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

    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.

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

    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 America's Forgotten Wells: Study Addresses Decades Long Problem

    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?

  • The Psychosocial Imperative of Food Security Preparedness

    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.

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

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

  • Potential 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.

  • Trump 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?

  • 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)

  • ACIP 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.

  • NIH 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.

  • What 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.

  • Guns 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.

  • Kennedy’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.”

  • RFK 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.

  • RFK 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.