Maggie Schneider, MD, PhD

‘Vaguely Threatening’: Federal Prosecutor Queries Leading Medical Journal The New England Journal of Medicine received a letter suggesting that it was biased and compromised by external pressure. Other journals have also received the letter.

It is difficult to express how profoundly troubling this is. The Trump Administration’s attack on the scientific/medical research apparatus and the basic norms of science will directly harm to the health of Americans. I’m glad NEJM isn’t standing for it.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/h...

I know I’m leaving soon, but I am so so proud to be @harvard.edu affiliated at this moment.

A hand giving the rock sign with multiple concert wristbands on the wrist.

I am a very avid #music fan. I saw a post earlier about all of the issues with #spotify. Sincere question: assuming that I am not going to stop #streaming music, aside from the obvious things, what should fans be doing to support the artists we love in the streaming era?
Photo for algorithm.

Just a friendly reminder that getting good grades ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT mean that a child can’t have ADHD. Kids with ADHD often struggle in many areas of social and emotional functioning even when they are OK academically, and the right treatments and supports can help.

A graphic with the books in the Tournament of Books 2025, with check marks over most of the books including: Beautyland, The Book Censor’s Library, The Book of George, The Book of Love, The Extinction of Irena Rey, Great Expectations, Headshot, The History of Sound, Martyr!, Orbital, Rejection, All Fours, Liars, and The Wedding People. Books without check marks are: Colored Television, James, Margo’s Got Money Troubles, and Someone Like Us.

Tournament of Books 2025 starts today! The here’s my checklist so far. I should have everything read before its first match. Come join us for literary bloodsport and fun friendly commentary!
@tournamentofbooks.com

NIH’s role in training the next generation of scientists is so vital. My time at NIMH before med school gave me critical skills and helped me understand that I truly wanted to pursue dual-degree training. Cancelling these programs makes America weaker and poorer.

I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding scientists to answer questions, but volunteering my services if you ever need a child psychiatrist/neuroscientist!

Exclusive: NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants Studies that touch on LGBT+ health, gender identity and DEI in the biomedical workforce could be terminated, according to documents obtained by Nature.

This is so infuriating. Sending support to anyone facing this.

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

What to know about vitamin A and the measles In the CDC’s first public statement on the measles outbreak, it suggested vitamin A as a type of supportive care.

Vitamin A does not *prevent* measles - the measles vaccine does.

Vitamin A *may* reduce the severity of measles - but that data comes from patients who had vitamin A deficiency, which most Americans don’t.

Vitamin A *is* toxic on its own at high doses.

The best approach is to not get measles.

That’s weird, I am getting 26,351 when I use that term in quotes, where are you?

I got it back and searched the term “SSRI” and got three pages of results on discontinuation syndrome and sexual side effects, which terrifies me. I hope it’s just some sort of search quirk, but I don’t really believe that.

Pubmed seems to be back in the US, but I am getting results that seem to emphasize side effects and complications of SSRIs, can we get some other science folks or comp sci folks to do some searches or look at this and see if they changed the algorithm? I’m not savvy enough to verify my concern.

It seems to be back, but based on those results I am concerned that they messed with the algorithm

It was back up as of a few minutes ago, but the results I got searching the term “SSRI” had the first three pages about discontinuation syndrome and sexual side effects, so I am terrified.

Pubmed was apparently down for several hours. I just searched “SSRI” and the top three pages of “best match” results are all about discontinuation syndrome and sexual dysfunction.

They can’t change the science by changing the database, but I am still absolutely fucking terrified.

There is now a confirmed case of Rubella in Texas in addition to the nearly 150 cases of measles.

I am so sad, and so very angry.

Vaccines work, this is completely preventable.

cbsaustin.com/amp/news/nat...

A picture of a badge lanyard sitting on a table with a zebra print awareness ribbon pinned to it.

