Spot on, from @petridishes.bsky.social: "For a while...we, as a nation, thought to ourselves: Life is too short for everyone to inspect their own food. Let the government handle this. But then along came the Trump administration to wonder: What if we didn’t?" www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

ICE observers recording with phones are heroes, and are the reason we know the truth about the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In public health, we make observations by collecting and analyzing data. But RFK Jr. is taking the equivalent of our “phone”. Without data, he can lie with abandon.

So sad that Bill Foege saw the US formally withdraw from the WHO in his final days.

A public health icon and a national hero. William H. Foege, Key Figure in the Eradication of Smallpox, Dies at 89 www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

This is, quite literally, our collective duty.

📣 Join us for our next #TobaccoEndgame CRE #Webinar on FDA regulation and nicotine reduction! Prof Micah Berman will present 'Taking the Nicotine Out of Cigarettes: Lessons from the US FDA's Attempt'. 📆02 February ⏰1pm AEST 🔗 tobacco-endgame.centre.uq.edu.au/event/sessio... @micahberman.bsky.social

New annual tobacco prevention spending report from @tobaccofreekids.bsky.social. www.tobaccofreekids.org/what-we-do/u... #Ohio now ranked 43rd, spending $6 million on tobacco prevention & cessation annually. This is less than the tobacco industry spends on marketing in Ohio in a WEEK.

Read the details here. RFK’s Hep B vax “trial” in Guinea-Bissau is not just a Tuskegee-level ethical travesty. It’s also skewed to make the vax (which has been proven to save lives) look unsafe and ineffective. And it funnels money to RFK cronies. open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

👇🎯💯

“The goal of this administration is to basically make vaccines optional,” said @pauloffit.bsky.social. “And we’re paying the price.” www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

For her part Machado said on X that the guy who actually won the election — Edmundo González Urrutia — should be the leader

Oh wow — an article about where my family tree overlaps with @stevevladeck.bsky.social’s.

More on the continuing purges at #NIH. Now 13 out of 27 institute directors have been gotten rid of. This is not normal. @jonathanwosen.bsky.social www.statnews.com/2025/12/27/n...

ugh

It was all so obvious & uninteresting in its clear bad faith & bad intentions, & the willingness of so many senior folks in academia & society to tolerate the clear bad faith & bad intentions over the last 25 years has been incredibly depressing.

This has flown below the radar, but it’s a low-key outrage that Trump’s FDA has withdrawn the rule to regulate asbestos in talc products. It’s the opposite of making America healthy. www.notus.org/health-scien...

Extraordinary courage from Ahmed al Ahmed, a Muslim, 43-year-old father of two, who bravely risked his life to save his neighbors celebrating Hanukkah. Praying for his full & speedy recovery. And so deeply inspired by his example.

This executive order is a lot of bluster and doublespeak, but the reporting (here and elsewhere) needs to be better. EOs cannot preempt state laws; EOs can't create new grounds for lawsuits; the funding threats are almost certainly unlawful, etc., etc. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/t...

Do you know an amazing post-doc interested in FDA policy and maybe even with some Delphi experience? Send them our way - we're looking to hire on our new project ASAP! postdocs.yale.edu/posts/2025-1...

Every day it's something new. Another terrible precedent in the ongoing politicization of the FDA. www.statnews.com/2025/11/21/t...

Horrific

There is no difference between Trump destroying the East Wing and using a wrecking ball on the Washington Monument or Smithsonian. Just because he (temporarily) lives there doesn't give him the right to demolish the White House without Congressional approval.

An AP investigation found that more than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses this year, part of a campaign to enshrine a conspiracy theory-driven agenda into law. https://to.pbs.org/43dxCkD

"Tiburon could become just the third municipality in the country to ban all sales of tobacco products. The idea originated from a group of high school students in town." www.ktvu.com/news/tiburon...

Inside FDA, career staffers describe how political pressure is influencing their work www.statnews.com/2025/10/14/f... via @statnews.com

“What we’re seeing is what happens when individuals who have don’t have a basic understanding about how vaccines are delivered are making these crucial policy decisions for the American public. They don’t know what they’re doing” -Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of AAP’s Committee on Infectious Diseases

Very well said -- with lessons for other fields as well.

If you believe free speech rights aren't important when the government is moving towards authoritarianism, you never actually believed free speech rights were important.

Hepatitis B can lead to cirrhosis, cancer, death We have reduced its incidence among children by 99% — a huge achievement Today RFK Jr’s hand-picked vaccine committee could unravel it www.thebulwark.com/p/rfk-jr-ken...

One of the newly-announced ACIP members... ohiocapitaljournal.com/2021/02/22/s...

The professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.

It should not be up to John Oliver to be publicly making the argument that university presidents should be making loudly & collectively on the news & in front of the US Capitol every day.

As a lawyer, I'll tell you that there's nobody who knows this law better than Ryan and Brian. Sure looks like murder or war crime to me. But as a human, I'll tell you that the Rubio statement -- we could have stopped the boat but we blew it up to send a message -- is sickening and depraved.

Truly no words to describe how stunningly irresponsible and dangerous this is.

The Ohio Capital Journal talked to two parents who send their children to private school — one who uses school vouchers and the other who refuses to use vouchers. @ohiocapitaljournal.com bit.ly/3JVzlE1

Resignations of CDC staff directly related to misinformation, weaponizing of public health, which is coming from RFK Jr. Untenable situation for them to serve under these conditions. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

At @defendpublichealth.bsky.social, in anticipation of the next MAHA report, we wrote on what it would actually take to maker Americans healthy. It demands that we examine the root causes of illness, malnutrition, etc. & invest in health-promoting programs. www.defendpublichealth.org/resource/imp...

Perhaps there is more context, but numerous outlets reporting that CDC Director Monarez told CDC staff that "misinformation can be dangerous" without clarifying WHAT misinformation and WHO is spreading it. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

The data package HHS offered to defend Kennedy’s decision is not the work of U.S. government scientists… “The compilation originated as material for a book titled “TOXIC SHOT: Facing the Dangers of the COVID ‘Vaccines’,” an anthology of essays by prominent anti-vaxxers.” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social

Disgraceful.

Feel like this needs a spotlight: employees were told that the shooting at CDC, which left an officer dead and buildings riddled with bullets, was targeted at agency, @lenasun.bsky.social, @laurenweberhp.bsky.social and @tobiaraji.bsky.social report Years of anti-CDC rhetoric has consequences

Textbook democratic erosion. No one fears challenging the government in a functioning liberal democracy.

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.

Again, they’re not just canceling this funding going forward but revoking already-awarded grants for things like vaccines against H5N1 bird flu Big “enlightenment reverts to mythology” hours

Good piece by @emilyctamkin.bsky.social on the incoherence of the Trump administration's strategy of effectively requiring DEI for Jews and banning it for other minority groups. www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...

#Ohio -- where the legislature has tried preempt ALL local tobacco regulation -- is unsurprisingly one of the states with the highest number of tobacco lobbyists. Thanks to @ash.org for their important work compiling this data. ash.org/tobacco-money/

The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services is a direct threat to public health. "Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to remove all the members of an advisory panel that determines what cancer screenings and other preventive health measures insurers must cover."

Fantastic and timely intervention by the indispensable Dave Pozen on the true meaning of the Columbia shakedown for higher ed: replacing the rule of law with regulation by deal, which ultimately undermines both regulation and education. balkin.blogspot.com/2025/07/regu...

"In some cases, [panel members] claimed that antidepressants don’t work at all and that depression goes away on its own." More promotion of dangerous, stigmatizing misinformation. www.nbcnews.com/health/menta...