Axios

Unlicensed and unregulated experimental vaccines were administered to at least eight herpes patients in the United States, in direct violation of US law, according to an investigation by Marisa Taylor at Kaiser Health News. The experiments were conducted secretly for several years in a Holiday Inn Express and Crown Plaza Hotel near Carbondale, Illinois.

What we already knew: William Halford, the associate professor at Southern Illinois University who conducted the experiments, died of cancer this summer. Halford had previously been accused of dodging US oversight laws by running trials out of a house on the island of St. Kitts in 2016. The St. Kitts and Nevis government says they were not notified of the research.

Why it matters: "We're not allowed to do this in guinea pigs in this country let alone human subjects," herpes expert Anne Wald told Kaiser Health News.

Some people's tax cuts under the GOP Senate bill would be canceled out by the increased premiums they would face due to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, according to an analysis by The Commonwealth Fund. And, for those roughly 7 million people who buy insurance on their own but don't get premium subsidies, high health care costs would endure even after the bill's tax cuts expire.

Thanksgiving is always a time to think about those in need. How about, then, a group we don't worry about enough: the many lower and moderate income Americans who can't cover their cost sharing if they get sick? It raises the question: How much cost sharing is too much?

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican who broke ranks over the summer to vote against GOP plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act, has written an op-ed declaring her support for a repeal of the ACA's individual mandate. She writes, "I believe that the federal government should not force anyone to buy something they do not wish to buy in order to avoid being taxed."

Why it matters: The Senate tax plan includes a repeal of the mandate, which helps stabilize insurance markets by incentivizing healthy people to buy coverage. This may be a signal Murkowski intends to vote yes on the plan.