Kennedy Refuses to Commit to Backing New C.D.C. Director on Vaccines

Fox will not commit to protecting henhouse

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/u...

The First AI Drug Prescriber This Viewpoint explores the entry of AI into clinical care, the role of the US Food and Drug Administration, and the associated legal, public health, and medical implications.

"Other companies may take the lesson that they can bypass federal safety standards, and they may race into the market to ensure they are not left behind"

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

New PEPFAR Data Show Worrying Declines in Testing and Treatment for H.I.V.

“What these data show us is the deliberate unraveling of the elements of H.I.V. prevention and treatment service delivery that are essential to actually finish the job and defeat this pandemic”

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/h...

Cell therapy primed liver transplant patients to avoid organ rejection, small study shows A few transplant patients in a small study were able to stop using immunosuppressive drugs, thanks to pre-transplant cell therapy.

Cool idea

www.statnews.com/2026/04/17/o...

💉 Where can you find accurate information on vaccines❓

✅ American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP): downloads.aap.org/AAP/PDF/AAP-...

✅ Medical societies: cmss.org/programs-and...

✅ CIDRAP for in-depth evidence review: vaxintegrity.cidrap.umn.edu/evidence-rev...

Totally agree notes can make life easier for notewriters

This study related to whether quality was sufficient to justify that benefit

On many domains, quality suffered so... not a surefire "yes"

Rapid Evaluation of Artificial Intelligence Technology Used for Ambient Dictation in Primary Care: Comparing the Quality of Documentation of Artificial Intelligence–Generated and Human-Produced Clinic... Background: Ambient artificial intelligence (AI) scribes can reduce the burden of administrative documentation. Prior evaluations have been vendor specific and not focused on measures of documentation...

Multiple AI scribes inferior to human note writers

"Although ambient AI scribes hold promise for reducing clinician burden, independent, vendor-neutral evaluations of note quality are essential before large-scale clinical deployment."

#bioethics

www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/...

Trump to Nominate Doctor Who Has Publicly Supported Vaccines as C.D.C. Director

It’s news that this administration chose someone qualified

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/h...

The analogy that keeps coming to mind is a doc caring for a patient with an arrhythmia who says, “I’ve never met a cardiologist but all they think about is pumps, so they’re useless to me here…”

I don’t know much about ethics, and I’ve never spoken to an ethicist, but here’s a long piece saying ethics isn’t useful

#bioethics

aeon.co/essays/why-b...

1/ You may have seen headlines that CDC paused #rabiestesting. It sounds alarming, but I want to assure you that the immediate risk is low. This is a temporary pause for a quality review, with testing expected to resume in a few weeks. But there’s a bigger issue underneath this I want to talk about🧵

Dear Member of Congress: The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) are deeply grateful for the longstanding bipartisan support from Congress for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We want to inform you of current and likely impacts of delays and changes in funding policies and procedures for NIH grants. Our concerns relate to the following areas within NIH: • Massive reduction in notice of funding opportunities • Delays in funding processes and inadequate capacity to administer grants • Increase in forward funding of multiyear awards in year one • Delays and potential lapses in funding for large clinical trial networks and clinical trial units Lack of transparency around permitted international collaborative partners for research projects • Disproportionate impact of grant terminations on vulnerable populations, especially women and people of color

U.S. infectious disease research is on the brink. Without immediate action from Congress, much of it will cease to exist within a year.

For example👇

1️⃣ No collaborative RFAs posted for >1 year (normal: many / year).
2️⃣ No foreign collaborators allowed on grants.

🧪🪦 www.idsociety.org/globalassets...

Ohio’s nursing homes are dumping patients at homeless shelters Long-term care facilities in Ohio are increasingly discharging their residents to homeless shelters, according to interviews and facility inspections.

Shocking story: Ohio’s nursing homes are dumping patients at homeless shelters

📣 Our NEW study on AI chatbots & medical misinformation: bmjopen.bmj.com/content/16/4... cc @ualberta.bsky.social

"...chatbots performed poorly when answering questions in misinformation-prone health and medical fields."

"even marginal reductions in MMR vaccine uptake can result in disproportionately large health and economic burdens"

Nine-Valent HPV Vaccination and Related Cancers This cohort study examines associations of the 9-valent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine with HPV-related cancers in males aged 9 to 26 years.

