As expected, today’s hearing of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Committee quickly devolved into political theater, sometimes crossing into the absurd, as the only witness, Anthony Fauci, answered every question, no matter how mundane or comical, by pleading the Fifth Amendment. But amongst the allegations of unhinged obsessions and grandstanding on both sides of the aisle, real concerns were raised and the human impact of the pandemic remembered. At issue for CTGT panelists is which version of a statistical analysis plan (SAP) should have been used to evaluate Hope-3 phase III study data. San Diego-based Capricor said regulators improperly relied on SAP version 1.1, an unsigned incomplete internal draft that became obsolete as the DMD trial went on, whereas the company reported success based on SAP 3.0, the version finalized prior to unblinding of the results. At the 26th International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2026), researchers reported persistent abnormalities affecting the gut, cardiovascular system, metabolism and immune function despite effective viral control.