I guess RSV monoclonals aren't technically vaccines... But forgive me if I think the whole schtick about MAHA is "now focused on food not vaccines" is a crock. Hoeg and Prasad are both still at the FDA and both still anti vaccine, anti mRNA.

The last part abt how measles disrupts immunity vs other infections is, imo, underappreciated (& mechanism was recently clarified). It's part of why measles vaccination was seen to help beyond just reducing measles complications - not getting measles reduces severity of subsequent infections too.

Just for fun…

“TN bill would allow death penalty for women who have an abortion *** The bill “prohibits all abortions from fertilization, without exceptions for rape or incest.” It’s supported by the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s largest evangelical denomination. 2/20/26 … 1/

As I have watched measles cases in my home state of SC skyrocket to almost 1,000, I wondered why I hardly ever heard anything about the severity of complications. Here’s what I found.

Perhaps such a framing overlooks the value of public pushback, litigation, economic assessments, and polling which showed the White House overwhelmingly out of step with the American public. www.chip50.org/reports/amer...

Republicans are not monolithic, but they have fallen in line, turning a blind eye when the CDC was dismantled, NIH directors were removed, FDA refused to let evidence drive decision-making, NSF staff was kicked out, and have not intervened to slow the decline of American leadership in R&D.

I have been saying that these ICE thugs look and operate like nothing so much as the paramilitary death squads in the Southern Cone countries in the 1970s and 1980s, who disappeared people and adopted out their children, and HERE WE ARE. 🥚

"You cannot lecture me about merit while nominating Pete Hegseth." www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8xYaYqU/

Apparently, DOGE bros literally used chat GPT to identify “DEI” related grants at National Endowment for the Humanities. The description is aligns strikingly well with the output we saw at NIH. www.techdirt.com/2026/02/19/d...

“ .. I must wonder if America’s utter abdication of any responsibility for global warming will someday come back to bite in the form of retaliatory tariffs .. What’s to stop a group of nations with .. climate-related economic losses from eventually penalising the US ..” www.ft.com/content/4d25...

“Iran’s nuclear facilities have been obliterated - and suggestions otherwise are fake news.” - White House, June 25, 2025 www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202...

SC hospitals do not report measles hospitalizations and they are being vastly undercounted. Propublica delves into the problem of transparency and how it affects what doctors can say to parents. www.propublica.org/article/sout...

If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle. It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get. www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

Academic research is at best a challenging discipline with uncertain funding and short term contracts dominating for early career scientists but coupled that with Trumps attacks on science and US funding is leaving the US with a potential void of future talent

RFK’s anti-vax Children’s Health Defense was called the World Mercury Project, which falsely claimed vaccines had mercury which caused autism. Now RFK Jr & CHD are silent about children absorbing high doses of mercury from the air. www.npr.org/2024/12/03/n...

🧪 Trump Signs Order Protecting Glyphosate, Phosphorus Production share.google/Az7ZRF3wvIho...

Who did this??

Researchers followed more than 400,000 teens until they were adults. It found that those who used marijuana were more likely to develop serious mental illness, as well as depression and anxiety. www.npr.org/2026/02/21/n...

The Trump administration rolled back restrictions on toxic pollution from power plants, including limits on the release of mercury and lead.

?What Trump lied and used an illegal executive order? “Invoking the Defense Production Act to spur the domestic production of glyphosate is a gross abuse of presidential authority . . . ”

Why do people living at high altitudes have better glucose control? The answer was in plain sight

Dr. Bhattacharya recently came to U. Chicago for an "off the record" event. My strong impression was that he is truly unfamiliar with how most biomedical research works.

(This rhymes a bit with what B of A said on Friday about global equity flows: the US is getting its lowest share since 2020.)

Trump is giving tax cuts to Bezos but none to you.

Wonderful op-ed by a mother who explains how NIH-funded research at U of U Health saved her daughter's life. "That research — and Briar’s life — demonstrate just how critical federal support is to scientists, doctors and, especially, the patients they help." www.sltrib.com/opinion/comm...

Here's the documentary that 1.1 million Hungarians have watched over the past week, documenting the damage that Viktor Orban's regime has done to health, education and public transportation in Hungary with English subtitles: youtu.be/9NQEcLIiOpM?...

