Views my own, but you can borrow them if you feel so inclined. Anti-disease. Big Nerd Energy. “A homework person.” Fun at parties. Antibody hoarder. “Problematically literate.” he/him
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A US senate subcommittee was told this unpublished vaccine study was 'the most important ever.' Henry Ford Health now confirms why it was never published: it failed scientific standards. Here's what's actually wrong with the study: jakescottmd.substack.com/p/why-the-senates-most-important-vaccine
Just saw an article from 2006 and it said "19 years old" and that knocked the wind out of me a bit
👀"Vaccine to curb chlamydia epidemic devastating koalas approved" 🐨💉 www.bbc.com/news/article...
Rolling the dice on a vaccine preventable illness is never the better option. Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis is a rare and fatal complication of measles that can occur several years after the original infection. This is sad, this is avoidable. Vaccinate kids! www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
Preprint claiming link between COVID-19 mRNA vaccines and 'transcriptomic dysregulation'/cancer (based on just 10 people who got cancer in the year after vaccination) has been withdrawn. HT: @reeserichardson.bsky.social preprints.org/manuscript/2... See: scienceintegritydigest.com/2025/07/25/p...
🚀 NY-CURES Launch — Championing State-Wide Investment in Science! 🚀 Our new coalition advocates for sustained public support of New York’s vibrant biomedical research ecosystem — creating cures, economic gains & strengthening communities. Sign up. Stay informed. Join the movement: www.nycures.org/
It is absolutely wild that the person in charge of health in America has be roundly condemned and labeled as dangerous by: - Former CDC directors - Former Surgeons General - Multiple medical professional societies - Health professionals across multiple platforms And still holds his position.
This why accurate journalism and reporting matters so much . After @npr.org reported on these individuals who faced death without access to ART after the US pulled foreign funding, the Zambian government stepped up, got in contact and providing life saving meds. A win! www.npr.org/sections/goa...
I keep forgetting that there is no nadir to human depravity. This was a helpful reminder.
Additionally the state has the moral and legal obligation to ensuring the wellbeing of all children the state is quick to intervene when parental substance use is a concern, but not when children are at risk of losing education, food, or are being denied indicated medical interventions?
In addition, not vaccinating your child and sending them to school endangers other parents’ children at school. You are taking away their right to be safe from preventable disease. #CommunityImmunity #Ivax2protect #freedom
Nevertheless, there are expectations for how parents are supposed to care for their kids. Routine childhood immunizations are literally lifesaving and prevent disability. It does not make sense to exclude them as part of parental responsibility in the care of children.
Its invocation cannot be justified by the mere fact of denying one's children routine childhood immunizations (and I am not advancing the position that it should constitute sufficient cause—the praxis of doing that becomes very messy very quickly, independent of whether or not it's justified).
Some people seem to be taking this thread to be an entirely legalistic point, which is my fault because I was unclear about my intent. I'm talking about morality, not legality. I'm aware that the law grants parents considerable latitude. The doctrine of parens patriae still exists. Presently...
This is literally how the clinical trial process already works. Pharmaceutical companies do not carry out clinical trials. They pay outside researchers to do it for them. www.forbes.com/sites/johnle...
Do you mean on top of the normal pre-licensure required studies or instead of them? And who pays for the cost of these clinical trials?
What do you mean by an “outside final trial”?
I'm trying to understand this. You think that pharmaceutical companies should pay for the research, development, and clinical trial process of getting a vaccine to market, and then not be entitled to any of the profit if they do get it to market?
Are you aware of the failure rate of investigational new drugs in the clinical trial process? I don't think taxpayers would appreciate having to cover that cost. www.asbmb.org/asbmb-today/...
So you want taxpayers to foot the cost of all pharmaceutical innovation?
Children are not property. Parents do not get to do whatever they want to them and claim it's fine because it's their child and that no one has any right to butt into their private family affairs when what they are doing places their child in danger. Children deserve better.
Claiming that routine immunization requirements for school are an issue of parental rights dehumanizes children. Kids have intrinsic rights just as anyone, and parents are obligated to provide the best care possible for them. That includes providing them with indicated medical interventions.
Unfortunately, very true. Which is especially stupid because the fetus's health is dependent on the health of the pregnant individual, so letting them suffer risks harms to the fetus that such individuals purport to care about.
