Andrew Lea, MD, PhD

RFK Jr. in interview with Scripps News: ‘Trusting the experts is not science’ HHS Secretary RFK Jr. sat down with Scripps News for a wide-ranging interview, discussing mRNA vaccine funding policy changes and a recent shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said."

It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy.

I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.

I increasingly believe that having that much money distorts one's human interactions such that billionaires are in a constant state of progressive moral decay. The option to avoid this fate by philanthropically disposing of your gross excess assets is permanently available yet rarely exercised.

When I say "technology" I mean the textual means by which experimentalists create virtual witnessing (h/t Steven Shapin).

When I say “technology” I mean the codex

Paper from "Policy: Issues and Actions," vol. 9, no. 3 (September 1996): Zondi Masiza and Chris Landsberg, "FISSION FOR COMPLIMENTS? South Africa and the 1995 extension of nuclear non-proliferation"

Well, everyone, I've found it: the academic paper with the worst pun title possible. The search can finally end. This cannot be beat.

GEORGE WASHINGTON CORNER SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE "Ryan White, Hemophilia, and the HIV/AIDS Epidemic" Wednesday, September 10 5:30 Lecture 6:30 - 7:15 Social Gathering Rochester Academy of Medicine 1441 East Avenue, Rochester, NY In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan White emerged as the face of the epidemic. Diagnosed with hemophilia at birth, Ryan contracted AIDS through contaminated blood products. In 1985, he became a household name after he was barred from attending his Indiana middle school because he had AIDS. As Ryan appeared on nightly news broadcasts and graced the covers of popular magazines, he was embraced by music icons and well-known athletes, achieving a curious kind of stardom. This talk will focus on Ryan's experiences with hemophilia and AIDS, as well as the contested meanings of his life, death, and afterlives. Paul Renfro is an associate professor of history and an affiliate faculty member in the Women's Gender, and Sexuality Studies program at Florida State University. He is the author of Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2020) and The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2024), which earned an honorable mention in the general nonfiction category of the Florida Book Awards. For more information or to become a Corner Society member, please contact Christine Slobogin, PhD, at Christine_Slobogin@URMC.Rochester.edu.

Our first Corner Society lecture is taking place on Wednesday, September 10, at 5:30 pm at the Rochester Academy of Medicine!

@renfro.bsky.social will be giving a talk titled "Ryan White, Hemophilia, and the HIV/AIDS Epidemic"

You can register here: www.raom.org/event-6257176

Flyer for the: George Washington Corner Society for the History of Medicine 2025-2026 Season 5:30 Lecture 6:30 - 7:15 Social Gathering Rochester Academy of Medicine 1441 East Avenue Wednesday September 10 Paul Renfro Florida State University "Ryan White, Hemophiia, and the HIV/AIDS Epidemic" Wednesday, September 29 Courtney Thompson Mississippi State University "A Calculus of Compassion: Medicine, Emotion, and Identity in Nineteenth-Century America" Wednesday, November 19 Mary Fissell Johns Hopkins University "Savin, Sex, and Scandal: Rethinking Abortion in Early Modern Anglo-America" Wednesday, February 25 Andrew Lea University of Rochester "Who's in Whose Pocket? Reference Tools, Industry Interests, and the Quest for Therapeutic Reform" Wednesday, March 25 Ayah Nuriddin Yale University "Black Eugenics and the Struggle for Equality" Wednesday, April 15 Anna Arabindan-Kesson Princeton University "Case Notes: Art History's Medical Imaginaries" For more information or to become a Corner Society member, please contact Christine Slobogin, PhD, at Christine_Slobogin@URMC.Rochester.edu.

The new Corner Society schedule is live!

I'm so pleased to be able to welcome exciting history of medicine scholars to Rochester during this academic year.

Even if you're not in Rochester, each of these lectures will be available via Zoom (with free registration).

very cool that the same chuds screaming about “unqualified DEI hires” are giving ignorant 23-year-olds the power to destroy federal agencies

Friends don't let friends wear white-soled dress shoes. This fad cannot die out soon enough.

in which disciplines is the all-lower-case-email most prevalent?

Can someone tell him that by "War on Cancer" we don't mean a war on its behalf?

Supreme Court allows Trump to fire members of product safety agency A judge had reinstated three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a federal agency set up by Congress to be independent of political pressure.

