Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Got a new story about a little-known HHS agency with a massive job: the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR). ASPR gave us Operation Warp Speed. Now it's being run by a conspiracy theorist who calls those vaccines “genocide.” www.msnbc.com/msnbc/meet-a...

Madison is a close friend and has a touching personal story about IVF: "Just before my 25th birthday, I hooked my feet into stirrups on an icy exam table, ready for a doctor to retrieve my eggs. I’d been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and learned chemotherapy might make me infertile.

Fewer grad students means less science, but many STEM PhD programs in the US are cutting back on admissions this year due to federal funding uncertainties. Words by me for @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41... @emsque.bsky.social @ucsdcooperlab.bsky.social @julieposselt.bsky.social 🧪

People being treated for certain deadly cancers lived longer if they had received an mRNA-based vaccine against COVID-19 than if they hadn’t go.nature.com/4hkqZma

A vaccine that helps to fight cancer might already exist: People being treated for deadly cancers lived longer if they had received an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccines have this apparent life-extending effect not because they protect against COVID-19 but because they rev up the immune system.

A must-read @politico.com piece about the man behind the Great Barrington Declaration & the Brownstone Institute, two groups that were foundational and central to RFK Jr’s rise and to his MAHA agenda (I was interviewed for the piece; there’s a quote from me) www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Powerful @maxkozlov.bsky.social interview with Susan Monarez, who was fired from the CDC for standing up to Robert Kennedy's demands. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Read our exclusive interview by @maxkozlov.bsky.social with the ex-CDC director - Susan Monarez - In which she talks about the importance of the job and the reasons why she was fired 🧪 #CDC #MedSky @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"But whether or not I ever want to go back to the federal government — I just don’t know if I can. I know that there is greatness in health innovation in the United States...And I just don’t ever want to be put in a position where we don’t embrace that" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Powerful interview of recently fired CDC director by @maxkozlov.bsky.social . What unfolded is chilling and also sad to read in her words. The decimation of the CDC is a low point in global public health history because its impact extended beyond America. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

EXCLUSIVE: In her first interview all year, Susan Monarez, CDC director for only 29 days, tells me why Trump/RFK fired her and where this is all headed. The CDC director is an “inherently political position, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be politically compromised”, she tells @nature.com.

EXCLUSIVE: In her first interview all year, Susan Monarez, CDC director for only 29 days, tells me why Trump/RFK fired her and where this is all headed. The CDC director is an “inherently political position, but that doesn’t mean that it has to be politically compromised”, she tells @nature.com.

Staff members at the NIH seem to have done the impossible: spend the agency's $48 billion budget. “Everyone has been rallying together to clean up the mess, but it’s a mess that did not need to be made,” an NIH program officer told me. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

From an NIH source: "The fact that it’s 8am on the day of a likely shutdown, and NIH personnel have received not one word about it from our leaders, from HHS, or higher, is gobsmacking. Normally we receive shutdown preparations emails starting days in advance. Absolute silence except at IC level."

Staff members at the NIH seem to have done the impossible: spend the agency's $48 billion budget. “Everyone has been rallying together to clean up the mess, but it’s a mess that did not need to be made,” an NIH program officer told me. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Despite political obstacles, officials are on track to disburse all of the research funds allocated to the NIH go.nature.com/46Mxycw

From an NIH source: "The fact that it’s 8am on the day of a likely shutdown, and NIH personnel have received not one word about it from our leaders, from HHS, or higher, is gobsmacking. Normally we receive shutdown preparations emails starting days in advance. Absolute silence except at IC level."

Several scientists have received letters from the NIH director disinviting them from their positions on advisory councils that make final decisions on grant funding, I'm told. In July, I reported that NIH staff were told to select members aligned with Trump administration priorities.

Recently I learned that civil servants have the First Amendment-protected right to speak out on matters of public concern. Thurgood Marshall, in an 8-1 SCOTUS decision, noted that government employees know how the gov’t works, and the public has a special interest in hearing from them.

NEW: Nature trained AI to predict which NIH grants from 2014 would have been cut if the Trump admin had its way back then — and what science would have been lost to history. "The results show the damage that cuts in funding can do to research, and the unpredictable nature of the research process."

And THIS is interesting as a much more shall we say pointed counterfactual: tracing the impact of past NIH grants that specifically look like projects the Trump administration is currently trying to defund bsky.app/profile/maxk...

NEW: Nature trained AI to predict which NIH grants from 2014 would have been cut if the Trump admin had its way back then — and what science would have been lost to history. "The results show the damage that cuts in funding can do to research, and the unpredictable nature of the research process."