The fact that they are bringing new humans into the world and that their quality of life matters, acknowledging that all medical decision-making is a matter of balancing risks and benefits. But that’s not nearly as exciting as calling people pharma shills and misrepresenting black box warnings.
Untreated pain in pregnancy, however, markedly reduces quality of life and can lead to issues like high blood pressure, depression, and insomnia, which also aren’t exactly prenatal vitamins. Instead, we could decide that pregnant individuals have intrinsic value and dignity independent of…
So, we could lean on the fact that acetaminophen has consistently been shown to be generally safe as a pain medication at the dosages it is recommended during pregnancy, or we can decide that we don’t want people to have pharmacological treatment options for their pain in pregnancy.
Okay, so NSAIDs seem to be worse than APAP. So what other pharmacological tools do we have to treat pain in pregnancy? That’s basically it as far as over the counter stuff. There are a handful of other options but generally they are only effective for specific types of pain e.g., muscle relaxants…
- increased risk of low birth weight - increased risk of asthma in the child - increased risk of preterm labor Now, there are some unique circumstances where the benefits of NSAID use may exceed the risks and even some where they are shown to be beneficial, but these are **the exception.**
The blood to bypass the fetus’s fluid-filled lungs, enabling oxygen delivery in utero; this normally closes after birth as the infant’s lungs now breathe air and aren’t fluid-filled. For the sake of not having to explain the physiology, I’ll just say that premature closure can be really bad).
The urethra is located on the underside of the penis instead of the tip), and cleft lip with and without cleft palate - increased risk of fetal and neonatal kidney dysfunction - increased risk of premature closure of the ductus arteriosus (a component of fetal circulation that allows…
- increased risk of various congenital anomalies including congenital heart defects and gastroschisis (a birth defect in which the baby's intestines extend outside of the abdomen through a hole next to the belly button), neural tube defects (e.g., spina bifida), hypospadias (a condition where…
So, acetaminophen is terrible, right? What about the alternatives? The major one would be NSAID medications. Use of NSAIDs *at doses generally safe for non-pregnant people,* depending on the specific point in pregnancy, have been associated with: - increased risk of early pregnancy loss
As to the other half that are unintentional, there is usually an additional contributing factor like fasting, critical illness, alcoholism, or malnutrition. Admittedly one issue is that APAP is often combined with other medications people take but they don’t notice it and add more APAP on top of it.
This is a really great example of how to terrify people with the selective presentation of information and omit critical context. 🧵 First: The dose makes the poison. Acetaminophen (APAP) can indeed be a cause of liver failure at higher doses. However, about half of these overdoses are intentional.
Misogny and pseudoscience already has many mother’s thinking they have to suffer during labor. Why not the entire pregnancy too? After all, the important thing is that they know their role in society as producers of future workers. Those tiny hands can replace the hard to reach machine parts.
Calling for RFK’s resignation is less than the bare minimum. People have already died bc of decisions he’s made. The impacts of what he’s done over the last few months will already be felt for decades even if they could all be reversed today. Not demanding actual consequences is missing the moment.
As a mom to an ASD kid, being blamed for my kid’s ASD (vaccines, acetaminophen) is really not helpful. What we need is resources, not blame
I have spoken to people who have directly worked with him. Suffice it to say they’re… not impressed by him.
Alas
Whoever let him into NIAID has so much to answer for.
Depending on the specific point in pregnancy and how much they take, potentially very bad things.
Aside from the incredibly flimsy evidence claiming a link between ASD and acetaminophen use in pregnancy, there is something remarkably cruel about effectively trying to restrict one of very few pain medications that are known to be safe in pregnancy.
The phrase “medical freedom” is a lie. Freedom is being able to travel in your own country without having to worry about foodborne or airborne illnesses thriving due to governmental failings. Living in fear of what will happen to you or your children bc of government wantonness is not freedom.
Sorry- DSMB = data *&* safety monitoring board
Also -CRO = contract research organization -DSMB = data safety & monitoring board (aka data monitoring committee, DMC)
I’m not entirely sure what you’re suggesting here. It was absolutely appropriate to license Oxycodone. The issue came with its misuse which goes back to the supply issue with recreational drugs.
