Catherine Freije

A picture is worth a 1000 words. The birth dose of hepatitis B vaccines in the USA eliminated perinatally acquired hepatitis B infection from over 20,000 cases a year before the vaccine was introduced to <20 cases a year. The gaslighting by the current members ACIP is obscene, unethical and cruel.

Thanks @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social for the chance to chat about what I am up to in and outside the lab.

Here's the upshot on hepatitis B vaccination at birth:
- it's extremely safe
- the earlier it's given, the better it protects against transmission from mother-to-child
- screening fails to capture many cases and is not done at all in many cases
- perinatal HBV infection is catastrophic

I know Democrats are overwhelmed (or rudderless, if you are less charitable) by the sheer volume of Trump authoritarian moves, but I’d like to see them unified behind specific goals like “RFK Jr is a threat to public health and needs to go.”

August 22, 2025 Dear Director Bhattacharya: I write to you regarding your plans after the Supreme Court ruling yesterday. As you know, the Supreme Court did allow a stay on the required grant reinstatements based on a controversial jurisdictional issue but also found that the grant termination processes used were likely illegal. I know you are deeply concerned about public trust in NIH. I hope that you understand that proceeding to fail to reinstate or to re-terminate grants that had been found to have been illegally terminated will not increase the public trust in NIH. This would also be substantially damaging to science.

I just sent this email to Director Bhattacharya and am sending him a hard copy by registered mail.

1/14

Text reads: “Deaths from viral hepatitis-related causes are increasing. 2019: 1.1 million deaths 2022: 1.3 million death

Today is World #Hepatitis Day.

Did you know❓ Hepatitis is the second leading infectious cause of death globally, with hepatitis B and C claiming 3 500 lives every day.

Learn how to protect yourself and your loved ones 👉 bit.ly/hepatitis2025

If you love #viruses, #ribosomes, and genomic #darkmatter, this thread is for you!! 💫
We're excited to share our new publication developing Massively Parallel Ribosome Profiling (MPRP), which uncovered ~4,000 hidden proteins in ~700 viral genomes. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

As someone who had their 1st K99 application not considered for funding due to DEI cancellations and the 2nd withdrawn due to changes in policies (that happened post submission), these announcements are because some NIH folks are trying to make up for the losses. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

Children infected with hepatitis B virus have 90% risk of developing chronic hepatitis.

30% of liver cancers are caused by chronic hepatitis B.

We have an incredibly effective vaccine. THAT’S why we vaccinate babies.

Weird: science DOES focus on improving health!

Grifters like Casey Means don’t.

This article does a great job describing the lives of young American scientists:

“You roll up your sleeves, try to make or discover something useful and then let the scientific community try to punch holes in your work to make sure that it’s sound”

In Bloomberg interview, Eisgruber signals that Princeton will not make concessions University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 signaled that Princeton would not make concessions to the federal government after news broke that the Trump administration had suspended dozens of the U...

www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025...
“In principle, we have to be willing to speak up, and we have to be willing to say no to funding if it's going to constrain our ability to pursue the truth.” Thank you for standing up President Eisgruber.

0 new NIH Fellowship awards since mid-February 🤕🤕. These are awards that support doctoral students. I wrote about how we need to think more critically about how to support the future of science. Even more clear now!

open.substack.com/pub/notbeing...

In my view, you need to somehow connect with folks who don't get it (because of information bubbles, etc.).

These conversations may be uncomfortable, particularly at first, but most folks did not vote for, and do not support, the demolition of biomedical research.

Saying ‘pandemic is over,’ NIH institute starts cutting COVID-19 research Grant terminations halt research on improving vaccinations and preventing future pandemics

Exclusive: Science has learned that grant termination letters went out last night to principal investigators of 29 awards made by NIAID, including nine grants that were part of a program hoping to deliver antiviral drugs to prevent future pandemics. scim.ag/4iVm7mY

NIAID Announces Antiviral Drug Development Awards The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded approximately $577 million to establish nine Antiviral Drug Discovery (AViDD) ...

Included in this are the AViDD program. This was TO PREPARE for agents of pandemic potential. The DOGE bags cut it because Covid is over (it isn't) and they did not bother to understand this program.

www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/...

2/n

if you've had an NIH grant terminated, I want to hear about it. Signal: katherinejwu.12

born too late to get a two Western blot Nature paper, born too early to be a science TikTokker, born just in time to start a postdoc during a global pandemic and look for faculty positions during a historic hiring freeze

For prospective grad students, I would remind them that a doctorate typically takes about six years.

A lot can change in six years.

A scientific career is like the stock market: easy to get distracted by daily ups and downs. The long haul is where the value is.

This is terrifying.

Today is a devastating reminder that infectious diseases don’t care what your ‘beliefs’ are. Everyone is likely to be affected directly or indirectly. Serious challenges require serious people at the helm. Protect your loved ones. Educate. Advocate. The cost of not doing so will be too much to bear.

Defend the NIH - TimmermanReport.com Too many people don’t believe anymore in the American Dream. But if you can’t dream big, you can’t accomplish big things. Today, the National Institutes of Health — biomedical science itself — is unde...

Defend the NIH. timmermanreport.com/2025/02/defe...

Everything feels weird and uncertain, and I can only imagine how trainees feel right now… so are some things mentors can do to support mentees during these challenging times: 🧵

I have learned from several sources that NIH staff tried to find out how to transfer F31-diversity applications to other program announcements for funding but were not able to do this. I don't know whether this was technical (regulations) or ideological.

1/n

What's Happening Inside the NIH and NSF

A long post about what’s happening to the science funding agencies in the US and why. As mentioned, this one just kept getting longer even as I kept stripping curse words from it.

www.science.org/content/blog...

Sadness and frustration continue to pile up this week and 100% this is a crisis - many of these words are those we use in every day writing/language and should not be flagged because of EOs. 😓

Tomorrow at the Systems Virology Journal Club, @jnoms.bsky.social from @doudna-lab.bsky.social lab will present their work on the discovery of putative function of thousands of unannotated viral proteins using predicted protein structure
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39187718/