This photo is making the rounds on social media and some have asked if it's legit. It is. As the curator of a new exhibit on U-M medical history that opens this weekend, I wanted to share a link showing that it was taken by a LIFE magazine photographer: www.life.com/animals/anim... #IDsky

Really looking forward to this Oct 14 UTI Hour online to learn more about veterinary UTIs! utiga.org/upcoming #UTIsky

I may be American, but I’ll never be the Gestapo.

I normally post to this account for scientific reasons, but I’m excited to share something more personal. I’ve been taking photos from the same spot for a few years. 1/

Postdoc position (please re-post) A funded postdoctoral position, will open in 2026 to study aspects of Neisseria gonorrhoeae pathogenesis, antigenic variation, genetics, or physiology. If interested in more information, please contact Hank Seifert [email protected] #MicroSky

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As national medical, scientific, public health and patient organizations, we call for the resignation of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ensure the health of the American people. Read our statement: asm.org/press-releas...

The practical upshot is that justice delayed is justice denied; or to be more precise, a lab which had to fire all of its researchers and halt work on groundbreaking research isn't going to be able to ever restore itself to the same position it would have been without a multi-year pause in funding.

Are the mRNA vaccines incredible? YES! Are the mRNA vaccines perfect? No. Have the mRNA vaccines saved millions of lives? YES! Can we make the mRNA vaccines even better? YES! Can we use mRNA vaccine technology to prevent and treat many other diseases? YES! Fund mRNA research!

Veterinary #UTIs don't just happen to companion animals. A study in the 1980s found urinary tract infections were the cause of death in up to 30% of female koalas!* Our Oct 14 (12EDT, 1600UTC) #UTIhour can help explain how 🐨 infections can impact 🧍‍♀️too *(PMID: 6887434)

Mark your calendars for the next #UTIHour on Oct 14th focusing on veterinary #UTI

New publication from our lab, featuring Dr. Santosh Paudel’s work offers a refined cost-effective approach to study bacterial growth rates during infection @globaluti.bsky.social #UTIsky

Just saw this shared. You can see which stations stand to lose more than 50% of their funding adoptastation.org

I really want to know what that Duluth lab found! www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2...

Tomorrow!

I am both a professional microbiologist and a hobbyist gardener and I’m just finding out about mosquito dunks!

In case you are wondering what it's like for scientists now, every person I saw at the ASM conference asked others in a deeply serious voice "But how are you really?" I thought it was just me, but no, everyone is asking everyone this!

If you burn down a forest, you don't miss out on lumber for just that season. You have to replant all the trees, nurture them, and wait for them to grow. The science and research budget cuts happening now are wanton, senseless arson. Recovery, if it ever happens, will take generations.

Senator Durbin noted that some (I believe Republican Senators) had indicated the US had been doing more than its share of biomedical research and it was time for other countries take a turn. I felt I had to interrupt to respond...

Who's calling the shots at NIH? Sworn testimonies and internal e-mails reveal for the first time the breadth of DOGE's control over the world's largest public biomedical funder. DOGE has provided lists of hundreds of grants to cut, and DOGE is now reviewing ALL NIH awards before they're released

The NIH Director continues to misunderstand (or mischaracterize) the extent to which research is being gutted. I appreciate this program officer for speaking up.

Last year, Ben Mazer wrote this piece about the revenge of the Covid contrarians all now ensconced as leaders of public health, science & healthcare. but they’re a whole lot of fellow travelers among the liberal establishment who should take some of the blame. 1/ www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Most Americans frequently use federal science information. But few are concerned that cuts to federal science spending could affect their access to such information, a new poll finds.

This report of interview with new NIH Director Jayanta Bhattacharya from @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social reveals a real $hit show... www.science.org/content/arti... 1/n

Bezos plans to sell ~$4.8 billion of Amazon stock. That's only 2.5% of his holdings in the company. That sale roughly equals the proposed ~50% cut to NSF. IOW, with modest endowment-level growth of Amazon, Bezos could fund the entire NSF shortfall into perpetuity. www.cnbc.com/2025/05/02/j...

I got hit by some rather sudden and extreme financial hardship so if anyone is in need of remote wetlab contract research, strictly BSL1, do let me know. Currently scrambling for gigs. Plant, Bacterial, Archaeal Non-model Bioeng Custom Lab Hardware Turn Key Genetic Design Please repost for reach 💚

Final point here: this post is from an anonymous NIH employee, and it feels critical to raise these voices precisely because the Trump administration has silenced credible NIH officials and their leadership is not representing them. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-nih-bu...

