• TARGETING SCIENCERFK Announces New ACIP Members, Including Vaccine Critics

    By Lisa Schnirring

    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.

  • TARGETING SCIENCERFK Jr’s Shakeup of Vaccine Advisory Committee Raises Worries About Scientific Integrity of Health Recommendations

    By Santosh Kumar Gautam

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • THREATS TO U.S. S&T LEADERSHIPA Brief History of Federal Funding for Basic Science

    By Jake Miller

    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.

  • ARGUMENT: VACCINE POLICY BY PROCLAMATIONVaccine Integrity Project Says New FDA Rules on COVID-19 Vaccines Show Lack of Consensus, Clarity

    By Stephanie Soucheray

    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.

  • COMMON-SENSE NOTES // By Idris B. OdunewuThe 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?

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

    By Lisa Schnirring

    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.

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

    By Seema Lakdawala and Anice Lowen

    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.

  • COVID ORIGINSNew 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.

  • PUBLIC HEALTHMass 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.

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

    By Annie Waldman

    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.

  • PUBLIC HEALTHMeasles Could Again Become Widespread as Cases Surge Worldwide

    By Rebecca Schein

    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.