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Biden recently announced that former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins would serve as a temporary science adviser, filling one of Lander’s key roles to help shepherd some of the White House’s most ambitious health priorities. But installing Collins may actually complicate efforts to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health because he, like Lander, is a strong proponent of housing the agency in NIH — and an increasing number of lawmakers are against that idea. “Every American agrees we must lead the world in scientific research,” a Republican leadership aide, who is close to ARPA-H discussions, said. “But based on member conversations I’ve witnessed, the majority of Republicans in the House worry ARPA-H will become another slush fund for Fauci-minded scientists — unchecked scientists who will use more government money just to curate their public image rather than get results.” (Owermohle, 2/22)

Lawmakers of both parties introduced legislation last week to bar federal funding for “drug paraphernalia” in response to a story in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website, asserting that federally funded addiction treatment programs would distribute pipes for smoking crack cocaine as part of “safe smoking kits.” In response, White House officials said tax dollars would not be spent on pipes. But with the Beacon story ricocheting around the conservative ecosystem — amplified by Republican including Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas — Congress is pursuing plans not only to bar federal funding for “crack pipes,” but to impose restrictions on a new program that would have, for the first time, allowed federal funds to be spent on sterile needles for “syringe services” programs. (Gay Stolberg, 2/21)

The Senate took a significant step in recent days to help former military service members suffering from toxic burn pit exposure by passing a bill to expand access to health care for post-9/11 combat veterans. It's not yet clear though when burn pit legislation might get to the President's desk to be signed into law, and advocates say more still needs to be done for veterans to address the issue of toxic exposure. (Foran and Zaslav, 2/20)

The Omicron wave hammered the American work force, sending more people home sick than at any other point in the pandemic. Yet unlike in 2020, there is no federally required paid sick leave for workers — and none at all for the one-fifth of workers who don’t receive it from their employers. Now, as Omicron recedes and many restrictions are being lifted, and as more of the country begins to treat Covid as an unavoidable part of life, some Democratic lawmakers and others are trying to revive paid leave for Covid-related reasons. (Cain Miller, 2/21)

Former Bridgewater Associates CEO David McCormick and celebrity physician Mehmet Oz have already shattered spending records in their Republican primary battle for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania that is pivotal to party efforts to retake control of Congress. McCormick and Oz have flooded Keystone State airwaves with television and radio ads at a clip typically reserved for the closing stretch of an election, especially courting supporters of former President Donald Trump whose votes could spell the difference in the May 17 primary. (Niquette, 2/21)

“Stand your ground” laws may have led to hundreds of additional homicides every year in the United States, according to a new study that could boost criticisms that they encourage unnecessary violence. Fiercely debated and increasingly common in the United States, stand-your-ground laws remove the duty to retreat from an attacker when possible before responding with potentially deadly force. They became a flash point in national disputes over gun violence, self-defense and racial profiling, particularly after the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, in 2012. (Knowles, 2/21)

The Sackler family is offering more money to settle the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case, the mediator of the settlement reported on Friday. The mediator filed a third interim report on Friday in which the Sackler families proposed paying between $5.5 million and $6 million for the settlement. The original bankruptcy settlement was listed at $4.3 million. The mediator, former Bankruptcy Judge Shelley Chapman, asked that the parties of the settlement receive more time to work on the settlement proposal. (Vakil, 2/18)

Faced with the gravest health crisis in memory, governments deployed newly developed vaccines in record time. Many countries indemnified pharmaceutical companies that made the shots, with some governments promising to consider compensation for suspected Covid-19 vaccine-related injuries. Now governments, including the U.S. and U.K., are trying to live up to that pledge. They are in the very early stages of applying existing vaccine-injury programs to hundreds of claims of injury alleged from Covid-19 shots. (Strasburg, 2/19)

The use of two unproven COVID-19 treatments was higher in counties with a larger share of Republican voters in late 2020, according to a study released Friday, suggesting stark political differences in medical decisionmaking. Hydroxychloroquine prescribing volume from June through December 2020 was roughly double what it had been the previous year, and prescriptions were 150 percent higher in the most Republican counties than in the least, according to the study published Friday in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal. (Weixel, 2/18)

To health leaders across the globe, reaching the World Health Organization’s goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the planet’s population by mid-2022 is crucial to stave off future Covid-19 surges. To Bill Gates, the target represents a top-down approach to fighting the coronavirus that overlooks the reality on the ground — a way of thinking he says must change before the next pandemic. “We’ll never get to 70 percent. Who is kidding who? We live in a world where you have countries that spend $12,000 per person per year on medicine and countries that spend $200 per person per year,” Gates, whose foundation has carried out successful polio vaccination campaigns for years, said. “If you’re playing the $200-per-person game, you can only do things that have huge impact.” (Banco, 2/19)

Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates said that the risk of severe COVID-19 infection has reduced dramatically but warned that another pandemic caused by a different pathogen could be around the corner. In an interview with CNBC's Hadley Gamble at Germany’s annual Munich Security Conference, the billionaire said the novel coronavirus has spread to enough of the population that the "risks are dramatically reduced because of that exposure." (Dress, 2/19)