Derek Lowe

FDA staff fear Tracy Beth Høeg will bring bias and instability to embattled drug center Høeg is set to become the fifth head of the FDA's drug center in a year.

Tracy Beth Høeg assumes the role of acting director of the #FDA's drugs division Monday. #CDER staff are worried about what Høeg will do. Among her targets: #RSV monoclonals that have been game changers, but which Høeg questions. @lizzylawrence.bsky.social reports. www.statnews.com/2025/12/11/t...

We're completely screwed if our response to measles is going to be asking antivaxxers - the most selfish and stupid people in our society - to voluntarily self-report and quarantine for 21 days each every time they get exposed

Scoop: FDA vaccine chief’s memo cited 10 pediatric Covid-19 vaccine deaths—but the agency’s own analysis found 0–7. Dr. Vinay Prasad circulated a memo before FDA scientists finished their work. His conclusions overshot what the agency’s own analysts ultimately found.

Prasad, Makary and others who claim that COVID19 vaccines killed 10 children are not telling the truth.

According to @jeremyfaust.bsky.social, the committee that worked on this question reported that there were ZERO deaths that they were certain were caused by the vaccines.

Well worth reading.

Long shot, but does anyone in Switzerland have an emergency Theremin to loan tomorrow night ( Friday 12 December )?
#ViaMardot is playing a show in St Gallen, and the airline lost her equipment!!!

We can help pay for a courier if needed, please share to get this message out!!
#theremin #switzerland

If I understand the Roberts court correctly, what the Founders *really* wanted was a brawny, virile Chief Executive empowered to do pretty much anything that crosses his mind.

What more authority is needed, eh?

I will never forget and never forgive these actions. And there are so many, with so many people carrying these orders out while others laugh and clap and post excited selfies about it all.

Justice has to be served.

This is strictly a personal observation from living in LA, but RFK scares me so much because otherwise orthodox liberals with a woo food and chemicals streak are being converted into lunatic conservatives.

Fixing A Reaction

We organic chemists have been running metal-catalyzed C-N couplings for decades now. But we’re still learning about ways to run them better!

This seems quite believable. It’s looking more and more like Trump has serious health problems and is wildly over-reacting at any suggestion that he isn’t the most invincible human being on the planet. Roy Cohn’s playbook.

Ah crap, these folks just keep emerging.

MAGAZINER: How many veterans have you deported?

NOEM: We haven't deported veterans

MAGAZINER: We are now joined on Zoom by a combat veteran you deported to Korea

I’m but a simple country theoretical physicist, and I can say, in my professional capacity, “datacenters in space” is so colossally, monumentally stupid that it is difficult to know where to start with which laws of physics the idea is spitting in the face of the most.

Drug discovery is a profession where there’s always room for one more slice of humble pie

I hope people understand that if Trump gets his way America will soon be part of the global axis of evil if we aren't already. You see it in the Caribbean, you see it in Ukraine, and you see it with Trump trying to buddy up to Xi. We are a malevolent force.

I can only imagine what the vetting might be like. . .

So who from our side is going to play dress up bc we need you NOW!

"LZ uses 10 metric tonnes, or 10,000 kilograms, of ultra-pure liquid xenon"

Jeepers flickin' gripes that's a lot of Xe!

Eight public biotechs raised a total of >$3.2 billion overnight. Most had strong data readouts in the past few days. All but one upsized their offerings from their proposed targets. They say a healthy follow-on market augurs a healthy IPO market. $GPCR $WVE $DYN $VERA $FULC $KYMR $TERN $DNLI

i read stuff like this and can genuinely angry at guys like jd vance who insist that this country belongs to some narrow vision of the "native born"

I don't know, for the record, if there is a single place in the US that does ozonolysis on significant scale in the organic chemistry space in the US.

Garden & outdoorsy folk, please spread this news: The great people at Monarch Watch have a program where schools, nonprofits & large restoration projects can apply for FREE MILKWEED (only thing Monarch caterpillars eat, can't have too much of it IMO). Check it out! monarchwatch.org/bring-back-t...

Actually I'd love to get a count on here of who's actually done particular reactions. I bet there are loads of odd ones chemsky has drawn on when needed

What's Happening At the Water Surface Anyway?

More controversy about air/water interfaces, which you might imagine wouldn’t stir up much passion:

It started in 1981 after the attempted assassination of John Paul II, as a nickname for the newly armored and bulletproof-glassed vehicle made for him to use in public.

Three kilos! I’m thinking hard, but I really don’t think I ever would have tried that. Glad you made it through!

Stand Up for Science is trademarked. We are incorporated (501c3 & c4) with a clear mission, we have staff, a board, & we are working hard to establish our brand.

I *will* start outing large science orgs
who use our brand for fundraising & clout.

This week was a $100m/yr scientific society.

This is eugenics in decent tailoring.

What Kennedy has been pushing and Duffy here channels is the idea that poor health is a moral choice. Good people live the right way (getting their pull-ups in at Gate 17) and enjoy good health.

Lazy weak people don't, and get what's coming to them.

Monsters.

So as you had the story, this was some general cancer cure? That’s extremely unlikely IMO, but there would had to have been completed clinical trials to come to any such conclusion.

Another GLP-1 Alzheimer's Trial

I think that GLP-1 drugs are increasingly less likely to have an impact on Alzheimer’s, unfortunately:

The top US health director who stood up for science — and was fired Susan Monarez is part of Nature’s 10, a list of people who shaped science in 2025.

Susan Monarez was fired after less than a month as Director of the CDC for holding the line on scientific integrity

She is part of Nature's 10 - our list of people who shaped science in 2025
go.nature.com/48FnHpx