Ben Barres autobiography removed from military library in "purge of DEI content" apnews.com/article/dei-...
media.defense.gov/2025/Apr/04/...

Congratulations!!

This is a stellar thread, and I'm encouraging all people with scientific backgrounds to write one like it

Completely brilliant idea meeting learners where they are and changing the next generation. hats off Jaime et al!

Any talk you hear from the current administration about making the US more competitive in science and technology is utter bullshit. What they are doing is sabotaging our country for years if not decades to come.

Late yesterday, Trump issued an executive order that terminates HHS's Long COVID advisory committee.

The committee's focus was bringing perspectives from outside government to inform action of the Executive Branch on Long COVID and other infection-associated chronic conditions.

Never forget about training. The 1st author on the suzetrigine paper got his start in research as a postbac in the intramural program at NIH, a PhD at Columbia and a postdoc with Nobel laureate (although not at the time) David Julius at UCSF.

www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiah-...

/fin

Second: Of course, it was done in the private sector. Drug companies like Vertex have expertise that is complementary to that in academia although there is certainly some overlap. It is this complementarity that empowers the system (with appropriate regulations) to help humankind.

32/n

First: it is profoundly obvious that this would not have occurred without the huge foundation of fundamental research, conducted in laboratories in the US and around the world. This includes biochemistry, pharmacology, and neuroscience with the development of key technologies in every field.

31/n

An SCN9A channelopathy causes congenital inability to experience pain - PubMed The complete inability to sense pain in an otherwise healthy individual is a very rare phenotype. In three consanguineous families from northern Pakistan, we mapped the condition as an autosomal-reces...

Remarkably, families were discovered with individuals who did not seem to experience physical pain and the variation responsible was mapped to the gene for NaV 1.7.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17167479/

23/n

He demonstrated that these toxins blocked sodium channels, using some of the electrophysiological methods pioneered by Hodgkin and Huxley and subsequently improved. After 5 years at NIH, Catterall moved to Seattle to set up his independent laboratory at the University of Washington.

11/n

Bill Catterall had completed his PhD at Johns Hopkins Med and then moved to NIH to do postdoctoral work with Marshall Nirenberg and then stayed on as a staff scientist at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. He worked on neurotoxins from scorpions, sea anemones, and salamanders.

10/n

They performed the experiments in the squid giant axon. This nerve which controls part of the water jet system of this animal is much larger than most nerves, making it accessible for experimental investigation.

5/n

A brief historical perspective: Hodgkin and Huxley

Sodium currents were detected and characterized by British scientists Alan Hodgkin and
Andrew Huxley who collaborated first before and then, 7 years later, after WW II. They developed methods for measuring currents across cell membranes.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

4/n

Let trace back how this drug was developed. First, let’s think a bit about sodium channels.

Actually, without sodium channels we wouldn’t be doing much thinking or anything else. They are among the most central players in the transmission of signals in our nervous system.

3/n

FDA Approves Novel Non-Opioid Treatment for Moderate to Severe Acute Pain The FDA approved Journavx (suzetrigine) 50 mg oral tablets, a first-in-class non-opioid analgesic to treat moderate to severe acute pain in adults.

The FDA recently approved a novel pain medication developed by Vertex, Journavx (suzetrigine)

www.fda.gov/news-events/...

1/n

The breadth and scope of cowardice amongst our scientific leadership is staggering.

“I never thought antivaxx policies would be put first in MY state,” sobs man who single-handedly cleared the way for antivaxxers to dictate health policy for the entire country

Thanks to all of the NIHers and their friends who reached out to me. I am still here (DM me or Signal jeremymberg.78)

I still have a very incomplete picture but based on what I have been told, the damage to NIH and to many wonderful people who work(ed) there is/was impossible for me to imagine

1/n

It’s been buried in all the news today, but every scientist in the US should pay attention to this:

Mike Lauer went out on a limb for us all, sending out a memo saying institutes should start awarding grants. And it looks like Trump/Musk fired him for that. 🧪

Every Atlantic feature on totalitarian Bard sophomores should have been about America's Elite Backbone Crisis

Anyone Can Push Updates to the DOGE.gov Website "THESE 'EXPERTS' LEFT THEIR DATABASE OPEN."

One of the most important roles of the NSF is to support science and tech ecosystem in the US. This ecosystem drives basic science breakthroughs that industry can build on. It also supports the education of a skilled workforce so that actual tech firms don’t have to hire utter imbeciles like these.

I’ve followed your writing for a long time. I’m so terribly sorry to hear you are on this hard journey too. Solidarity and please know you are very much not alone.

Proud of my boss bringing it tonight.

How much Elon Musk makes from the government a day: $8 million.

How much a senior on Social Security gets a day: $65

Guess which budget Musk and Trump want to cut?

Venezuelan Migrant Sent to Guantánamo Bay Is ‘Not a Criminal,’ Family Pleads (Gift Article) Luis Alberto Castillo arrived in the United States so that he could “give everything to his son,” said his sister. Then, while scrolling on TikTok, she found out he was headed to Guantánamo.

We only know this man is in Gitmo because Noem tweeted a propaganda photo that included him and his sister saw it. He has no criminal record. He entered the US in January and immediately made an appointment with CBP to claim asylum. They sent him to a concentration camp bc of his basketball tattoo.

i mean, the president's executive order isn't a goddamn law! as far as this doctor is concerned, who cares what the president says!

A Direct Hit, by @holdenthorp.bsky.social @science.org
www.science.org/doi/full/10....
"This is a moment to unite."

Research universities are often the largest employers in their region. They are often the primary health care providers to communities. This funding shift will not only reduce US research leadership, it will put working people out of work and reduce healthcare access.

...The exchange reached out to male and female sex workers and offered total anonymity. It was likened to a supermarket. Users could choose between 3 types of needle. Partly as a response, Merseyside had one of the lowest rates of AIDS cases in Britain (21, compared with 304 in Manchester in 1988).