Trump administration axes key STI lab amid dramatic rise in US syphilis cases

Source: The Guardian

Mon 21 Apr 2025 09.27 EDT
Last modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 11.10 EDT


The Trump administration’s cuts to a sexually transmitted infection lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) comes as some states, such as Wisconsin, announce enormous increases in syphilis.

Syphilis mitigation is just the latest example of work in sexually transmitted infections (STIs) that will be affected by the lab’s closure, as the Trump administration discards expert leadership and programs that surveil, test and research STIs amid chaotic government cuts.

“This is the Cultural Revolution 2.0,” said Gregg Gonsalves, an associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University’s school of public health, about the mid-20th-century political upheaval in China. Gonsalves is an expert in modeling the impact of public policy on infectious disease. “The 30,000-ft view is this is not necessarily about HIV and STIs – although it is because they have a particular animus against it – they are looking to gut the ability of federal institutions to do their jobs,” he said.

Authorities in Wisconsin announced that syphilis cases had risen 1,450% in the state since 2019, the public health director said in a statement on Thursday. The trend mirrors a nationwide increase that officials at the CDC described only two years ago as a “heartbreaking” epidemic.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/21/syphilis-trump-cuts-cdc-doge