January 16, 2026 — Evidence is mounting that the word of the year for 2026 could well be nihilism. Nothing matters. Meaning is void. Science is suppressed. Nonsense is flooding the zone of public discourse. In the contention between signal and noise, noise often seems to be winning. Breaking American Institutions of Science We note with regret that the […]
December 31, 2025 — This has been quite a year that we are closing out on this New Year’s Eve. As we start another new year, we will be leaving behind an ample collection of curses we suffered and blessings we enjoyed in 2025. No doubt, you have your list. So here is our own brief list of the […]
November 29, 2025 — “Basically, all the scientific leadership has been wiped out at the CDC. They’re all political people now who are running the CDC and determining what the public health message is going to be,” says Julie Rovner. She has been reporting on the CDC for four decades now and has never seen anything like this. Leadership […]
November 22, 2025 — A rupture of public trust occured this week. Information on the CDC website changed overnight, without input from scientists, to espouse the anti-vaccine agenda of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Specifically, the website now says “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the […]
October 16, 2025 — UPDATE: Axios reports the administration has now reversed its decision that eliminated NHANES staff at CDC. It seems that tariff policy is not the only whipsaw game in town. Pesky facts and data get in the way of policymakers who want to pursue their agenda. So should we be surprised that the critical staff […]
August 30, 2025 — This has been a bad week for the CDC. Wednesday night, a spokesman for President Trump, Kush Desai announced that the White House had terminated CDC Director Susan Monarez because she was “not aligned with the President’s agenda of Making America Healthy Again.” She had been sworn into that position only last month by HHS […]
July 12, 2025 — This has been quite a week for easy reading news nuggets about diabetes. First we had the news that Barbie is getting a nifty heart-shaped CGM (continuous glucose monitoring) patch and an insulin pump. Then comes a news blurb from CDC telling us that one in three teens have prediabetes. Should we celebrate the news […]
June 15, 2025 — The previously unquestioned American leadership in science is evaporating. Groundbreaking medical research is stopping abruptly. Research institutes at NIH are disappearing. As this unfolds, the response of many people in supposed roles of scientific leadership has been to duck and take cover. Tell us when it’s over and we can get back to work. Yes, […]
April 2, 2025 — Yesterday was a profoundly sad day for people who care about American greatness in health. With a measure of gratuitous cruelty, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services slashed 10,000 jobs, wiping out a stunning breadth of health expertise at FDA, CDC, and NIH. Robert Califf, an international expert in clinical research and cardiovascular […]
February 14, 2025 — New data from CDC (yes, it’s still there) tells us obesity is still growing steadily in children, while in adults, the growth in prevalence appears to be on pause. But in both children and adults, rates for severe obesity are continuing to grow. These data, published in JAMA yesterday by Samuel Emmerich and colleagues, come […]
