Alzheimer's, Global Trade, and LGBTQ+ Rights in Uganda
July 21, 2023
Editor's Note
It has been a newsy year for Alzheimer's treatments. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave its first full approval to a drug (Leqembi) designed to reduce the amyloid protein that builds up in the brains of people with early-stage Alzheimer's disease. Weeks later, news reports came out that a second monoclonal antibody therapy, donanemab, outperformed Leqembi in clinical trials. Not all experts are sold on the clinical benefits of these drugs, but our first author, George Vradenburg, chairman of the Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative, maintains these two drugs represent important progress and are a reason to increase and better coordinate international funding to fight the rise in Alzheimer's cases globally.
Our next contributors, Bryan Mercurio and Ronald Tundang, argue that the push for medical supply chain security in the United States and European Union threatens to distort global markets. The authors highlight the passage of the European Commission's Critical Medicines Act as a particular cause for concern.
Finally, we take a long look at Uganda's recently proposed anti-LGBTQ+ laws with an article from Matthew M. Kavanagh, Alice Mutebi Kayongo, and Adi Radhakrishnan. The authors explore the role of global health advocates and institutions in supporting local activism and litigation against these new laws.
