Yikes, the amount of health misinformation peddled during the pandemic by the current NIH Director is eye-watering (the US did NOT have “herd immunity” just before Delta; in fact, during Delta we continued to lag peer countries in COVID & excess all-cause mortality: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...)

Yep. The first time Trump was elected, it was a fluke of our Electoral College. True, the popular vote should never have been close enough that Trump’s 2016 victory was possible, but it could still be considered a fluke. This time around, it’s *all* on us. The US electorate chose this. It’s on us.

See also

Yep. It’s even more insanely difficult for physician-scientists, who, thanks to clinical obligations, have far less time to devote to grant writing. At least we physician-scientists can go back to being full time clinicians if we can’t get funded. Basic scientists don’t have that option.

I’d ask him to name one of these “serious historians.”

My colleagues need to join @joho.bsky.social and me in endorsing and signing the Murray Hill Declaration.

Hit it again, even if you think it’s dead. A double tap is not enough.

i am sobbing and begging The Long 80s & 90s to end please god let it fucking happen this year it has to end it has to stop

It’s even worse when she lacks the very skill set needed for the job, never having designed or carried out the sorts of randomized controlled clinical trials required for FDA approval of a drink or obtained experience in drug regulation policy.

On Being Denmark: we are not a small, homogeneous country with strong healthcare access and low child poverty, points out @pauloffit.bsky.social. Also, Denmark pays for less vaccines with hospitalizations and deaths. open.substack.com/pub/pauloffi...

Wait, what? I’m still here.😏

I called it. They’re going to enshittify Medicare using AI.

Well sure. Same thing with Trump’s assault on the NIH, FDA, and CDC led by his minion Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which is basically Lysenkoism 2.0, but on a grander scale than Trofim Lysenko could ever have imagined.

"What does science matter when the health secretary openly peddles unfounded conspiracy theories?" "What does research matter when evidence-based medicine is treated as optional, or worse, as ideological opposition?" Essential reading. www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/seco...

As 2025 ends, I look back at the damage federal science and medicine have sustained thus far under Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. through the lens of a classic science fiction film. Truly, it’s a madhouse at HHS. sciencebasedmedicine.org/public-healt...

I feel this…

For example youtu.be/3CBI5Drgqg8

It’s a sadly apt metaphor.

@gorskon.bsky.social on the whole sordid saga of RFK Jr., FDA's sports medicine doc Tracy Beth Hoeg, Bandim Health Project at the University of Southern Denmark, hepatitis and babies in Guinea Bissau. sciencebasedmedicine.org/every-accusa...

Except that we won’t. The social Darwinism and eugenics are a huge part of MAHA. After all, a key idea behind the antivax movement is that vaccine-preventable diseases can’t harm you if you’re healthy and that if you’re not healthy it’s your fault.

HHS Secretary RFK Jr.'s CDC funneled a $1.6 million grant to researchers to carry out an unethical and scientifically unjustified randomized clinical trial of the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine in Guinea-Bissau. With MAHA, it’s Tuskegee all over again. sciencebasedmedicine.org/every-accusa...

I would rather have been wrong about this.

Things are going great over at X, The Everything App

“Having him on the panel charged with monitoring efforts to improve cancer treatment is a disaster for cancer patients, as he will inject conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and false claims about cancer into the panel’s reports,” @gorskon.bsky.social told me www.wired.com/story/risch-...

Sadly, it appears so for the foreseeable future.

OK. I have to resurrect Respectful Insolence in 2026.

Thanks to Kaveh for the chance to rant with science communicators whom I admire!

JFC, he’s even more of a self-righteous tool than I thought, and I’ve been writing about his quackery for two decades.

CDC ACIP met last week, eliminating the universal recommendation for a birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. There was, however, a more insidious threat to vaccines in a White House press release after the meeting cloaked under the buzzword “best practices.” sciencebasedmedicine.org/best-practic...

Good question. youtu.be/LB2VRT3H-Co

Spoiler alert: Høeg is utterly unqualified but this job.

I suspect FDA no longer has qualified people willing to do this job. "FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has appointed Tracy Beth Høeg, a longtime skeptic of Covid-19 vaccines, to be the acting director of the agency’s drug unit,...." endpoints.news/fda-to-name-... @endpts.com

Over at X, the hellsite formerly known as Twitter, I’ve been dealing with legal threats of defamation suits for describing a woman who says she’s vaccine injured as an antivaxxer. She tracked down my cell number and home address and then started threatening. Very stalkery, IMHO. Also exhausting.

The damage being done to US science will take a generation to repair, if it is ever repaired at all,

As was I, mainly by my physician colleagues. In fact, I was told that deconstructing quack claims in general was a poor use of my time. And guess what? One of the physicians who criticized my activities in this sphere is currently in charge of FDA CBER.

As much as I’ve long had enormous respect for Dr. Offit, unfortunately I think he’s wrong about this. COVID taught us that death from disease will no longer “do the education.” We’re now well and truly screwed. Dr. Offit is working from the perspective of a pre-social media prepandemic world.

I’ll do you one better. So is Oprah.

I had that very thought. There was a time, several months ago, when I thought that Andrew Wakefield was too toxic even for Trump 2. I no longer labor under that delusion.

"...Dr. Prasad tasked sports medicine physician turned COVID-19 contrarian and “Urgency of Normal” misinformation spreader Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg with re-analyzing VAERS reports of children who died after receiving COVID-19 vaccinations." The Urgency of Normal logo is best depicted as a child casket

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines, part 5: VAERS and a useful idiot at the FDA sciencebasedmedicine.org/rfk-jr-is-de... via @sciencebasedmedicine.org.web.brid.gy @gorskon.bsky.social

In the continuing story of HHS Secretary RFK Jr.'s efforts to eliminate vaccines, we look at one of his useful idiots, CBER Director Dr. Vinay Prasad, and his email laying out how FDA will weaponize dead children to justify making vaccines harder to approve. sciencebasedmedicine.org/rfk-jr-is-de...

One of my absolute favorite expert virologists (who is also one of the editors of the journal Vaccine) tells it like it is “Prasad can heap suffering on CBER staff all he likes, but it always must be in the service of Kennedy’s MAHA agenda. What Kennedy asks, Prasad will deliver.”

Wow. Nice to see Makary regurgitating old lab leak conspiracy theories about HIV. This should serve as a reminder that *every* new pathogen that’s caused an epidemic or pandemic since the age of genetic engineering has spawned conspiracy theories that it was created in and/or leaked from a lab.

Studies finding a link between autism and vaccines haven’t been ignored. They’ve been examined and found deeply flawed. www.wsj.com/opinion/rfk-... via @wsj.com (paywall)

No, he can't. At least he can't lead it competently. And WTF is this fawning headline? This man's policies have already started demolishing public health and vaccine infrastructure in the US and will likely lead to many unnecessary deaths.

. @edyong209.bsky.social went independent and I am glad he did, because this fawning piece about a man who will be responsible for millions of excess #deaths would never be written by a proper #health and #science #journalist

The CDC is lying to you about vaccines and autism. The CDC webpage about vaccines and autism now misrepresents the science and lies to the public about vaccines and autism. It’s just part of RFK Jr.'s ongoing war on vaccines. sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-cdc-is-l...

Indeed.

I wonder what he thinks of amalgam. 😂

Oh bloody hell. Ioannidis was arguably the most (previously) respected scientist to politicize public health and COVID science. 🤦🏻‍♂️