Jeff Keelan

73% of Australians are worried about the future of democracy in the USA (ABC reporting).
The impact of the disastrous Trump administration is being noticed around the world.
How long before Americans rise up and take back their democracy?

After Trump fired the last director because the numbers were terrible for him. Nothing to see here.

20 years ago I applied to the Marsden Fund and my grant was ranked #6 in the country. There were sufficient funds for the top 5 only. It was devastating, and one of the main reasons why I moved to Australia, where I got 5 grants in my first year!

I can't believe the President of the USA posted this for the world to see. So wrong on so many levels, it illuminates just how cruel, ignorant and corrupt he is. This alone is proof he is deranged, dangerous and not fit for office.

Billions!

Great suggestions. Additional ideas welcome!

The Path Forward for Vaccine Policy in the United States | NEJM The former members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices consider paths forward for U.S. vaccine policy in the wake of their dismissal by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in...

Excellent, well-informed and thoughtful article on the NEJM on the vaccine approval landscape in the US and what needs to happen next:
The Path Forward for Vaccine Policy in the United States | New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

The language and intent of this document are astonishing - and not in a good way! The political bias and ill-informed prejudice couldn't be more obvious.
And what the hell is "gold standard science" and why isn't it included in the list of abbreviations???

In my life I've seen the introduction of:
Television
Space flight
Mobile phones
Satellites/GPS
Electronic music
Computers/PCs
Internet
Email
Social media
Smart phones
Online banking
Electric cars
Drones
Solar power
Bitcoin
Generative AI

What on earth is the next 70 years going to bring???

My thoughts on what’s going on in Los Angeles:

Opinion | Harvard Derangement Syndrome

Excellent and illuminating article on Harvard's woes. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/o...

NIH staff and biomedical community sound alarm about agency politicization, funding slowdown In test of NIH director’s support of dissent, NIH staff sign Bethesda Declaration urging reversal of grant cuts and freezes

🧪NIH staff have released the Bethesda Declaration, a public statement signed by over 340 scientists and staff, urging their director to depoliticize the agency and reverse significant cuts and freezes to external grants. It comes in response to a proposed 40% budget cut to NIH for 2026. #MedSky

Undermining Women’s Health Research — Gambling with the Public’s Health | NEJM The benefits of women’s health research haven’t been limited to women. But actions by the Trump administration threaten to dismantle the hard-won progress in this area.

Please read the excellent letter in the NEJM regarding the gutting of women's health research under Trump. About $2.5 billion in NIH research funding has been rescinded, much in areas that affect women and families. Thousands of government websites have been stifled.
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Today we celebrate bioinnovation and entrepreneurship in the School of Biomedical Sciences at @UWA.
www.uwa.edu.au/seek-wisdom/...

Mortality in severe serious adverse events following heterologous and homologous prime-boost vaccination strategies for SARS-CoV-2: A retrospective cohort study The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the urgent need for widespread vaccination to achieve herd immunity and mitigate severe outcomes. To address vaccine supply constraints, heterologous prime-boost stra...

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Korean study: 38.8M doses of vax, 687 serious adverse events reported = 1:58K
Of 358 in study cohort, 160 deaths <42 days (0.0004% by dose) Median age 69y, multiple comorbidities, causality undetermined.

Antivaxxer: Nearly HALF of Patients with Serious COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries DIE Within 6 Weeks!

Powerful new tool against Malaria (𝘕𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦)

Instead of killing mosquitoes, bed nets coated with ELQs (endochin-like quinolones) KILL THE MALARIA PARASITES INSIDE THE INSECTS. Infected mosquitoes land, absorb the drug through their legs, and are rendered parasite-free

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Identification of nanoparticle infiltration in human breast milk: Chemical profiles and trajectory pathways | PNAS Breast milk is crucial for infant health, offering essential nutrients and immune protection. However, despite increasing exposure risks from nanop...

Interesting paper just published in PNAS: researchers identified metallic oxide nanoparticles (~25-1000 nm) in the majority of breast milk samples; they studied biological uptake, dissemination and transfer mechanisms in a mouse model:
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

🧪 Here is a resource that tracks federal grants that have been terminated.
grant-watch.us

Academic friends, if your NSF grants have been terminated by the administration, FABBS is hosting a webinar Friday about appealing the decisions. It's important that as many people appeal as possible to show we're not accepting this targeting of science. Link to the webinar registration is below.

Of 400 phase 2/3 vaccine trials, only 22 included pregnant women. We need to do better and change the clinical trial culture.
Great infographic presented at the 2025 SRI meeting earlier this year.

105 controlled vaccine trials.
110 yrs. 1.8 M participants.
All in one live, crowd-sourced sheet.

Built by contributors worldwide to counter the myth that vaccines weren’t tested with controls.

Quiet work still breaks through the noise.
www.bradspellberg.com/vaccine-rcts
@bradspellberg.bsky.social

New molecular label could lead to simpler, faster tuberculosis tests MIT chemists found a way to identify a complex sugar molecule in the cell walls of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the world’s deadliest pathogen. This labeling could lead to simpler, faster TB tests.

𝐓𝐁 𝐎𝐑 𝐍𝐎𝐓 𝐓𝐁

𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

Study from Kiessling Lab MIT in PNAS exploits a rare sugar—methylthioxylofuranose (MTX)—to tag TB’s virulence glycans with oxaziridine probes

Method distinguishes TB from nonpathogenic relatives and enables live-cell imaging, great promise toward diagnostics

Efficacy and safety of pentavalent rotavirus vaccine in Japan: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial - PubMed Rotavirus is the most common cause of severe gastroenteritis in children under 5 y of age. Estimates of disease burden in Japan suggest that between 26,500 and 78,000 children in this age group need h...

It was also trialled separately in Japan using the same protocol.
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23732903/

Safety and Efficacy of a Pentavalent Human–Bovine (WC3) Reassortant Rotavirus Vaccine | NEJM Rotavirus is a leading cause of childhood gastroenteritis and death worldwide. We studied healthy infants approximately 6 to 12 weeks old who were randomly assigned to receive three oral doses of l...

Great resource, thanks to all involved. You should include the REST trial for the RotaTeq vaccine (Rotavirus) which enrolled 68,000 children in a huge multinational randomised controlled RCT employing inert placebo.
www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/...
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

‘This is insane:’ New NIH policy on funding foreign scientists stirs outrage Agency will make researchers outside United States seek grants of their own rather than “subawards” from U.S. scientists

Insane is exactly the phrase I would have used!

‘This is insane:’ New NIH policy on funding foreign scientists stirs outrage

www.science.org/content/arti...

I am so sorry this is happening to you and your colleagues. It's almost unbelievable this kind of pseudofascist attack on science could be perpetrated and endorsed by a US government. How such an Orwellien regime got enough votes to gain power is beyond me. I fear for the future.

What's "like" got to do with it?
My point is that you cant cherry pick and dismiss studies because they tell you something you'd rather not hear. That's what RFK and his ilk do, and its wrong. Critical, informed & honest appraisal and interpretation are required to reach the truth.