As a historian of injuries and product safety, this one feels personal.

The CPSC can’t do its job without independent commissioners.

Let’s review some of the cases that led to the establishment of the agency in the first place:

Opinion | This system is critical to Americans’ health. We must defend it. Medical progress depends on independent journals to advance science without political interference.

With bad-faith political attacks on science and medicine mounting, the editors-in-chief of @nejm.org and @jama.com team up in @washingtonpost.com to defend the importance--and independence--of medical journals.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Digitizing Diagnosis Medicine, Minds, and Machines in Twentieth-Century America

Everyone who thinks that AI will provide magic answers to all our medical problems should read Andrew Lea’s excellent book.

www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

The liberal justices may as well self-immolate on the Supreme Court steps at this point.

Always in awe of the self restraint of New Yorker staff writers who forgo their cartoon rendering as a profile pic.

The gov't will resume interest accrual for stud. loans on which borrowers have no means of making qualifying payments. We're trapped doing game theory with an arbitrary and insane player. Will the policy stand? Will one's employer be PSLF-disqualified on malicious and pretextual "anti-DEI" grounds?

Flyer for upcoming talk. Friends of Millbank You are warmly invited to attend our July meeting, a book launch, on Zoom only 1830 hrs UK (1330hrs EST), Friday 25 July 2025 Our guest speaker, Christine Slobogin, speaking from Rochester, USA presents 'Putting Plastic Surgery on Paper' How Art and Archives Defined Second World War Reconstructive Surgery in Britain * two images here; one headshot of me, the speaker, blonde white woman with short hair and a blue blazer; one image of the cover of the book * Christine will be familiar to many Friends of Millbank, having attended some of our talks while in London. She describes herself as an art historian of medicine. She is now Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester, USA and she has kindly agreed to launch her new book with us online. It can be ordered from the publisher's website and is also available open acces. Proceeds will be donated to the speaker's chosen charity, the Hunterian Museum.

I'll be giving an online book launch talk for the military medicine group Friends of Millbank on July 25! 1:30 pm EST; 5:30 pm BST.

You can register here: us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Nice to see Segregated Species on display at #BSHS2025

Digitizing Diagnosis Medicine, Minds, and Machines in Twentieth-Century America

🔊🔊🔊 ALL @hopkinspress.bsky.social books--including DIGITIZING DIAGNOSIS--are available for 40% OFF through July 10! Discount code: H4JUL25
www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/...

Once you understand that "communist" and "socialist" in modern political discourse means "a moderate Republican circa 1977" it's much easier to understand

If you're a student or trainee interested in science communication, media production, and journalism, consider working with me as a communications fellow! We are putting together an exciting new podcast on digital health.

www.nature.com/npjdigitalme...

I heard this morning that my informatics colleague Dr. Atul Butte passed after a battle with cancer. He was a giant in the field & inspired many of us over his distinguished career. He was a passionate champion of the power of big data & his impact on our field is immeasurable. RIP Atul & thanks.

Why the Sudden Firing of ACIP Members Should Put Every Clinician on High Alert There are certain irrefutable verities when, like me, you’re an infectious diseases specialist married to a pediatrician. Here are our top two, which are deeply interrelated: Infectious deaths in chil...

The head of HHS said he’d preserve ACIP. Then he fired the entire committee.

Now a new panel -- with mostly unclear expertise in clinical trials, vaccines, and ID -- is in place. Time for high alert for changes that could seriously affect public health. #IDSky blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-obser...

More needs to be made of the distinction between trust and trustworthiness. Lower levels of trust in vaccines and ACIP are more likely a function of attempts to actively undermine trust from the likes of RFK Jr and company, not the trustworthiness of ACIP.

Stumbled upon (and purchased!) LAB DOG by @bolman.bsky.social at the @mitpress.bsky.social bookstore. Excited to dig in! cc @uchicagopress.bsky.social

But his sadism, tragically, *is* effective.

the administration suffered a 96 percent loss rate in the courts in May.

Trump is losing these cases for a simple reason: They’re breaking the damn law. They’re invoking old and obscure laws and insisting that they confer upon them the authority to do things they don’t have the authority to do.

Saying that the Trump administration seeks to "reshape" American science and biomedicine is a bit like saying that the Death Star sought to reshape Alderaan. The word you're looking for is destruction.