Taylor Eddens

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine (Gift Article) A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

New York Times article on science funding with some depressing but familiar curves with interactive graphics.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Yay! @mcfreeid.bsky.social
Congrats!

From Paper 2: Pathways activated by external stimuli and the effect of ACBs. Copyright: 2025 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

🌏 Despite substantial progress, asthma still poses a serious health burden globally.

A Lancet—@lancetrespirmed.bsky.social Series provides new insights into the genetics, prevention, & risk factors of the disease: spkl.io/63322Abjbm

Some of my newest work - amidst everything going on, we're still trying to deliver excellent care to really sick children. But the system is under a lot of strain:

What if NIH had been 40% smaller? Replaying history with less NIH funding shows widespread impacts on drug-linked research

This paper does a great job with a "It's a Wonderful Life" scenario about NIH, supposing the consequences of the bottom 40% of the funding NIH grants never existed.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

tl:dr The world would lose a lot, but directly and indirectly

Today’s ACIP meeting promoted false claims and misguided information about vaccines. AAP will continue stepping up and working with our local, state and federal partners to make sure every child in every community continues to have access to immunizations.
bit.ly/4puP4uf

3 former Surgeon Generals issue a warning: "The CDC is more than just an agency. It is the cornerstone of public health... The recent turbulence at the CDC threatens to undermine this legacy, and we feel this is not just a bureaucratic or political issue. It’s truly a matter of life and death."

Acetaminophen Use During Pregnancy and Children’s Risk of Autism, ADHD, and Intellectual Disability This nationwide cohort study with sibling control analysis examines the association of acetaminophen use during pregnancy with children’s risk of autism, ADHD, and intellectual disability.

Acetaminophen/Tylenol use during pregnancy was not associated with children’s risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability in sibling control analysis. This suggests associations observed in other, less rigorous analyses may have been attributable to familial confounding (aka erroneous finding):

As national medical, scientific, public health and patient organizations, we call for the resignation of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to ensure the health of the American people. Read our statement: asm.org/press-releas...

Opinion | America First? Not When It Comes to Your Health.

New York Times story with profiles of researchers whose grants were terminated.

[Gift Link]

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/24/o...

Is your album of the year so fsr SABLE fABLE?

In child development, timing matters when it comes to immunization. Just like kids have developmental stages, their immune systems have stages, too, and vaccines work best when their bodies are ready to respond.

Learn more.
www.healthychildren.org/English/safe...

Cutting the NIH—The $8 Trillion Health Care Catastrophe This JAMA Forum discusses the recent budget cuts to National Institutes of Health (NIH), the effects of these cuts on scientific research and health of individuals in the US, and the prospects for cha...

Over the next 25 years, if proposed cuts in NIH funding are made real, “In a population of more than 340 million, this reflects **82 million** fewer years of life.”

In the US alone.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Exiting expertise The members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) fired this week have published, on average, nearly five times more papers mentioning vaccines or vaccination in the title or abstract than their newly appointed replacements, half of whom have not published on the topic at all.

I think this really says it all:

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

For decades, Sec. Kennedy has spread lies about vaccines. Now, his misinformation will lead to preventable illness & death.

Firing independent experts is a dangerous move that makes it harder for Americans to access vaccines that are safe, effective & essential to saving lives.

I worry that not enough of a big deal is being made about how long-term the devastation of these budget cuts to our scientific and health agencies will be, beyond the absolute ruin they will cause in the acute period.

Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.

There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.

Here's the NIH's proposed budget - from $48 billion to $27 billion. NIAID, current ~$7 billion cut to ~$4.2 billion.

The proposed 15% cap on indirect costs remains.

Again, these budgets are passed, and our leadership in science, technology, and innovation is gone.

www.hhs.gov/sites/defaul...

“America First” Will Destroy U.S. Science The U.S. government has sought to restrict immigration under the “America First” doctrine. These policies severely harm American science by stripping it of talent and eliminating a major driver of its...

25 years ago, I came to Stanford on a J1 visa and worked so hard to be worthy of that privilege. Today, I lead Immunology at Mount Sinai and I am the one who feel privileged when brilliant international trainees chose to join us.

The Measles vaccine has 60 years of safety and efficacy data and was tested in a placebo controlled trial. Sec Kennedy consistently misstates the facts about this vaccine.

@jreinermd.bsky.social

Excited to share the first official paper from the Eddens lab published in @jimmunol.bsky.social. How an infant responds to a respiratory virus is very different than adults... and tightly regulated.

academic.oup.com/jimmunol/adv...

Scientists question NIH project’s use of 20th century technology to make a universal flu vaccine $500 million NIH program to make vaccines against pathogens that can trigger pandemics uses approach pioneered in last century

People who design & study vaccines are wondering why the #NIH is sinking half a billion dollars into trying to develop a platform for universal flu & covid vaccines using a decades-old production approach. “There is incredible work going on. This is not it." www.statnews.com/2025/05/03/n...

RFK Jr.'s HHS Orders Lab Studying Deadly Infectious Diseases to Stop Research NIAID's Integrated Research Facility is one of the few federal facilities charged with studying Ebola. Tuesday afternoon, all of its work was put on indefinite pause by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s departm...

RFK Jr. ordered the NIH’s Integrated Research Facility in Frederick to stop all research on serious infectious diseases yesterday at 5:00 PM.

They study pathogens like Ebola there. You may be familiar with it from The Hot Zone.

www.wired.com/story/hhs-ni...

Deaths from heart disease down 75%, that’s NIH.

Deaths from stroke down 75%, that’s NIH.

HIV/AIDS no longer a death sentence, that’s NIH.

99% of FDA approved drugs in the last decade, that’s NIH.

Please show this video to anyone who doesn’t understand why the NIH is so important.

How Real Doctors Brought ‘The Pitt’ To Life We go inside the scientifically accurate ER world created for the TV show with one of its medical consultants.

The TV show "The Pitt" has been praised for its accurate depiction of life in the ER.
Dr. Sylvia Owusu-Ansah of @pittpediatrics.bsky.social, who served as a medical consultant on the show, joins us to discuss how it captures real emergency room experiences.

The plan for NIH is in, source with full 64 page proposal for all of HHS is linked. Reported in WaPo. This is catastrophic. Reduction to 8 centers. 40% cut in budget. 15% IDC cap. This will decimate science across America open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

Seth Rogen presenting the Breakthrough Prize for physics (Getty)

“It’s amazing that others in this room underwrote electing a man who, in the last week, single-handedly destroyed all of American science. It’s amazing how much good science you can destroy with $320 million and RFK Jr, very fast.”

— Seth Rogen’s censored remarks presenting the Breakthrough Prize

Exclusive | Ousted Vaccine Chief Says RFK Jr.’s Team Sought Data to Justify Anti-Science Stance Peter Marks says the new health secretary’s team wants to show vaccines aren’t safe while promoting dangerous and unproven treatments.

More from Peter Marks on RFK Jr and the FDA
This extends beyond anti-vax to unproven use of stem cells
Gift link
www.wsj.com/health/healt...

The myth that the childhood vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) causes autism is based on a discredited study falsely linking the vaccine to autism. Find out more: ow.ly/EqeC50VlKva.

#ImmunologyExplained #Measles #MedSky #MMR

Trump Administration Has Begun a War on Science, Researchers Say Nearly 2,000 scientists urged that Congress restore funding to federal agencies decimated by recent cuts.

Some 1,900 leading researchers accused the Trump administration in an open letter on Monday of conducting a “wholesale assault on U.S. science” that could set back research by decades and that threatens the health and safety of Americans.