Alie Ward

What's bacterial?

What's viral?

Let's start with the ones that are wipeoutable by antibiotics.

I'm glad it's still there.

Yep.

So on our website at alibor.com slash ology slash venereology, we'll link the CDC's screening recommendations and considerations referenced in treatment guidelines and original sources, which is the site.

And you can sort that by infection or by population.

Very handy.

And shortly after, Donald Trump issued a post-inauguration executive order titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, which, side note, erroneously stated that only two biological sexes exist.

You can see our neuroendocrinology episode for more on that, as well as intersex individuals.

The executive order demanded that all statements, policies, regulations, forms, communications, or other internal and external messages that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology must be removed, which puts the entire population, including infants born with congenital infections, at risk of death.

to have researchers retract or pause any manuscripts in the process of publication, which included these newly forbidden terms, including gender, transgender, pregnant person or pregnant people, LGBTQ, transsexual, non-binary, assigned male or female at birth, and biologically male or biologically female.

So within a few weeks of this, in early 2025, a federal judge ordered that

those pages be restored, saying that the now-banned information included more than academic references and they're vital for real-time clinical decision-making.

So if you ever try to admonish me or this podcast by saying we should keep politics and science separate... You have a lot to learn.

So maybe Dr. Park can't spill any beans, but I did find an article from late 2025 titled, IQRIS announces phase three trial results of HSV treatment, which teased that there had been a major milestone in herpes simplex virus treatments.

noting that the phase three trial of this one small molecule antiviral can inhibit this enzyme that the herpes virus needs to replicate.

And it can help those who have been resistant to other forms of antivirals, including immunocompromised people.

Also exciting, there's a 2024 paper in the journal Nature titled Gene Editing for Latent Herpes Simplex Virus Infection Reduces Viral Load and Shedding in Vivo, which the study busts out of the gate with

some real talk.