• IMMUNOLOGYImmunologic Study Shows Rebound of Other Viruses After COVID Measures Lifted

    By Lisa Schnirring

    The lifting of COVID-19 prevention measures such as masking and social distancing, which also tamped down the circulation of other respiratory viruses and left young children without immunity, may explain the rebound in non-COVID-related diseases.

  • ASSAULT ON SCIENCEHHS Scraps Further Work on Life-Saving mRNA Vaccine Platform

    By Mary Van Beusekom

    In what experts say will hobble pandemic preparedness, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the dismantling of the country’s mRNA vaccine-development programs—the same innovation that allowed rapid scale-up of COVID-19 vaccines during the public health emergency.

  • ASSAULT ON SCIENCERFK Jr Is Wrong About mRNA Vaccines – a Scientist Explains How They Make COVID Less Deadly

    By Deborah Dunn-Walters

    In announcing the cancellation of US government support for research into mRNA vaccines, Kennedy has claimed that mRNA vaccines “encourage new mutations and can actually prolong pandemics” – a misleading statement that contradicts the scientific consensus on viral evolution and effects of vaccination. The false assertions by RFK Jr. and other vaccine-skeptics notwithstanding, mRNA vaccines do not cause viruses to mutate. Mutations are part of viral evolution: a natural process that happens regardless of our intervention. What vaccines do is give us a fighting chance.

  • ASSAULT ON SCIENCEI’m a Physician Who Has Looked at Hundreds of Studies of Vaccine Safety, and Here’s Some of What RFK Jr. Gets Wrong

    By Jake Scott

    In the five months since he began serving as secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made many public statements about vaccines that have cast doubt on their safety and on the objectivity of long-standing processes established to evaluate them. Many of these statements are factually incorrect. The evidence is clear and publicly available: Vaccines have dramatically reduced childhood illness, disability and death on a historic scale.

  • PLUGGING ABANDONED WELLSPlugging America's Forgotten Wells: Study Addresses Decades Long Problem

    By Sydney O’Shaughnessy

    Since the drilling of the first oil well in 1859, millions more oil and gas wells have been drilled across the nation. Today, millions of wells – bout 3.4 million of them — sit idle, some for decades. One option for limiting the environmental and health impacts of orphaned wells is to plug them. But the question remains, with so many orphaned wells in the United States, what’s the best way to address this issue?

  • FOOD SECURITYThe Psychosocial Imperative of Food Security Preparedness

    By Andrew Henderson and John Coyne

    The dust has barely settled on the 2025 Australian federal election and the returning government has already reaffirmed its commitment to delivering a national food security strategy. But unless we address the psychological and cultural barriers that shape Australians’ perceptions of food security, even the most technically sound strategies will fail to achieve their intended effect.

  • PUBLIC HEALTHFDA Layoffs Could Compromise Safety of Medications Made at Foreign Factories, Inspectors Say

    By Victoria Malis, Katherine Dailey, Sadie Leite, Debbie Cenziper, and Megan Rose

    Beyond staff cuts, the departures of some longtime investigators in recent months have left less experienced people tasked with rooting out dangerous manufacturing practices.

  • 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.

  • CHEMICAL EXPLOSIONSTrump Quietly Shutters the Only Federal Agency that Investigates Industrial Chemical Explosions

    By Tristan Baurick

    Hazardous chemical accidents happen in the U.S. about every other day. Who will investigate them now?

  • 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)

  • TARGETING SCIENCEACIP Draft Agenda Revives Anti-Vaccine Boilerplate Topics

    By Lisa Schnirring

    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.

  • 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.

  • SERIAL KILLERSWhat Warped the Minds of Serial Killers? Lead Pollution, a New Book Argues.

    By Kate Yoder

    Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, and others terrorized the Pacific Northwest. “Murderland” asks what role polluters played.

  • GUNSGuns Kill More U.S. Children Than Other Causes, but State Policies Can Help, Study Finds

    By Nada Hassanein

    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.

  • TARGETING SCIENCEKennedy’s HHS Sent Congress ‘Junk Science’ To Defend Vaccine Changes, Experts Say

    By Jackie Fortiér

    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.”