Kathie Ferbas, PhD

After Years of Anger Directed at C.D.C., Shooting Manifests Worst Fears

“...disinformation, conspiracy theories & political violence is getting scarier by the day. I’m very worried about how this is now going beyond defunding of infectious diseases & public health to political violence against the people working in those fields."

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/09/u...

Only you can save Birmingham’s medical rainforest: op-ed from UAB researcher he fuel that propels Academic Health Centers like UAB comes, in large part, from NIH funding.

www.al.com/politics/202... “Academic Health Centers are like tropical rainforests: They take decades to develop and weeks to destroy.”

It was awesome

The list includes several well-known critics of vaccines. The eight new members, a significant decline from the 17 that previously served on the panel, include: Dr. Joseph R. Hibbeln, a psychiatrist and nutritional scientist who previously worked on nutritional neuroscience at the NIH; Dr. Martin Kulldorf, an epidemiologist formerly at Harvard Medical School, who has served on an FDA safety committee as well as the vaccine subgroup of ACIP; Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management; Dr. Robert Malone, a physician who conducted early research on mRNA vaccine technology; Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, who has previously held advisory roles at CDC and FDA, including as an ACIP member; Dr. James Pagano, an emergency medicine physician; Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse with a PhD in public health, who has previously served on FDA vaccine advisory committees; Dr. Michael Ross, an obstetrician and gynecologicist, who has served on a CDC advisory committee for the prevention of breast and cervical cancer.

NEW: After firing expert scientists on the CDC's vaccine advisory committee, RFK Jr. has named their replacements.

The new committee contains many figures known for spreading disinformation about vaccines and COVID including Robert Malone and Martin Kulldorff.

This is bad.

Trump team set to destroy $12m worth of HIV drugs and contraceptives bought by USAID The life-saving drugs and contraceptives have been sitting in warehouses since January

They'd rather throw away 12 million dollars worth of contraceptives and HIV meds than give it away to the people it was slated to go to.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

ADD YOUR NAME: Sign the Open Letter in Support of NIH Staff Join the courageous and committed National Institutes of Health (NIH) public servants by adding your name now.

Show your support for the #BethesdaDeclaration and the NIH mission. Join a growing list of prominent scientists, Nobel Prize winners, cancer survivors, patient families, and concerned citizens by adding your name. 7/7 actionnetwork.org/forms/add-na...

Rapid Response Bridge Funding Program In the face of recent abrupt shifts in federal funding for education research, including large-scale terminations of National Science Foundation (NSF) research grant awards, we have developed a rap...

The Spencer Foundation is offering rapid response bridge funding for those who lost NSF research grants.

www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

Yay!

OMG

Just a reminder that the HPV vaccine literally PREVENTS CANCER and the series can be started as early as 9 years of age.

January has been a lot. Not much survived the fires here, but the candy dish that was always full at my Grandparent’s house somehow persevered. A little broken, a lot sooty, but it survived. Just like me.

Going to be a long night here.

Jeff Bezos and I were both in the news today.

Bezos is making nice with Trump.
Kash Patel has said that I am an enemy of the GOP.

He owns the Washington Post.
I founded Democracy Docket.

Both rely on paid subscriptions. Which do you want to support? www.democracydocket.com/member-me/

Healthcare Workers vs Hunger Healthcare workers vs Hunger is an annual friendly competition between teams of healthcare workers to help relieve food insecurity.

Good morning!

Thankful for all of you turkeys out there but especially those that want to help us feed others.

#HCWvsHunger 2024 starts tonight at 6pm EST.

You can help in many ways
🍎 post/repost
🍎 donate to any org fighting hunger & log donation at HCWvsHunger.org
🍎 invite everyone you know

A restaurant board sign that reads: “we are not all in the same boat. We are in the same storm. Some have yachts. Some have canoes. And some are drowning. Just be kind and help when you can.

I love this.

A post for the Transgender Day Of Remembrance in which I remind people that “Now more than ever, remember us. Remember that we will fight. Remember that we will never really cease to be and that we will keep extensive records of who was truly on our side and who was not”

From brick to bone. From hospital to home. Trans rights, now and forever.

Sleepy kitty

1 death reported in E. coli outbreak linked to carrots; 39 cases across country, CDC says Health officials are warning of a deadly E. coli outbreak linked to organic carrots infecting 39 people across 18 states.

Grimmway Farms.

Sounds like the setting for a Dickens novel.

abc7ny.com/post/1-death...

💯

First U.S. case of new mpox strain detected in California California has detected the country’s first case of a new mpox strain in a person who recently traveled from Eastern Africa

The US joins the list of countries that has detected clade Ib #mpox. A person who recently traveled from eastern Africa was diagnosed with the disease in San Mateo County, California. Sounds like a mild case. My story: www.statnews.com/2024/11/16/m...

Wondering why so many people have mycoplasma (aka walking pneumonia) lately? Here’s a clue.

Just published: after propensity matching, those w/ prior #COVID19 infection were about 3x more likely to get mycoplasma than those without #COVID: www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

#MedTwitter #MedSky

Jay Bhattacharya, an NIH critic, emerges as a top candidate to lead the agency The Stanford physician was excoriated by NIH’s director in 2020 for his “fringe” ideas on covid. Four years later, he’s poised for power in Trump’s Washington.

This is all just getting worse. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/...

A breakthrough cancer immunotherapy is now taking aim at autoimmune disease CAR-T therapy is generating excitement for lupus, scleroderma, and other conditions as clinical trials expand

Treating lupus by depleting B cells with CAR T cells has been shown successful

A breakthrough cancer immunotherapy is now taking aim at autoimmune disease | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

📌

Cemetery of Untold Stories by Julia Alvarez

Advancing our knowledge base on Long Covid
a new dedicated issue of ScienceTM with papers on sex-differences, kids, potential therapies, and more
www.science.org/toc/stm/curr...

Yes please!

Bluesky,

Today is my 2nd day on here as an escapee from The Bad Place. I am BEGGING y’all to repost this

I have $80,000 in scholarship money to give away to women and girls NATIONWIDE. I worked so hard to raise this money. Applications open THIS week. I’m scared the mass migration will impact this