Heidi Fidler

David Tuller's Trial by Error Fall 2025 Help UC Berkeley raise $68,000 for the project: David Tuller's Trial by Error Fall 2025. Your gift will make a difference!

For several years, I have spent my time busting terrible and even fraudulent research into ME, ME/CFS, Long COVID, etc. If this crowdfunding works out, I will do one more in the spring and then retire from Berkeley. If you'd like to support my work, here's how: crowdfund.berkeley.edu/project/47768

Graphic with text and images. Woman wearing an N95 mask and medical gloves, with the following text beside her: Support the CSA draft standard for respirator masks in health care. Public feedback is open until August 19th!   Image of a tablet showing a webpage with the following text beside it: DoNoHarm BC has created a thorough guide on providing feedback.

Help shape Canada’s respirator standard!

Until August 19, the CSA Z94.4 standard is open for public comment — and for the first time, it includes protections in health care settings.

1/

Highly agree, these groups and individuals are a great starting point.

#OpenToWork: how laid-off US scientists are coping with shattered careers Unemployed researchers face some tough career choices as they flood the job market after the Trump administration’s cuts to science.

Nature’s careers team spoke to a dozen scientists who have been laid off from US federal agencies and from universities because of federal funding cuts in the past two months. #Academicsky 🧪

I’m one of many in this.

From @this.is.the.illness.m.e on Instagram 👍

This video might take a few minutes to watch, but M.E takes years. Decades. Whole lives.

(Video 1 of 2)

#MyalgicEncephalomyelitis #MEcfs #MEawareness #PwME #MillionsMissing

1/

On #MillionsMissing Day:

As an ally to the tens of millions of us on earth w/ #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis and #LongCovid, an easy thing you can do is follow

M.E. Action @meactnet.bsky.social

Open Medicine Foundation @openmedf.bsky.social

The Bateman Center
@batemanhornecenter.bsky.social

Rubio publicly criticizing an ally for cracking down on right-wing extremism. And Germany hitting back. We are in a new world

A Gutted Education Department’s New Agenda: Roll Back Civil Rights Cases, Target Transgender Students The Trump administration is subverting the traditional priorities of the department’s decimated civil rights office by making discrimination investigations practically impossible — instead enforcing i...

With more than half of the Education Department’s civil rights offices closed and the division reduced to a fraction of its former staff, families’ pleas for updates and action have gone unheard. @jsmithrichards.bsky.social @jodiscohen.bsky.social

Tricia McLaughlin & @TriciaOhio 0... The narrative being pushed about Jose Hermosillo is false. On April 8, Hermosillo approached Border Patrol in Tucson and stated he had entered the U.S. illegally through Nogales. He said he wanted to turn himself in and completed a sworn statement identifying as a Mexican citizen who had entered unlawfully. He was processed and appeared in court on April 11. Afterward, he was held by the U.S. Marshals in Florence, AZ. A few days later, his family presented documents showing U.S. citizenship. The charges were dismissed, and he was released to his family. This arrest was the direct result of Hermosillo's own actions and statements.

In an interview with Popular Information, his first with any media outlet, Hermosillo said DHS'. 's account was false. According to Hermosillo, he was visiting his girlfriend's family in Tucson from his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Several hours before his arrest, Hermosillo was transported to a hospital in Tucson by ambulance after suffering from a seizure. He has a New Mexico state ID, but did not take it with him during the medical emergency. After being released from the hospital following treatment, Hermosillo did not know how to return to where he was staying. He approached the Border Patrol officer because he was looking for someone to help him. "I saw a car, and I askled] him for help," Hermosillo said. He told the officer that he was staying in Tucson.

"You" re not from here. Do you have your papers?" the officer said, according to Hermosillo. When the officer asked where he was from, Hermosillo said he told the officer, "New Mexico." The officer then accused Hermosillo of lying. "Don't make me lout] like [I'm] stupid," the officer said. "I know you're from Mexico." After that, Hermosillo said, he was arrested. Hermosillo said that he never told the officer that he was born in Mexico, was a citizen of Mexico, or entered the country illegally. And he would not have said those things because they are not true. He signed the transcript released by DHS because the officer ordered him to "sign everything." But Hermosillo did not read it, because he cannot read. According to Hermosillo's girlfriend, Grace Hernandez, Hermosillo has learning disabilities and can only write his name. Hermosillo said he did not graduate from high school and dropped out after the 10th grade.

The officer also signed the document, which said Hermosillo "read" the document or had it read to him. But Hermosillo said no one read him the document. Other documents created by the officer have inaccuracies. For example, the criminal complaint says that Hermosillo was detained "at or near Nogales, Arizona." But Hermosillo was detained in Tuscon, which is more than 70 miles from Nogales. John Mennell, a spokesperson for the U.S. Border Patrol, said that it was an "unintentional" error. Hermosillo said he was detained with about 15 other men in a cell at the Florence Correctional Center. He was served only cold food. He said he contracted the flu because "they have it cold in there and everybody's getting sick." Hermosillo said he requested medicine but was not provided with any.

