UK appeals court approves funding for HIV drug PReP News
UK appeals court approves funding for HIV drug PReP

The UK Court of Appeal [official website] on Thursday approved [judgment] the National Health Services (NHS) [official website] to fund research [press release] into the HIV drug PReP. The ruling has established that NHS England has the ability, but not the obligation, to fund PReP and would not be subject to legal challenges for funding. Pre Exposure Prophylaxis (PREP) [NHS backgrounder] has been under research in the UK for several years and can be expected to stop those at very highest risk from contracting the virus.

Combating HIV has been an international concern for years. Last June a group of UN independent human rights experts said that human rights violations contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS [JURIST report]. In May California’s governor signed Senate Bill 1408 into law, allowing HIV-positive individuals to become transplant donors to HIV-positive recipients [JURIST report]. In 2015 President Barack Obama issued executive order 13703 [JURIST documents] “Implementing the National HIV/AIDS Strategy,” which was intended to ensure successful implementation of the the updated national AIDS/HIV strategy. In 2013 the Alabama Department of Corrections [official website] announced an end to its policy of segregating HIV-positive inmates at Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women [JURIST report]. In 2010 Human Rights Watch urged the South Carolina Department of Corrections to stop automatically segregating HIV-positive inmates [JURIST report].

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.