Autism is rising. Or at least that’s how it looks. But is it really increasing? And if so, why? As President Donald Trump blames Tylenol, Nature examines the decades of research on the causes of autism. Read more: go.nature.com/4ns6Rku 🧪

GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy on Trump and RFK Jr’s claims about Tylenol and autism: “Talk to your OB about it. But secondly, I was talking to a woman, she goes, ‘Oh, this is great. Two men telling me not to take the only thing I can take when my back's hurting and I'm pregnant.’”

Exclusive: The US Department of Defense is continuing to bankroll projects to develop vaccines against deadly pathogens go.nature.com/46AcHbZ

Yesterday's presser is perhaps the most glaring example of the discrepancy between the Trump admin's words (gold standard science! rigor! reproducibility!) and their actions (citing a couple correlative studies to make massive policy changes). Placebo RCTs for thee, observational study for me.

My colleagues @heidiledford.bsky.social & @helenpearson.bsky.social looked into the link between autism and Tylenol — here's what they found “When you see any associations, they are very, very small,” says @jamcusack.bsky.social. People are "trying to look for simple answers to complex problems."

Now might be a good time to repost this story about what scientists actually know about the complex causes of autism, and what's behind the increasing prevalence. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity. The stakes are not theoretical — we have already seen the largest [US] measles outbreak in more than 30 years, which claimed the lives of two children.” go.nature.com/46rhA7s

Fired CDC director testifies at tense Senate hearing that scientific integrity is being quashed at US health agency. go.nature.com/4njcWzt

After today's hearing, @drdebhoury.bsky.social told me, “The CDC director should be given autonomy on how to lead the agency. We really need physicians and scientists to raise their voices” at a time when radical transparency and gold-standard science are not happening at the CDC. Read more below!

HHS now referring to mpox as "monkeypox" again. "It just falls in line with the playbook of this administration to go back to controversial terms ... This is a simple provocation." www.npr.org/sections/goa...

The paper has helpful diagrams and it's WILD. They clone the other species so they can produce sterile hybrid workers. It's like if a horse could occasionally give birth to a donkey deliberately so they can make mules to serve them while they sit on their... horse throne... as horse queens do.

The new XKCD has to be a reference to the ant paper where ants just casually lay eggs of a different species, yes? Maybe? There are so many weird bugs its hard to know.

“The fact that scientists, and not school administrators, are leading the push is meaningful, Green Nylen says. ‘It feels really important for us that there was something we could do as researchers to fight back and to make a difference for ourselves.’” 🧪

Inspired by Fred Rogers, @nature.com asked readers to help us 'find the helpers' amid the crisis in American science. What emerged were inspiring stories of researchers, legal experts, data hounds and government scientists who are fighting the dismantling of the US research enterprise. 🧪🧵1/6

A fringe immunologist has, apparently, been having long conversations with Secretary Kennedy about his belief that Tylenol causes autism. Gold Standard science? www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Pauses to some US graduate programmes have led universities in several countries to launch initiatives to entice would-be PhD students go.nature.com/46AqorN

OLIVER: "While I do get the appeal of thinking just 'one more concession, one more payoff' might safeguard your independence or let you live to fight another day, it's worth asking: At what point have you compromised so much that the thing you're supposed to be defending is gone?"

News 🚨: The much-anticipated autism report from RFK Jr.'s HHS will point to Tylenol during pregnancy, folate deficiency, among other possible causes of autism. With @nidhisubs.bsky.social Link👇 www.wsj.com/health/healt...

US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Thursday defiantly defended his controversial actions to upend public health, made unfounded allegations about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and accused the medical establishment of corruption. go.nature.com/3V3My05

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers! This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Okay, so we’ve reached the “explaining to people why you cannot simply kill criminal suspects” stage… “Because killing people is so extreme — and doing it without due process risks killing the wrong people by mistake — the question of which rules apply is not simply a matter of policy choice.”

Still thinking about this mind-boggling exchange regarding the former CDC director today RFK JR: I told her that she had to resign because I asked her, “are you a trustworthy person?” and she said “no.” WARREN: What?

So I have a question... RFK, Jr. says he does not believe "modeling studies" to estimate the number of premature deaths prevented by COVID vaccines, He want to see real data. Question: What data does he have in mind? 1/2

So if you aren't perfectly healthy your punishment is....preventable death? What are we doing here. “Dr. Memoli reiterated the administration’s position that vaccines are unnecessary if populations are healthy,” the complaints said.

Asked who RFK gets his briefings from at CDC, he says William Thompson. Thompson is a longtime CDC psychologist who has pushed the false theory that vaccines are linked to autism.

RFK claims he fired CDC director Monarez because he asked her if she's trustworthy and she said no. What's more believable – that, or, as Monarez claims, she was fired because she refused to sign off on his vaccine recommendations?