Maxwell Smith, PhD

When anti-mask-wearing laws were being proposed/passed, clinically vulnerable lives were devalued for what seemed like ridiculous argument that the COVID cautious were hiding faces for criming reasons. Now ICE et al are hiding their faces for criming reasons. Every accusation seems a confession.

Autonomy in vaccine decision-making is supported, not undermined, by expert recommendations and guidance. Thanks for emphasizing this, @kmpanthagani.bsky.social

Autonomy in vaccine decision-making is supported, not undermined, by expert recommendations and guidance. Thanks for emphasizing this, @kmpanthagani.bsky.social

Canada will require refugees and asylum seekers to co-pay for health care starting in May They will have to pay 30 per cent of the costs of services such as dental, optometry and physiotherapy and a $4 flat rate on each prescription.

This came in the same budget that axed a luxury tax on yachts. www.thestar.com/news/canada/...

Here is a post for all those “ethics” and “accountability” in AI folks.

Good luck with that!

Screenshot of the partial table of cuts, with Global Affairs (population 7657/workforce adjustment notices 1223) and Health Canada (population 9628/workforce adjustment notices 1039) highlighted

🤔"Tracking job cuts in the [Canadian] federal public service" www.hilltimes.com/story/2026/0...

⬇️. Precisely.

When people refuse to get vaccinated, simply piling on more evidence of their effectiveness is not enough. The same holds for politic leaders & the officials they appoint.

There are, however, powerful moral arguments that are more appropriate (& by extension political ones as well).

Do vaccine mandates impair the voluntariness of informed consent? An ethical and legal obligation generally exists for informed consent to be obtained prior to the administration of medical interventions. This includes vaccinations. For an individual’s informed cons...

Regarding his claim that vaccine mandates violate informed consent, we rebut this view here:

jme.bmj.com/content/earl...

Learning from five bad arguments against mandatory vaccination

Fortunately, there are compelling moral arguments at our disposal to rebut Milhoan's moral claim.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

It's incongruous to suggest that invoking "a person's right to refuse a vaccine" entails a rejection of decades of science.

If one strongly believes people should have the right to refuse a vaccine, no amount of evidence rebuts this.

This is a moral claim, and we need to engage with it as such.

If given the opportunity, a journalist needs to ask Milhoan the incidence of hospitalization and death he would need to see from this 'experiment' to concede that these vaccinations are important and ought to be strongly recommended/required. Put a figure on his indifference to suffering and death.

If given the opportunity, a journalist needs to ask Milhoan the incidence of hospitalization and death he would need to see from this 'experiment' to concede that these vaccinations are important and ought to be strongly recommended/required. Put a figure on his indifference to suffering and death.

WHO removing Us Flag

When I see tragic figures like this, I sometimes wonder what the public's reaction would be if they learned 44 kids have died this year from an *unknown* cause. Front page news. And I suspect they'd demand swift action to prevent additional deaths.

But child flu deaths? That are preventable? 🤷‍♂️

1. A #flu update:
12 more kids have died, bringing the 2025-26 pediatric death toll to 44 so far. This time last year the total was 27 — & last year went on to be a record year for kids dying from flu. These deaths are reported on a lag; more will come, sadly.
CDC says ~90% weren't vaxed.

Anyone working in feminist and other critical approaches to bioethics with expertise in global health/policy willing to write a blog post for the International Journal of Feminist Approached to Bioethics blog on this? Would love to have your piece on the blog if so.

Screenshot from STAT article that says "What we're going to have is a real-world experience of when unvaccinated people get measles," he said. "What is the new incidence of hospitalization? What's the incidence of death?"

RFK Jr. appointee Kirk Milhoan has just clearly stated, out loud, that he wants to experiment on the people of the United States by seeing what happens as vaccination coverage plummets and infectious diseases spread.

The 'you do you' of public health now the 'you do you' of global health

Holy shit. HHS says the Africa CDC "is a powerless, fake organization attempting to manufacture credibility by repeating its claims publicly. It is not a reliable source, and its statements should be treated accordingly."

Senior CDC official: Loss of measles elimination status in U.S. would be ‘cost of doing business’ The principal deputy director of the CDC said he would not view the loss of the United States' measles elimination status as a significant event.

Would the #CDC's principal deputy director view it as a public health loss for the US if the country loses its #measles elimination status? "Not really," Dr. Ralph Abraham said at a press conference today. www.statnews.com/2026/01/20/c...

Scoop: The leaked protocol of the CDC-funded Hepatitis B vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau. “This is another Tuskegee.” The protocol reveals that the trial will withhold the Hepatitis B birth dose from thousands—without placebos, without universal maternal screening, and with endpoints critics call indefensible.

We have the CDC-funded Hepatitis Vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau protocol.

It’s worse than you thought.

Check it out, first in Inside Medicine…

with @pauloffit.bsky.social David Boulware and others.

insidemedicine.substack.com/p/scoop-the-...

Asking questions about vaccines is fine. Repeatedly ignoring the answers is not.

Two students were suspended from Peel District schools over outdated vaccine records. They were fully immunized Andrew Steeves submitted his son’s immunization records at least three times to Peel Public Health, proving his 10-year-old has received all of his routine vaccinations. But his public school still su...

We desperately need a vaccine registry.

www.cp24.com/local/toront...

This is absolutely just one metric of the burden caused by COVID. On its own, it is significant and should be cause for action. When you consider the totality of the burden of this disease, it's a no-brainer.

Compare COVID's rank as the 9th leading cause of death in Canada in 2024 with other leading causes we tend to take seriously:

Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: 10
Parkinson's: 12
Suicide: 13
Sepsis: 14
HIV: 32
Meningitis: 33
Tuberculosis: 34
Measles: 48

Data published today from Statistics Canada show that COVID dropped from the 6th leading cause of death in Canada to the 9th in 2024.

COVID deaths continue to decrease. This is great news, but we can't give up - COVID remains a top 10 cause of death in Canada.

www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quo...

"Just asking questions" rather than engaging with the answers to those questions version 1,000,000

Trump and RFK Jr are dismantling public health—aided and abetted by powerful doctors High profile physicians should be using their positions of power to resist Trump and RFK Jr’s damaging policies, not collaborating with them, say Gavin Yamey and Jonathan Shaffer President Donald Trump and secretary of health and human services Robert F Kennedy Jr have held many press events during which they have promoted dangerous health misinformation.1 2 Despite taking an oath to“first do no harm,” influential doctors have stood by Trump and RFK Jr’s sides during these briefings, lending their support. The wider medical community needs to tackle this phenomenon with evidence based strategies, including warning the public about the risks of misleading information, highlighting scientific consensus, mapping the institutional networks that spread controversial information, and countering them using political and legal strategies.3

Trump & RFK Jr.'s coterie of bootlicking doctors are real pieces of shit, we argue in the British Medical Journal, essentially.

Link: www.bmj.com/content/392/...

Do others remember this headline?

According to this new JAMA study, the US reaches this incalculable loss annually. I think most of the public doesn't realize it.

#IDEpi #EpiSky

Physicians in the Trump administration are aligning themselves with anti-public health interests and policies.

High profile physicians should be resisting Trump and RFK Jr’s damaging policies, not collaborating with them, @gavinyamey.bsky.social @jonshaffer.bsky.social
www.bmj.com/content/392/...