New research suggests that a controversial gene-editing experiment to make children resistant to HIV may also have enhanced their ability to learn and form memories.

The shutdown of the HIV research at the federal lab in Montana, first reported in Science, was never disclosed publicly by government officials, who have forbidden affected researchers from discussing what happened. But colleagues say they are incensed by the action, which has fanned a controversy that pits the biomedical research community against antiabortion activists and other social conservatives pressing the administration to stop the flow of federal grants and contracts for work involving fetal tissue. Such tissue comes from elective abortions.

Ten years ago, Jennifer Wyms was a 17-year-old junior at Normandy High School in Wellston, Mo. She was the captain of her school’s hip-hop dance team and enjoyed going to the mall with friends. But when a health scare engulfed her St. Louis community, it cast a shadow on her high school experience.

A letter from school officials sent to parents and guardians in October 2008 relayed the news that epidemiologists with the St. Louis County Department of Health had grounds to believe that HIV may have been transmitted among some students — as many as 50 students at Normandy High School could have been exposed, it said.

“Everybody wanted to know, who had it? Where it came from? Why our school?” Wyms told The Washington Post.

An influential government task force has drafted a recommendationthat would for the first time urge doctors to offer a daily prophylactic pill to patients who are at risk for contracting H.I.V. The recommendation would include all men and women whose sexual behavior, sex partners or drug use place them at high risk of contracting the virus that causes AIDS.

Public health officials are expanding efforts to get the HIV prevention pill into the hands of those at risk, in a nationwide effort to curb infections. But the officials are hitting roadblocks — the drug’s price tag, which has surged in recent years, and changes in insurance coverage that put a heftier financial burden on patients.

Despite enormous efforts over more than 30 years, HIV/AIDS researchers have yet to develop either a vaccine or cure for the disease. But they have made progress in monkey experiments, and two studies reported here this week at the largest annual U.S. HIV/AIDS conference created serious buzz.

California lawmakers have passed legislation to reduce the penalty for those who knowingly or intentionally expose others to HIV without their knowledge, rolling back a law that mostly affected sex workers. The bill, SB 239, which was approved by the Democrat-controlled state legislature in September and signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown on Friday, will lower the charges for these acts from a felony to a misdemeanor when the law goes into effect in 2018.

The first hints of an uncertain future for the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS came last year, when Donald Trump’s presidential campaign refused to meet with advocates for people living with HIV, said Scott Schoettes, a member of the council since 2014. That unease was magnified on Inauguration Day in January, when an official White House website for the Office of National AIDS Policy vanished, Schoettes said. Last week, he and five others announced they were quitting the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, also known as PACHA.

A dramatic rise in HIV infections among young gay men in China has belatedly captured the attention of both national and local authorities. Although the total number of people infected with HIV remains below 1 million nationwide, the government recently reported that of the 96,000 new cases identified in the first 9 months of 2016, 28% were traced to male homosexual activity, up from 2.5% of new cases in 2006.

91% of new infections in the 15- to 19-year-old group were in adolescent girls.