PLEASE. MAY IT BE SOON!

Remember when RFK Jr. unilaterally decided that COVID19 vaccines should no longer be recommended during pregnancy? Well, COVID19 increases the risk of preeclampsia. And it turns out that getting boosted, either before or during pregnancy, significantly reduces the risk of preeclampsia.

There has been much fear mongering and misinformation about SSRIs in pregnancy, including from our federal government This has consequences In this study, stopping medications in the first trimester was directly tied to a spike in ER visits for mental health emergencies #MedSky

Put her in a choke hold and the other kids jumped in to beat his ass. The kids are alright.

Let's try this again 👋 Hi Bluesky - I'm Massachusetts' Attorney General. You might know me from suing President Trump nearly 50 times, beating Uber and Lyft in court, or being the first woman of color elected to statewide office in MA. I officially left X today - help me find my MA people?

Congress could legislate a different outcome (it won't, but it could!)

More than 32,000 pregnant women and 61,000 children under the age of one are at an increased risk of harm due to Trump's oil blockade of Cuba.

PhRMA spends $38 million on federal lobbying and the Trump administration dismantles the R&D, HC & insurance system that kept demand for its member's products so high. The AHA spent >$25 m. Wasted of money. I'd read an article on what their Trump strategy was and how it failed spectacularly.

The people enabling the Guinea Bissau study as per the Rollingstones article are: Lyn Redwood -- ex Children's Health Defense Fund Stuart Burns -- ex aide to Dave Weldon who was denied CDC Directorship bc of his antivax views

It's heartening that more people are now able to smell manipulated fvckery & willing write about it. It constrains bad actors. Even if they have millions at their disposal, they don't control all arms of all governments. It makes them look like desperate depraved doofuses.

Wednesday Whopper from DPH! "Kennedy flew to Samoa to discourage people from taking the measles vaccine... he wanted to run a ‘natural experiment’ to see how people would fare against the disease without protections.” -- Sen Brian Schatz (D-HI) www.defendpublichealth.org/opinion/whop...

NEW: When Biden was president, the Supreme Court eagerly embraced the "major questions doctrine" to rein in presidential power, but when it came to Trump's tariffs the theory only got three votes. What happened? 👇 www.nbcnews.com/politics/sup...

❓Are you multi-lingual and would like to help us get our translated content in good shape for the planned relaunch of Skeptical Science we are currently working towards? If your answer is yes, please check out this blog post to find out more: sks.to/help-transl-...

Having read this article I just wrote to my MP to demand that the government bring in proper AI safety regulations at the point of release, in line with any other industry that makes consumer products. Please will you do the same? giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... How tech turned against women

A Quack should never be running the HHS, so we are pushing the initiative to #RemoveRFKJr. Visit standupforscience.net/impeach-rfkjr and demand your rep. to co-sponsor the articles of impeachment against RFK Jr. #science #standupforscience #RemoveRFKJr #ImpeachRFKJr #ImpeachTheQuack

New data shows the US the only major destination in the world to see a decline in international travellers in 2025. So far 2026 getting worse. Foreign airlines cutting the number of US-bound flights. Disney warning of “international visitation headwinds”

As Karen got to know the guards, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says. 3/3

About the director of FDA/CDER who has never been involved in drug development... She gave a speech about going after RSV vax and SSRIs -- absolutely is not normal. Problems about drugs generally come to director, the director does not go out looking for problems. www.statnews.com/2026/02/19/t...

And now we present @jvl.bsky.social's narration of RFK and Kid Rock's cringe workout video

It's like the scene at the end of A Christmas Carol when Scrooge pretends to fire Bob Cratchit but instead doubles his salary. Except he actually does fire him.

A lot of people, including me, were wondering how an IRB could ever approve this study. The answer is that no IRB did. The person who “signed off” on approval from the only ethics board that reviewed it had resigned three years earlier. His signature was used without his knowledge.

A bill sponsored by several state reps seeks to prevent hospitals and doctors from questioning or interfering “in any manner” with a patient’s right to refuse treatments or vaccines. South Carolina hospitals aren't required to disclose measles-related admissions @jenniferberryhawes.bsky.social