Our current Medical Establishment got famous by going on Fox News and saying how well they *would have* handled COVID. Don’t believe them. Now that they are in power, they are botching measles and everything else. My latest. sciencebasedmedicine.org/measlesfail/

It's a great time to support @trevorproject.bsky.social and the vital work they do for kids.

The NYT wants you to think universities became dependent on government. This is false. The government invested in the national research infrastructure by competitive grants to universities. The taxpayers built this. It got us to the moon. Won the Cold War. Created Silicon Valley. Made the McRib.

Ever wonder how 2 people can be exposed to the same 🦠 but have wildly different #UTI experiences? It's because UTI isn’t one-size-fits-all. Genetics, hormones, aging, & immunity all play a role in who gets sick - and how often. Join our 4/30 #UTIhour to learn more! #UTIsky #IDsky

Phage people - does anyone have a lambda phage with a deletion/mutation in the integrase gene (unable to lysogenize)? If so, can you please share it with us to help us test a cool hypothesis? Thanks! Please RT. 🦠🙏

HULK ADAM SMASHES DIRE WOLVES. Man alive this vexes me, and I am a bit sweary and irritable in this. Enjoy. arutherford.substack.com/p/dire-wolve...

It's getting a lot of attn today. But even before today most of the country had very little idea of what has happened at NIH or through it the entire ecosystem of biomedical research in the US. Simply put, Musk, Kennedy & Trump exploded a bomb right in the middle of cancer cure research in the US.

Did You Work on a Terminated NIH Grant? ProPublica Wants to Hear From You. www.propublica.org/getinvolved/...

The greatest loss of data is in the Midwest, where forecasts of the timing and strength of low pressure troughs dominate steering of landfalling Gulf of Mexico hurricanes. It's plausible this lack of data could make a NHC 3-day cone of uncertainty to be centered over Mobile instead of New Orleans.

The best-known member of Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service team of technologists once provided support to a cybercrime gang that bragged about trafficking in stolen data and cyberstalking an FBI agent, according to digital records reviewed by Reuters.

So the guy leading RFK Jr.'s vaccine-autism study? A total quack who was previously charged for practicing medicine without a license for using chemical castration drugs on autistic children.

Laptop class professors wrote a revisionist history of the pandemic to glorify the laptop class. My review of In COVID’s Wake, a horrible new book praising misinformation advocates of herd immunity via mass infection. sciencebasedmedicine.org/laptopclassb...

I just listened to #TheDaily episode on "On COVID's Wake" with Frances Lee & Stephen Macedo where they make a categorical statement that non-pharmaceutical interventions didn't work during the pandemic. The evidence does not support this categorical claim. 1/ pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

This classic shallow argument runs cover for real ways that the response to the Covid pandemic has been all out class warfare, and is the perfect example of lazy, superficial “class analysis” that ignores the basic material conditions which actually define class under capitalism.

This line, coming from a wise 🇨🇦: “A hustle that is very much a US trait. Probably because of the lack of universal healthcare and good social safety nets, you know, a real sink or swim vibe that looks noble if you only pay attention to the ones who haven’t drowned.

Today I lost an NIH grant training clinicians to do research about intimate partner violence with perinatal women. More women are murdered in the perinatal period than die of obstetric complications. I didn't just lose a grant. We lost an entire cohort of people building careers to prevent that.

“This assault [on universities] is part of a broader endeavor, an attempt to take over every key institution in America and make each a vehicle to impose right-wing ideology. If they have to sacrifice cures for disease, so be it.”🚨 1/ @paulwaldman.bsky.social 💯 gets it. paulwaldman.substack...

In biology, I keep thinking of the bacterial strains, yeast strains, plasmids, mouse lines, worm mutants etc etc etc that will be lost to science FOREVER because the freezers and animal facilities won't be maintained Generations of work will be lost in essentially an instant

The government is demanding that a school discipline students as it wants, change the authority structure at the school, and end a department it doesn’t like. Remember that next time some person on the right tells you the GOP is the free speech party.

“Decades of research and hundreds of carefully designed and scientifically sound studies show no link or association between vaccines and autism.” www.idsociety.org/news--public...

The erosion of trust in science & scientists — sometimes due to complex social/historical factors but often deliberately perpetrated by charlatans — has tragic, deadly consequences, and, if unchecked, is an existential threat to society.

Remember: the administrative burdens we put up to catch immigrants will make your life worse, too.