Boys should also get the HPV vaccine, not only to help eliminate cervical cancer through building herd immunity but also because in this latest study it cancer risk in men by about half (in 10 years of follow up; the reduction may be larger with longer follow up)

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Surgeon Who Removed Wrong Organ From Patient Is Charged in His Death

Scary story of the incompetent surgeon who hacked out a Florida man's liver

AND -- a fantastic metaphor for what goes down when grifters run US public health

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/u...

Opinion | GLP-1 Experimentation Is Everywhere, and Science Can’t Keep Up Millions of Americans are experimenting with the drugs. Science can’t keep up.

There is good reason to research additional benefits if GLP’1’s…

… without being overly credulous, since improved patient wellbeing on surveys can stem from the polymorphous benefits of known disease improvements rather than some miraculous new biochemical impact

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

WELL NOW, would you look at that?

A massive, 4-YEAR-LONG study of NEARLY 30 MILLION people in France found that individuals who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine had a 74% LOWER risk of death from severe COVID-19 compared to unvaccinated individuals and ZERO increased risk of all-cause mortality.

Disappointing but important news in TB vaccine research.
A large phase 3 trial (~12,700 participants, 38 months follow-up) testing VPM1002 and Immuvac in household contacts of TB cases did not show meaningful protection against pulmonary TB, the form that drives transmission.
#IDSky #MedSky

Line graph showing the percentage distribution of Candida species from 2016 to 2024. Candida albicans is the most common species in most years, declining from about 36% to 32%. Candida glabrata increases overall, rising from about 25% in 2016 to a peak around 34% in 2024. Candida parapsilosis fluctuates between roughly 8% and 17% before declining to about 8% by 2024. Candida tropicalis and unspecified/other species remain relatively stable at lower levels (about 6–12%). Multiple-species infections decrease slightly over time. Candida auris is absent before 2022 and then increases to about 5% by 2023–2024.

Candida glabrata emerges as the most common cause of candidemia: analysis of a large hospital-based database, United States, 2016–2024

academic.oup.com/cid/advance-...

Jeremy Gold & colleagues at CDC Mycotic Diseases Branch, @jessicalittlemd.bsky.social and @drluiso.bsky.social

Emergency physicians call for immediate release of Venezuelan doctor detained in Texas. This weekend, The New York Times reported that a Venezuelan emergency physician was detained in Texas by US immigration agents.

“Detaining physicians who are here legally and serving communities in need of vital emergency care is not targeted enforcement. It is a threat to the health of the American people, and it must stop.”

insidemedicine.substack.com/p/emergency-...

I wrote “I am alive” on a piece of paper, and placed it into a photocopier. What I saw next has shocking implications

A researcher knowingly preprinted misinformation in order to run an "experiment" of whether LLMs would resurface it as medical knowledge.

Academia has finally invented its own version of the classic meme.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Expertise is no longer the goal

www.statnews.com/2026/04/09/n...

CDC delays publishing report showing covid vaccine benefits The acting CDC director cited concerns with the methodology, but the design has long been used to test vaccine effectiveness.

Better not share that positive COVID vaccine study or else people might get vaccinated

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/...

Trump’s Foreign Aid Overhaul Sent Millions More Dollars to Big U.S.-Based Contractors

Always be grifting

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/06/h...

Idaho Cut Services for People With Schizophrenia. Then the Deaths Began.

Awful, awful. Idaho Cut Services for People With Schizophrenia. Then the Deaths Began.

Eliminating outreach to people with severe mental illness set off such a cascade of bad outcomes that Idaho has scrambled to reverse the cuts.

How the media must cover this madman president My three suggestions—with illustrations—since 'sane-washing' is far too mild a term

How the media should cover a deranged president. The press, because of its own conventions and time-honored practices, sane-washes Trump, and thus fails to get across the extreme nature of his behavior, by @sulliview.bsky.social margaretsullivan.substack.com/p/how-the-me... #journalism

rebuilding our institutional, intellectual, & aspirational capital — to which American science contributes significantly — must be a priority in the post-Trump Reconstruction