CROI 2025: Stand up for science rally against Trump funding freeze

9 March 2025. Related: Early access, Conference reports, Treatment advocacy, , .

Stand Up For Science protest in San Francisco, 2025. A large crowd of people are gathered in front of Civic Centre Plaza on a sunny day. Some are holding placards. One says, "Stop Musk and the DOGE bros!"

Simon Collins, HIV i-Base

A white woman with short dark hair speaks into a microphone, outside. She is wearing sunglasses. There is a US flag behind her and the sky is bright and clear blue.

Nobel Laureate Carolyn Bertozzi

A couple of days before CROI this year – and not connected to the conference – several thousand scientists rallied in the sunshine at San Francisco’s Civic Centre Plaza to support the importance of science in universities and research and to stop the recent freeze on funding.

This was one of over 30 rallies in US cities this year as part of the Stand Up for Science protest. Speakers at the San Francisco rally included some of the current and former students and lecturers from Berkeley University, including Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi.

Many have benefitted from support that enabled them to be students and they spoke of the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion programmes, which were one of the early targets of the new Trump administration.

This direct assault on science will be the background to every presentation at CROI this year and will make this year an exceptional meeting.

It is being held in the aftershock of the initial weeks since Trump took office, in which thousands of scientists have been fired from USAID, the CDC, NASA and climate agencies and thousands of grants have been cancelled early with no notice.

National US agencies with multi-billion dollar budgets are being headed by new political appointees who have a history of supporting HIV and vaccine denialists.

The new President is threatening a Lebensraum approach to US foreign policy, and in just as much plain sight. And with just as much popular support. The reference is factual and not fictional.

This sunny afternoon protest was a lucky way to bring humour to what will be a much more serious and complicated CROI.

  A person at a protest holds a yellow placard, facing the camera. The text on it reads, "What do we want? Evidence based science! When do we want it? After a peer review!"A person at a protest holds two cardboard placards, facing the camera. The text on one reads, "Eat today? Thank a scientist and a farmer." The second one reads, "No science, no beer."  A person at a protest holds a yellow placard, facing the camera. The text on it reads, "My mom has polio but I don't, because of science."

Thank you to everyone who was happy to talk and to have their photographs included.

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