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NUCLEAR WARPotential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War
In the 1980s, in response to the buildup of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals during the Cold War, scientists issued warnings about the potential for a “nuclear winter” scenario which would follow a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Since then, military, political, and technological changes have reshaped the nuclear weapons landscape, while scientific advances have deepened the understanding of and ability to model Earth system processes.
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CHEMICAL EXPLOSIONSTrump Quietly Shutters the Only Federal Agency that Investigates Industrial Chemical Explosions
Hazardous chemical accidents happen in the U.S. about every other day. Who will investigate them now?
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Some people believe that the term anti-vaxxer is a pejorative,” the physician Robert Malone wrote on June 9. “I do not — I view it as high praise.” “The term ‘anti-vaxxer,’” he continued, “it is not a slur, but a compliment.”
— Quoted in David Wallace-Wells’s article, New York Times, 18 June 2025 (on 11 June 2025, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed Malone to the advisory board that steers America’s vaccine policy)
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TARGETING SCIENCEACIP Draft Agenda Revives Anti-Vaccine Boilerplate Topics
RFK Jr. replaced scientists on the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) with anti-vaxx activists. On Wednesday, true to form, the new ACIP members issued a draft meeting agenda which contains topics which have become common talking points of vaccine-efficacy deniers.
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PUBLIC HEALTHNIH Terminates GoF Research; OMB Proposes 54% Cut to CDC Budget in FY 2026
HHS announced it would terminate funding for gain-of-function (GoF), while OMB proposed budget includes 54% cut to CDC budget in FY 2026. The cuts include a $1.4 billion cut to chronic disease prevention and $794 million in cuts to HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, STD, and TB prevention.
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SERIAL KILLERSWhat Warped the Minds of Serial Killers? Lead Pollution, a New Book Argues.
Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, and others terrorized the Pacific Northwest. “Murderland” asks what role polluters played.
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GUNSGuns Kill More U.S. Children Than Other Causes, but State Policies Can Help, Study Finds
More American children and teens die from firearms than any other cause. Black children, especially, suffer when laws allow more guns to circulate, researchers found. There are more deaths — and wider racial disparities — in states with more permissive gun policies, according to a new study.
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TARGETING SCIENCEKennedy’s HHS Sent Congress ‘Junk Science’ To Defend Vaccine Changes, Experts Say
A document the Department of Health and Human Services sent to lawmakers to support Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to change U.S. policy on covid vaccines cites scientific studies that are unpublished or under dispute and mischaracterizes others. One health expert called the document “willful medical disinformation,” adding: “It is so far out of left field that I find it insulting to our members of Congress that they would actually give them something like this.”
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TARGETING SCIENCERFK Announces New ACIP Members, Including Vaccine Critics
HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory committee, replacing them with a group of eight new members, some of whom are vaccine skeptics.
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TARGETING SCIENCERFK Jr’s Shakeup of Vaccine Advisory Committee Raises Worries About Scientific Integrity of Health Recommendations
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed the immunization experts serving on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and replaced them with eight new members. The newly appointed members have expertise in psychiatry, neuroscience, epidemiology, biostatistics, and operations management. Many of them are vaccine skeptics who have actively spread vaccine-related misinformation, particularly relating to COVID-19 vaccines.
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COMMON-SENSE NOTES // By Idris B. OdunewuGlobal Anxiety and the Security Dimension: From Personal Despair to Political Violence
Uncertainty and despair—born of economic insecurity, social isolation, and widening inequality—have fueled a striking surge in anxiety across the United States. But this mental-health crisis is not confined by borders.
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TARGETING SCIENCE“The Bethesda Declaration”: Sounding the Alarm on the Growing Chaos at NIH
More than 300 officials and scientists from all of the NIH’s 27 institutes and centers, have signed and sent a letter to Jay Bhattacharya, the Trump-nominated director of NIH, harshly criticizing the sweeping changes which have plunged the agency into chaos.
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PATHOGEN SMUGGLINGChinese Nationals Charged with Conspiracy and Smuggling a Dangerous Biological Pathogen into the U.S. for their Work at a University of Michigan Laboratory
Two Chinese nationals were charged with smuggling into America a fungus called Fusarium graminearum, which scientific literature classifies as a potential agroterrorism weapon. This noxious fungus causes “head blight,” a disease of wheat, barley, maize, and rice, and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic losses worldwide each year.
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PUBLIC HEALTHEconomic Impact Report Warns of Setbacks to Public Health Progress Amid Federal Budget Cuts
A new report details the far-reaching impacts of 2025 federal funding cuts on public health infrastructure, research institutions, workforce development, and the broader US economy. The report provides the first comprehensive look at how widespread grant freezes, budget reductions, and agency restructurings are destabilizing academic public health institutions nationwide.
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FOOD SECURITYU.K. Government Not Sufficiently Prepared for the Increasing Risk from Animal Disease
Outbreaks of animal diseases have occurred in each of the past six years and the U.K. Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) have worked hard to manage them. It’s likely that DEFRA and APHA would struggle to cope with a more severe outbreak of animal disease. Long term resilience is being undermined by the necessity of focusing on increasingly frequent outbreaks and there is no long-term strategy.
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The long view
NUCLEAR SURVIVALWhat We’ve Learned from Survivors of the Atomic Bombs
Q&A with Dr. Preetha Rajaraman, New Vice Chair for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
ANTI-VACCINE THREATCombatting the Measles Threat Means Examining the Reasons for Declining Vaccination Rates
Measles was supposedly eradicated in Canada more than a quarter century ago. But today, measles is surging. The cause of this resurgence is declining vaccination rates.
VACCINATIONSocial Networks Are Not Effective at Mobilizing Vaccination Uptake
The persuasive power of social networks is immense, but not limitless. Vaccine preferences, based on the COVID experience in the United States, proved quite insensitive to persuasion, even through friendship networks.
ARGUMENT: VACCINE POLICY BY PROCLAMATIONVaccine Integrity Project Says New FDA Rules on COVID-19 Vaccines Show Lack of Consensus, Clarity
Sidestepping both the FDA’s own Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), two Trump-appointed FDA leaders penned an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine to announce new, more restrictive, COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. Critics say that not seeking broad input into the new policy, which would help FDA to understand its implications, feasibility, and the potential for unintended consequences, amounts to policy by proclamation.
ARGUMENT: AI-DESIGNED BIOWEAPONS LOOMAre We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”
ARGUMENT: TULSI GABBRD AS DNI“Tulsi Gabbard as US Intelligence Chief Would Undermine Efforts Against the Spread of Chemical and Biological Weapons”: Expert
The Senate, along party lines, last week confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National intelligence. One expert on biological and chemical weapons says that Gabbard’s “longstanding history of parroting Russian propaganda talking points, unfounded claims about Syria’s use of chemical weapons, and conspiracy theories all in efforts to undermine the quality of the community she now leads” make her confirmation a “national security malpractice.”