They literally do. They don’t run their own trials. They contract CROs at academic medical centers to do it for them. There is also an independent DSMB that tracks the data + has prespecified stopping conditions in their protocol. They also need regulatory approval to go to the next phase of trials.
If we have another pandemic while he’s in charge he has basically already ensured that it will kill as many people as possible
What is your question?
In fairness, a big part of that is a lack of investment because we decided apparently that coronaviruses weren’t a priority
I would say they deserve billions for the COVID-19 vaccines.
That’s not even close to true www.drugdiscoverytrends.com/2024s-blockb...
Vaccines are not pharma’s moneymakers and they don’t have complete protection from liability as I see has been explained to you already.
Vaccine court also makes it much, much easier to get compensated than actual civil lawsuits. It’s not a perfect system by any means, but it is mutually beneficial for patients as much as it is for pharma.
The liability protections exist to ensure we have an actual supply of vaccine. Regardless of how you may feel about the institution of pharma, I don’t think you can in good faith claim that they should have to make a product that is ultimately more costly for them than what they earn on it.
Vaccine court exists because parent activist groups kept harassing companies with lawsuits over alleged adverse events and a bunch of manufacturers decided that it wasn’t worth making the vaccines anymore because the fees for their legal defense exceeded the profits on vaccines.
#medsky #pedsky #idsky Important— please share and sign: c.org/cH9dxQySQg
His history of substance use isn’t germane to this situation
It’s not unreasonable that you would need at least some on-the-job training initially to better understand the role. The issue with Kennedy is he’s actively avoiding anything that might improve American health.
“Kennedy’s views on vaccination are as fringe and detached from reality as it is possible to be, and their dissemination among the public in any format directly harms us all” @enirenberg.bsky.social & myself time.com/6289037/robe...
And I mean it makes complete sense that Kennedy wouldn’t because he doesn’t care about the office at all, nor the welfare of the American people. His motives are completely cynical. It simply is not a priority for him to learn how to be a competent HHS Secretary.
Beyond the fact that he is actively trying to destroy US healthcare as much as possible, the thing that stands out to me in these Senate hearings is how little he knows about his actual job and its responsibilities
Asking for a commitment from Kennedy to do things that actually benefit the health of Americans as HHS secretary is like asking an arsonist who is actively lighting a building to stop setting fires.
Ultimately, this is the whole rub of Bobby at HHS. 100% of his time on his decades-long bullshit and 0% on *any functional role as administrator of a large federal agency like HHS*. A complete waste of taxpayer money.
I cannot overstate how damning it is as a comment on a physician or scientist's competence/intentions that they would support RFK Jr as HHS secretary.
In December 2022, Joseph Fraiman expressed his concerns that the doubt he was casting on Covid vaccines would lead to mistrust of pediatric vaccines, telling parents "these are safe." He is now under consideration for RFK Jr's ACIP. **I do not expect him to stand by this now and stand up to RFK**
GREAT piece on how (surprise!) Dr Prasad, Dr Bhattacharya, & RFK Jr love to censor their critics "The hypocrisy here is undeniable. These are the same people who spent years claiming that any fact-checking or algorithmic demotion was “censorship,” now using actual legal threats to silence critics."
It's just, objectively, inarguably, absolutely clearly better that if we're all required to put something into our bodies it's the thing that is vastly more likely to help us, not the thing that is documented only to cause us harm.
The thing about living in a human society is you either decide that everyone (except those for whom it would be medically dangerous) has to take VACCINES into their bodies or everyone (with no exceptions at all) has to take VIRULENT PATHOGENS in from those around them and, look, the first is better.
It's not just VFC. Private insurance takes their cues from the ACIP regarding which vaccines are reimbursed.
Excess deaths are also down! ourworldindata.org/grapher/exce...
Vociferously endorse
A bizarre dogma has emerged among the anti-mRNA crowd that the only data we have on vaccines is from the original trial papers, rather than the HUGE volume of studies that came out subsequently...
this entire thread
Yes, it was carefully hidden in the New England Journal of Medicine. Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1... ) 1/2
What was antibiotic resistance like before we ever used antibiotics? How did we change what antibiotic resistance genes looked like over 100 years? Our paper looking at resistance genes from a century of NCTC historical isolates now out in mGen: www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/jour...
