While Makary spreads bullshit about the origin of HIV. (To be clear, this has been thoroughly investigated and fits neither the timing nor the molecular epidemiology of HIV).

this administration is about nothing more than elite impunity thehill.com/homenews/adm...

*taps sign* the US’ torment of Haiti will never end open.substack.com/pub/primafac...

this is amazing news - the HPV vaccine promises to eliminate cervical cancer in countries where uptake is high.

RIP Kotor remake

Not hard to imagine a career-long HIV scientist would butt heads with Antivaximus prime at HHS and his lieutenant at NIH

Unfortunately, I can confirm that this is true. I have known Carl for 2 decades and he is smart, dedicated, and quite apolitical, focused on science and getting stuff done on important problems. Huge unnecessary loss of leadership and expertise.

New blog post on a curious rabbit hole I went down this past weekend thinking about a patient with apnea that led to the father of Toxicology by way of German mermaids. A 6 degrees of separation digression open.substack.com/pub/primafac...

I actually think centrist Dems are more likely to support/endorse an MTG independent run for president than a progressive candidate that threatens a Newsom/Buttigieg type figure in the primary.

Breaking News: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he personally instructed the CDC to abandon its position that vaccines do not cause autism. The move underscores his determination to challenge scientific orthodoxy — in this case, that vaccines save lives — and bend the health department to his will.

English speaking world discovering Peak. If you’ve never seen this, would encourage sampling with the episode where one of the puppets is depressed www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwYB...

TL syncing

There’s a word for this and it is colonialism. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

Every AI infrastructure graph looks like this. The exponential revenue generating event is always just around the corner and the capex commitments won’t get comically larger, we promise.

Bhattacharya's NIH made cuts to grants that disrupted trials, disproportionately impacting infectious disease trials & trials affecting minorities (e.g. trials on mitigating kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease, & cervical cancer in minority populations). These cuts were litigated in court. 1/x

I spent October traveling to schools throughout the South talking to students about American history. What I found were young people who understand we can tell a story that includes both the positive and the negative. As one 8th grader in Memphis said, “Doesn’t seem that hard, just say both things.”

3 way parlay: AI bubble pops, larry summers rank stripped, Epstein files released. Read it back to me

I had a dream I was wondering in a dark neighborhood at night and walked into a giant mansion filled with exotic pets, including a Wolpertinger in a glass box. I asked the people inside “is that a fucking Wolpertinger?” and they said “oh yes it hasn’t learned not to bite the goats yet”

It’s not going to do any of those things to any extent where the word “do” would have meaning.

Current vibe

They are straight up robbing taxpayers blind at this point and not even trying to hide it. Just ransacking the treasury out in the open. This motherfucker pleaded guilty! www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

"If we’re going to call ourselves writers, we have more than just an obligation to write, we have some obligation to stand in defense of language as a conduit for meaning rather than language as an antagonist to meaning." Omar El Akkad janeratcliffe.substack.com/p/finding-co...

NEW: Authorities said Tren de Aragua “terrorists” had taken over the building. A ProPublica investigation found little evidence to back up the government’s claims. For the first time, the Venezuelans arrested in a Chicago raid are telling their stories.

For folks (and journalists) who want to search the Oversight Committee email texts, I made a database for searching the 20k text files: splendorous-chaja-f79791.netlify.app

RFK Jr. has said he does not want to take vaccines away from Americans. But at a closed-door meeting of vaccine scientists in September, a top official at the FDA suggested doing just that. Here's how Vinay Prasad and Tracy Beth Høeg are reshaping vaccine regulation: www.statnews.com/2025/11/12/f...

Not the aurora but pretty nice

US aircraft carrier moves into Latin America region, officials say reut.rs/486sCAN

I spoke to CNN about how demoralizing it was to watch Stanford leadership stay silent while contrarians on campus launched unscientific attacks to stifle Stanford researchers. Now, those attacks have gone nationwide and much of MAHA leadership have ties to Stanford. www.cnn.com/2025/11/08/p...

A study of a large Florida school district found that the effects of immigration enforcement on students’ academic performance was concentrated in high-poverty schools. The test score declines also occurred for U.S. citizen students.

let 100 zohrans bloom

Soon in my inbox: Hello, it's the Democrats! We have decided to capitulate and cooperate with the fascists. Please donate between 5 and 50 dollars so that we can hire a marketing firm to help Republican politicians like us better. If you don't give, we won't be able to let them strip your rights!

Democrats negotiated a plan where a 8 completely safe dems would vote to open and the rest can post “i voted no” thats what all the negotiations were about: how they would explain the optics of the loss. it was never about saving healthcare

The biggest factor to caving was the flight delays. Healthcare and SNAP benefits are valuable political tokens to the Dems—and materially vital to actual people—but disruption to commerce disproportionately impacts the people they (and the GOP) are beholden to far more than any constituent.

Dems experienced victory and learned what they really love is losing

can they rise to the moment? no. can they rise to the moment in the future? also no.

Mitch McConnel's singular political insight is that Presidents get punished for Congressional obstinancy and he used that insight to get the Right an unbreakable majority on the Supreme Court, so of course Chuck Schumer's iteration on it is to proactively let democrats take blame after tangible harm

A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death. Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written." Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating. 🧪🧬🧫

We're disappointed to see Ben Barres's powerful book "The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist" among the ~400 titles removed from the Naval Academy Library. Needless to say, we're proud to have published his book and will keep it — and his memory — alive.

your honor, every single crunchwrap is more supreme than this court

evergreen

This is fascinating because this is such a new field and somehow they are going to hire 100 tenure-track faculty in the next 5 years who specialize in it. And yet when asked to fill spots with faculty of color/women/marginalized groups, administrators often cry about how the pipelines don't exist.

oh ok that clears things up

One analytical model shows that, as of November 5th, the dismantling of U.S.A.I.D. has already caused the deaths of 600,000 people, two-thirds of them children. https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/jUzNSc

It’s so disheartening seeing tenured PIs at R1s post like your training makes you a know-nothing dilettante. None of this is even remotely accurate. Yes, it’s a very long and challenging path but running a basic science lab is also not the only useful outcome of it nor the only way to have an impact

It’s so funny they already changed the title. No, we didn’t mean all women!

New data: CBPP analyzed USDA’s contingency fund spending plan & found it is only going to release 2/3 of the funding they committed to in court filings, cutting families’ SNAP benefits far more than necessary, violating USDA’s own regulations & shortchanging millions of families.

Data: Risks of vascular, inflammatory conditions in kids higher after #COVID infection than vaccination Over 6 months, COVID infection led to 2.24 extra cases of myocarditis or pericarditis per 100,000 children, versus 0.85 per 100,000 after vaccination. www.cidrap.umn.edu/c...