Saving because my students don’t believe me when I tell them about civet coffee when it comes up in class (re: what is a civet when discussing zoonotic spillovers) www.newscientist.com/article/2501...

Currently giving an Immunology exam while dressed as a (half-assed) Jedi…I am calling it Jedi on a casual Friday. I made the entire exam Star Wars themed. Overly proud of figuring out that I could make the peptide sequence of a peptide presented on Class I PALPATINE.

Seats are limited! Tell a friend @bioprofbarker.bsky.social @cindyleifer.bsky.social @stephanielangel.bsky.social

Do you love #immunology? Do you live near NYC? Come see MicrobeTV.tv’s live recording of the 100th episode of Immune! With @stephanielangel.bsky.social @bioprofbarker.bsky.social and special guests @drshrutinaik.bsky.social and Gretchen Diehl

Once upon a time, I would read Nobel Prize announcements and be awed by some canon in the field I had learned in classes. This year: another example of reading and thinking “oh yeah, I remember those papers and when this went from being not a thing to a thing”. Apparently I am old.

Too many vaccines in the first year?Your child is 44% more likely to survive to one year if they are vaccinated than if they are unvaccinated.

Personifying kidneys, depersonalizing humans.

Maybe the only we survive this is with a twinge of sarcasm and very dark humor😞.

Immune 95: Mitochondria for everyone Immune discusses how cancer cells swap mitochondria with T cells and then digs in for a discussion of an unusual checkpoint blockade that failed for cancer but could be repurposed for autoimmune inflammation. @cindyleifer.bsky.social @bioprofbarker.bsky.social

One of my colleagues is looking for readings for her first-year seminar on Gender, RACE and STEAM and wonders: “Does anyone have suggestions for undergrad accessible articles that focus on how race and/or gender shape research priority bias?”

YES. And relatively few people even know it happened

I’m in

“Dr. Bhattacharya might not realize that many human vaccines are based on live attenuated viruses, where we similarly cannot definitively quantify antigen amounts produced in recipients. The mRNA and live attenuated vaccine platforms have both proven to be safe and effective in clinical studies.”

This is utter nonsense. A KFF poll in May found that only 16% do not trust mRNA vaccines. Twice as many trust them, and 52% would like more information. This is an educational opportunity, not a justification to terminate research. Unbelievable to hear such nonsense from the NIH Director.

Great thread about the new @uk.theconversation.com article @sheencr.bsky.social and I wrote about how Kennedy is systematically undermining vaccines in a coordinated and scarily effective way in the US. full article here: theconversation.com/how-rfk-jr-i...

Nailed it.

Damn! I'm copying this whole 🧵 of replies for my #histmed teaching files. Everybody's right: this WAS a great achievement in human ingenuity & cooperation. It should be celebrated, commemorated, & memorialized at every opportunity. #COVIDvax

Teaching/mentoring undergrads in public health and biomedical science in 2025 is tough. Struggling to figure out how to give good advice about next steps in the field…trying to tell myself (and mentees) how important it is for people to have the training to rebuild things in the future…

There goes that diversify funding argument

CDC workers were terrified as gunman shot at the agency’s headquarters yesterday. Today they are still reeling from shock, fear — and rage. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/u...

Remember when we all used to clap every night to thank doctors, nurses, scientists, and public health workers for saving lives? Thanks to disinformation, people in these professions are now frequently threatened and attacked. There is no way society can keep functioning like this.

One day after a man who reportedly believed that the COVID vaccine had injured him shot up the CDC, HHS announced that a doctor with a history of casting doubt on the safety of the mRNA vaccines is being reinstated as the FDA’s top vaccine regulator. www.importantcontext.news/p/vinay-pras...

Per ProPublica, RFK Jr and Russell Vought have gone out of their way to demonize the CDC and federal workforce. Vought, on video: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.” Also, he expressed his desire that they be “increasingly viewed as the villains.” Again, stochastic terrorism.

truly senseless and random violence…who could be stoking such powerful flames of hatred……we’ll never know………

Jens Kuhn was the first person I thought of when I read this news

I'm seeing a lot of big accounts missing the mark on this story. HHS through BARDA is cancelling contracts for mRNA vaccine research related to viral respiratory illnesses. This does not affect mRNA cancer research by NIH and Moderna. It's still bad news but let's try to keep our facts straight.