“These are not typical requests from a health secretary to a C.D.C. director. Not even close. None of us would have agreed to the secretary’s demands, and we applaud Dr. Monarez for standing up for the agency and the health of our communities.” Op-ed written by 9 former CDC directors! 🧪 #IDsky
It’s really crystallized that sensation of being right while hoping to be wrong and then getting the completely hollow victory that your and your brilliant colleagues’ unheeded warnings were reified. Isn’t the world sick of panic/neglect cycles? I am.
The juxtaposition of the archetype where disaster movies always begin with a claim that scientists were overreacting (and thus should have salience by availability heuristic) and the shock that RFK et al are causing as much damage as possible… interesting isn’t quite the right word for it… but…
Starting January 2026, the NHS will offer the chickenpox vaccine free to young children in the UK. The jab aims to protect against complications and reduce lost productivity from illness. www.bbc.com/news/article...
Don’t trust the experts”? That’s not democracy, that’s recklessness. On a plane, I want a pilot. In a hospital, I want doctors and scientists who understand the evidence. Expertise isn’t religion or authoritarianism — it’s training, accountability, and data. Ignore it and we all pay the price.
I feel like people who don’t know how nice you are might misunderstand how serious your words are
I’m so grateful that I have tenure and the academic freedom to call it like I see it. “Dr. Kathleen Bachynski, a professor of public health at Muhlenberg College, described Kennedy’s comments as “absolute gibberish” and slammed the HHS secretary as a “dangerous buffoon” who is “threatening us all.”
While we were desperately trying to sound the alarm bells, other doctors profited by publishing pro RFK Jr. propaganda. Now look at things. Can they teach me why this was ethical and wise? My latest. sciencebasedmedicine.org/nonsensiblem...
I often talk about the fact that MAGA does not access the same news as the left wing. I present to you Exhibit A. Dr. Daskalakis’ resignation letter excoriated RFK Jr. and shared that RFK Jr. was lying to the public, manipulating data, and ordering unethical actions. This what Fox News served.
Today: CDC said ENOUGH. We stand with them and for America. #USAnotRFK Read & share this letter. Images or newsletter version below. techingitapart.substack.com/cp/172217963 @niniandthebrain.bsky.social @enirenberg.bsky.social @unbiasedscipod.bsky.social @matthewfacciani.bsky.social
One more time, shout out to the very serious people who suggested that RFK had some really good points about public health. No way to have predicted how things would turn out, except to look at his past record and everything he said about vaccines.
It's #NationalImmunizationAwarenessMonth. Check out our information sheet answering the top 14 questions about childhood vaccinations, with the nuance you’re looking for: m.yale.edu/c844 @meganranney.bsky.social @kkjetelina.bsky.social @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social @enirenberg.bsky.social
The @acog.org issued their guidance for COVID vaccine yesterday, and predictably there's disinformation about infertility and vaccination being posted on social media #Medsky + #ObGynSky + #ReproSky (1/5)
RFK Jr. still misleading and shitty.
It can be very good for summaries of large/technical documents or streamline literature searches. It’s not great. But it does have its uses.
Vent- AI has made some knowledge a lot more accessible. Even setting aside the accuracy issues (which are substantial), a presentation of discrete facts without an underlying conceptual framework to organize them has limited value. AI can't understand it for you. That part is still work.
inching closer and closer to my “they’re segregationists” take
full video is here (or on YT) Thank you @malar0ne.bsky.social @enirenberg.bsky.social @jonathanberman.bsky.social for helping as we researched/fact checked this www.statnews.com/2025/08/13/r...
1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said." It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy. I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.
New study alert! Looking at data from the IAT from 2006 to 2022, we found healthcare workers (HCW) involved in treating and diagnosing patients (such as physicians) had more explicit anti-fat bias than other HCW, and men consistently had more anti-fat bias than women. The good news is explicit…
This is utter nonsense. A KFF poll in May found that only 16% do not trust mRNA vaccines. Twice as many trust them, and 52% would like more information. This is an educational opportunity, not a justification to terminate research. Unbelievable to hear such nonsense from the NIH Director.
If you’re looking to introduce vaccines and the immune system to your young children this is an amazing book: www.amazon.com/dp/B0FL5DSXK...
this is a picture of CDC parents waiting to be reunited with their children at 11:00pm after 5 hours of lockdown