• Economic 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.

  • U.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.

  • Are 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.”

  • A Brief History of Federal Funding for Basic Science

    Biomedical science in the United States is at a crossroads. For 75 years, the federal government has partnered with academic institutions, fueling discoveries that have transformed medicine and saved lives. Recent moves by the Trump administration — including funding cuts and proposed changes to how research support is allocated — now threaten this legacy.

  • Vaccine 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.

  • The Silent Epidemic: America’s Growing Anxiety Crisis

    Anxiety—once dismissed as mere nerves or a passing phase—has become one of the most prevalent and debilitating public health issues facing Americans today. how did we get here—and what do we do now?

  • U.S. Poll Finds Shifting Vaccine Trust Amid Health Agency Overhauls

    Trust in vaccine information from government health agencies has shifted along partisan lines following health agency leadership changes and major agency restructuring under the Trump administration.

  • Trump Administration Issues Restrictive Executive Order to Govern Gain-of-Function Research

    Last week President Trump signed an executive order which imposes new restrictions on gain-of-function (GoF) research. Scientists and biosecurity experts say it is not unreasonable to review the security measures governing GoF research, but that the administration has used a definition of GoF which is too broad, vague, and inaccurate, raising the concern that the United States will become less safe, and less prepared for unforeseen biothreats, as essential research and important studies would be hobbled because of the wide net cast by the executive order.

  • Gain-of-Function Research Is More Than Just Tweaking Risky Viruses – It’s a Routine and Essential Tool in All Biology Research

    Updates to current oversight are not unreasonable, but blanket bans or additional restrictions on gain-of-function research do not make society safer. Gain-of-function experiments are not inherently risky or the purview of mad scientists. In fact, gain-of-function approaches are a fundamental tool in biology. Misunderstanding the term “gain of function” as something nefarious comes at the cost of progress in human health.

  • New Genetic Study Finds SARS-CoV-2 Originated in Wildlife Trade

    There is no scientific consensus on the origins of COVID, but the Trump administration is treating the speculative lab leak theory as a given. The administration claims that the lab leak theory has been “confirmed,” even though it is no more than a mere conjecture. In fact, the most recent study, published Wednesday, lends support to the zoonotic spillover theory.

  • Mass Layoffs, Sweeping Funding Cuts Threaten U.S. Public Health

    The first 100 days of the Trump administration saw more than 20,000 jobs in the public health field terminated and billions of dollars in funding axed. The proposed 2026 budged calls for additional cuts of $40 billion to HHS budget.

  • Trump’s NIH Axed Research Grants Even After a Judge Blocked the Cuts, Internal Records Show

    Many of the canceled grants appear to have focused on subjects that the administration claims are unscientific or that the agency should no longer focus on under new priorities, such as gender identity, vaccine hesitancy and diversity, equity and inclusion.

  • Measles Could Again Become Widespread as Cases Surge Worldwide

    By intervening early in an outbreak with local health department support, measles outbreaks can be contained as long as 85% of the population is vaccinated against the disease. That, of course, requires ensured ongoing access to free and accessible childhood vaccinations and restoration of the public’s trust in measles vaccines.

  • The MMR Vaccine Doesn’t Contain ‘Aborted Fetus Debris’, as RFK Jr. Has Claimed. Here’s the Science

    The US is facing its worst measles outbreaks in years with nearly 900 cases across the country and active outbreaks in several states. At the same time, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, continues to erode trust in vaccines. The evidence does show, however, that vaccines like the MMR vaccine offer excellent protection against deadly and preventable diseases, and have saved millions of lives around the world.

  • As Measles Outbreaks Grow, Trump Cuts Hinder Vaccination Efforts

    935 cases have been reported across 29 states, including 3 deaths. DOGE-driven $11 billion in cuts of federal funding for states’ health efforts forced states to cancel vaccination clinics needed to combat this year’s measles outbreak.