On this National Rare Disease Day, I would like to make sure that all other metaphor-loving health care professionals are aware that the official awareness ribbon for the National Organization for Rare Disorders is zebra print. 😂🦓❤️

The Precision Psychopathology + Dynamic Immunopsychiatry Lab at UPenn will be hiring 1-2 post-bacc RAs and potentially a postdoc this year

Immune/phlebotomy/blood preprocessing exp will be a plus. Formal posting will follow in a few weeks

Excited to recruit the founding members of this team :)

RFK Jr. Takes a Sledgehammer to Two Major Vaccine Developments Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is already implementing his dangerous anti-vax views at HHS.

An American child died of measles yesterday. This is a completely preventable tragedy. My heart goes out to their family and community.

In context, these HHS actions are appalling and embarrassing. If you are not frightened and furious, you’re not paying attention.

newrepublic.com/post/192059/...

They’re only once a month, and I go every time I can. Each one is a little different, but this month is an open discussion of the topic. Josh and Rob usually introduce the topic and then open it up to everyone to share or ask questions or whatever they need.

Measles alerts issued in San Antonio, New Braunfels and San Marcos as Texas outbreak spreads The largest measles outbreak in decades has reached San Antonio and San Marcos. Officials say an individual who tested positive for the virus in West Texas traveled to two major universities and one o...

Right. One of the Texas measles cases went to several major tourist attractions while contagious (before being symptomatic). This is the stuff nightmares are made of.

Get vaccinated. Make sure the people you love get vaccinated.

www.tpr.org/public-healt...

Flyer for meeting of Drum Set Confessional, Thursday Feb 27th at 7pm EST. The theme of the meeting is “Survivors Guilt and the Echos of Shame” and you can find more information at Patreon.com/DrumSetConfessional

The DSC community is so positive, warm, and welcoming. Please come join us! Meetings are free and open to anyone that has been affected by addiction, either in themselves or someone they love. Feel free to message if you have questions!

Measles outbreaks rise to nearly 100 cases between Texas and New Mexico. Here's what you should know The measles outbreak in West Texas has grown to 58 cases as of Tuesday. Eight people in neighboring eastern New Mexico also have been diagnosed with the highly contagious disease.

Measles has a 10-14 day incubation period on average, meaning that people don’t show symptoms for a while after they’re infected… it is insanely contagious. This is so frightening.

Get vaccinated and make sure your loved ones are vaccinated. Please.

apnews.com/article/meas...

Anyway, I'm going to keep reading the order closely from here, because I am sure that this is not the only verifiable nonsense it contains. Follow along if you're interested.
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I don't know why they would use 2021 data. (If you do, feel free to let me know) but I would be totally shocked if the 2021 data aligned with these claims, because that would represent an extraordinary change in rates over a very short time.

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Now they cite 2021 data. I have neither the time or the energy to try to find old data when the more up-to-date data is both more relevant to their theoretical point and very easily available.
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Obviously the claim that our rate was twice the rate of the next highest country makes no sense when we're not the highest rate to begin with, but for completeness sake:
The next highest rate was in Norway, and the USA rate was 1.025 times the rate Norway. It was 0.794 times the rate in Australia.
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Graph showing age-standardized rates of all cancers by country for both sexes.

Graph showing age standardized incidence rate for all cancers by gender for the top 15 countries with the highest incidence.

In 2022, the USA DID NOT have the the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer. We actually had the 4th highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer. Australia, New Zealand, and Denmark were higher. See the graphs below for overall rates and breakdown by sex for the top 15 countries.
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Global Cancer Observatory The Global Cancer Observatory (GCO) is an interactive web-based platform presenting global cancer statistics to inform cancer control and research.

Worldwide cancer data from 2022 is freely available online from the International Agency for Research on Cancer from the WHO. They have some absolutely lovely visualization tools that you can play with. This is what I used to create the figures below. The website is here: gco.iarc.fr/today…
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Screen shot of the "Make America Healthy Again" Commission Executive Action from whitehouse.gov with the following sentence highlighted: Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next-highest rate.

Decided to spend some time more time actually reading and trying to understand the EA on the "Make America Healthy Again" Commission.

I made it to the second paragraph. The cancer numbers cited didn't sound right to me...

That's because, as far as I can tell, they are just completely untrue.
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