A US citizen with a learning disability who has just suffered a medical emergency asks a CBP officer for directions outside the emergency room. He ends up detained in an icebox for ten days and has the assistant secretary of DHS lying about him to the public at large. popular.info/p/us-citizen...

E.P.A. Set to Cancel Grants Aimed at Protecting Children From Toxic Chemicals The cancellations, set to apply to pending and active grants, also affect research into “forever chemicals” contaminating the food supply.

They don't care about your health and they don't care about your kids.

"The Trump administration is set to cancel tens of millions of dollars in grants to scientists studying environmental hazards faced by children in rural America."

1/2

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/c...

👇🏽🎯

•••••BREAKING•••••
The Supreme Court has blocked any new deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

SCOTUS is acting in response to an emergency appeal by lawyers from the ACLU.

The Court has directed the Trump regime not to remove Venezuelan immigrants held in the Bluebonnet Detention…

aside: a stunning comment from David Baker, UW professor who won the Nobel Prize in 2024. Now 15 lab members are looking for positions overseas.

“There’s so many amazing people who want to come in, & we can’t take them. The Nobel Prize was just a little blip. But things have gotten quite bleak.”

A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die.

Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200,000 per year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.

This guy gets it. Must have listened to @timmiller.bsky.social

Let’s do this #chicago!

cc: @thebulwark.bsky.social

Let’s do this #chicago!

#HandsOff #April5 #handsoff2025 #wethepeople #youworkforus #chicagoprotest #equalityil #indivisiblechicago

The richest man in the world spent more money than most of us will see in our lifetimes to lose a state Supreme Court race by 10 points.

And the fact his $25 million was a drop in the bucket compared to what he's spent on other elections is exactly why we must overturn Citizens United.

Post from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that reads: Any unauthorized release of classified information is a violation of the law and will be treated as such.

Circling back on this…

"No Kings in America" comes to Church Hill Organizer Lauren Natale on counter-programming the 250th anniversary of Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death" speech

A reenactment of Patrick Henry's famous speech is slated for Richmond's St. John's Church this Sunday, exactly 250yrs after he delivered it there. Protesters hope to highlight “the hypocrisy of celebrating the power of political speech while our president declares protests and news media ‘illegal.’”

A friend drove two hours today for her breast cancer chemotherapy only to learn it was canceled due to NIH cuts. Clinical trial ended midstream. No treatment, no restart, no plan, no information. Her bro-in-law's chemo was also canceled.

The Sharks Circling the Boat From Marc | Donald Trump’s “flood the zone” strategy is designed to overwhelm us.

Our only real defense against the circling sharks — however imperfect — has been the courts. And in recent weeks, Trump has begun targeting them with precision.

"Autocracies require ideological control and a single narrative about what is happening within the country"
"Both science and universities foster critical thinking and a pursuit of truth and evidence over ideology"

open.substack.com/pub/christin...

[10 Dec 2024] Opening Remarks from Dr Tedros at yesterday’s @who.int media briefing:

“We cannot talk about COVID in the past tense.

“It’s still with us, it still causes acute disease and Long COVID, and it still kills.

“The world might want to forget about COVID-19, but we cannot afford to.”

3.1 million off with long Covid. Stop blaming disabled for sickness. Start accepting responsibility for not following WHO guidance and keeping your promise to #CleantheAir! @teamlabouruk.bsky.social

DOGE Staffers Cash In While Slashing Jobs

This is one of the least surprising things I’ve read all week.

📌 Musk’s gov’t efficiency crew is drawing healthy taxpayer-funded salaries—from the very agencies they are cutting.

18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated shortly after midnight. Read our letter to the American people:
18f.org

CDC Staff Prohibited From Co-Authoring Papers With World Health Organization Personnel It’s just the latest “Orwellian” crackdown on government scientists.

I don’t even know how this could be presented as being in service of anything other than hindering scientific progress.

A stacked bar chart (oriented horizontally) labeled: Living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome) Each horizontal bar is a disease status: Pre-ME, Mild ME, Moderate ME, Severe ME, Very Severe ME. The width of each bar represents how much energy is available in each status (100, 50, 25, 12.5, and 6.25 respectively). Each bar is divided into sections for how one might allocate their energy: hygiene & nutrition (gray); caregiving, cleaning errands (red); work (orange); exercise (yellow); friends (green); hobbies (blue); fun (purple). With worsening ME, the hygiene & nutrition takes up a larger proportion of total available energy and the amount of energy available for all other parts of life shrinks. Mild ME has most things cut in half, with exercise cut smaller. Moderate ME removes exercise altogether, and everything else shrinks. Severe ME has only tiny slivers of red, orange, green, blue and purple. Very Severe ME has only a tiny sliver of green.

I've been thinking about how to explain the challenge of living with ME/CFS and created this cartoon visualization.

Imagine the life of someone without ME is a rainbow of activities that each take a certain amount of energy.

ME limits your energy, and thereby the vibrancy of your life.