2025 and $500 million in investments in other mRNA vaccine research in September 2025. Bhattacharya and Memoli appear unperturbed by these dramatic abandonments, which are likely to do great harm to Americans. But magical thinking isn’t only happening in research and development. On 5 December 2025, the newly constituted Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) at the Centers for Disease and Prevention (CDC), voted to drop the decades-old universal hepatitis B vaccine birth dose recommendation without any new evidence of harm and ignoring clear benefits. Not coincidentally, the current roster of ACIP members includes vaccine skeptics and non-experts who were hand-picked by the US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr.—himself a known vaccine skeptic—who has claimed without scientific evidence that the hepatitis B shot causes autism. One of the arguments made by the ACIP panel is that Denmark does not require the birth dose unless a mother is known to be positive for hepatitis B. Denmark is a small, homogeneous population with a universal health system that ensures that the population is tested for hepatitis B and provided with adequate care. The experience in the US is more heterogeneous. All pregnant women are supposed to be screened for hepatitis B at their first prenatal visit, but 18% of women in the US are not tested for the virus during pregnancy and only 35% of women of women who test positive receive all recommended follow up care. The exact prevalence of hepatitis B in the US is unknown, with estimates between 660,000 and 2.2 million people. As many as 50% are unaware of their infection status, meaning that universal immunization to create population immunity is the best way to protect the population and to eliminate maternal-infant hepatitis B transmission. Hepatitis B vaccination at birth also protects children from infection through contact with infected caregivers and household members as well as in other settings which—prior to 1991—accounted for a substantial number of infections. As a physician who was a volunteer in the original efficacy trial for the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine in the mid-1980s, I have a particular interest in this vaccine and have followed it closely. It is exceedingly safe and highly efficacious. The current administration’s rejection of evidence-based public health policies recently led 12 former commissioners of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—appointed by both Democratic and Republican administrations—to express concern about vaccine policy and public health security at the agency. Nine former CDC directors have similarly argued that Kennedy, specifically, is endangering the health of Americans, with six former Surgeon Generals joining their call. Rejecting evidence-informed infectious disease strategies and undermining vaccine-based interventions will not make us healthy again. Given the influence the US has in the world, medical misinformation and disinformation is also likely to increase vaccine hesitancy globally. Magical thinking has no place in public health. Every scientist and health care provider has a duty to speak up against these misguided policies and positions.