Pandemic preparedness in the US has been leveled a crippling blow with the cancellation of multiple #BARDA contracts to help develop mRNA vaccines. No other vaccine platform produces vaccine so quickly; without mRNA, Americans will have a long wait for pandemic vax. www.statnews.com/2025/08/05/m...

The rest of the world, fortunately, will not ignore the huge potential of RNA vaccines. The result will be loss of leadership in the US and delay of benefits to Americans. The promise of personalized anti-cancer vaccines alone is incredible. #OwnGoal

I believe one of the new mRNA vaccines was expected to treat colon cancer, and another had the potential to keep pancreatic cancer from recurring. That’s what they’re taking away.

BREAKING NEWS: a government watchdog confirmed the Trump administration is breaking the law by blocking NIH funds.   How many kids with cancer or grandmas with Alzheimer’s have to get closer to death while crucial research is stalled?  Trump must end this illegal funding freeze.

JUST IN: HHS shuts down BARDA mRNA vaccine program Scrapping the fastest platform we have is a reckless move rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of vaccinology. No respiratory vaccine blocks all infections. mRNA vaccines have saved millions of lives. www.hhs.gov/press-room/h...

Doing course prep for my first time teaching Epidemiology while (looks around) all this is going on is wild

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

Helping my parents clean out their attic

“It was the NIH [that played an integral role in the development of a vaccine in record breaking time that saved at a minimum, one million U.S. lives]…It’s our responsibility to remember what really happened and remind other people of this.” 🧪 mikethemadbiologist.com/2025/07/30/n...

Really interested to read these papers

NEW The White House is blocking the NIH from awarding new research grants for the rest of the fiscal year Chokes off billions in research funding Gift link www.wsj.com/politics/pol... with @nidhisubs.bsky.social

I can’t even

Geologic Periods xkcd.com/3120/

Given the lack of significant outrage, people are either unaware or believe they can weather this storm. The latter set reminds me of folks confident they would get on the lifeboats when the Titanic was sinking. At 5% success & a six-grant application limit, there aren't enough lifeboats. /2

With news that NIH grant success rates are now below 5%, consider the effort that goes into one of these grants (apart from you, who submitted 60 AI-written grants)- why would you put in that much effort knowing your chances are only slightly better than winning a lottery? 1/

few outcomes, except for 99% of FDA-approved drugs, 174 recipients of 104 Nobel Prizes, training ~30K MDs and ~10K PhDs per year to enter the workforce, and a 34% reduction in age-adjusted cancer deaths since 1990 -- the largest decrease in history

It is an extraordinary loss of intellectual expertise that the American people invested millions in developing Every scientist who earns a graduate degree in the US is the product of an investment by the public This is like setting money on fire

And now we know what I will be trying to solve tonight #YesIAmANerd

Who can get their flu shot this fall? My latest newsletter breaks down how access to flu vaccines, especially for kids and people on Medicaid, could be disrupted if HHS doesn’t adopt routine CDC recommendations. 1/

The NIH’s 2024 budget of just under $37B generated $95B in economic activity in 2024 alone. 99.4% of new pharmaceuticals approved from 2010-2019 came from NIH-funded research. I’m hard pressed to think of anything that generates as much direct economic benefit as our NIH did before they destroyed it

Happy birthday Rosalind Franklin (1920 –1958), #chemist & x-ray crystallographer whose x-ray diffraction images were instrumental to discovering double-helix structure of DNA, made important contributions to carbon & virus research, was 1 of the great scientists of the 20th century.⁠ 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬 #histsci 🧵

Next-level public health clownery here in Canada with these bird flu ostriches, with accusations of CFIA murder drones, impromptu baptisms in ostrich farm runoff, and putting on the anti-vax bird flu version of the Fyre Festival. open.substack.com/pub/rasmusse...

@goastromo.bsky.social At a bookstore in Montreal

Completed my term as Dept Chair and am now excited to spend more time thinking about science! At conferences for the next week and a half getting my science brain back. :)