Tim Lahey

Initial Vancomycin Taper for the Prevention of Recurrent C difficile Infection This randomized clinical trial tested whether a 4-week pulse and taper vancomycin regimen was superior to a 2-week pulse regimen for preventing recurrence among patients with a first episode or first ...

Practice-changing study: 4-week oral vancomycin taper superior to standard 2-week pulse in randomized double-blinded study of hospitalized patients

Hoping head-to-head against fidaxomicin comes soon!

#Cdiff

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

14 measles cases reported at El Paso ICE tent camp The latest outbreak comes after a spate of COVID-19 and tuberculosis cases were reported at Camp East Montana, which holds more than 3,000 immigrants.

What a public health nightmare. “At least 14 active measles cases have been reported at a troubled El Paso tent camp holding more than 3,000 immigrants… Another 112 people in the facility are being isolated. The outbreak has closed the detention center to visitors” @jackiantonovich.bsky.social

CIDRAP Op-Ed: The COVID vaccine myocarditis signal was real but is now resolved. ACIP's March agenda pretends otherwise.

"A framework that allows any of these data points to be evaluated in isolation, or weighed against unverified case reports as though they carry equivalent value, will produce worse policy."

www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/cid...

The VA has not filled vacant healthcare professional positions, resulting in:

1,500 fewer physicians
4,900 fewer nurses
14,000 total fewer

This is 5% of the VA's medical staff.

#medsky

Despite Promises, Veterans Affairs Department Cut Thousands of Roles for Doctors and Nurses

"The head of the Veterans Affairs Department has repeatedly said that the agency needs to hire more doctors, nurses and other providers 'taking care of people on the front line' .... but the V.A. has eliminated thousands of medical positions"

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/u...

Residency Applications Tumbled in States With Restrictive Abortion Laws Decline seen for both female and male students

More impact outside of OB/GYN than I expected

www.medpagetoday.com/hospitalbase...

States Move to Limit Access to H.I.V. Treatment

“An economic disaster, a public health disaster, a moral disaster”

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/02/h...

We Lost Loved Ones to Suicide 25 Years Apart. Here's What’s Changed About Suicide in America, and What Hasn’t An aunt and her niece share their stories, their paths to healing, and their mission to help fellow survivors.

Powerful intertwined narratives from two eloquent women who lost people they love to suicide

www.oprahdaily.com/life/wholene...

Adolescent Cannabis Use and Risk of Psychotic, Bipolar, Depressive, and Anxiety Disorders This cohort study assesses the association of past-year cannabis use by adolescents with the risk of incident psychiatric, bipolar, depressive, and anxiety disorders by age 26 years.

Cannabis exposure associated with doubled risk of bipolar and psychotic disorders in Kaiser Permanente cohort study of over 400k adolescents

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

YouTube video by IAS-USA ''Annus Horribilis" and The War on Science: Thoughts on Resisting and Rebuilding - Peter Staley

Every word of this

youtu.be/p5kqUujWPCs?...

I love delicious figures!

These show changes in the relationship between symptom onset and viral load over time among SARS-CoV-2 variants (Fig.3) and the impact of vaccination on peak (lower) and length (shorter) of infectious virus or viral genetic material produced over time (Fig.4)

Going to be great at rejecting your insurance claims

The Trump Administration Will Automate Health Inequities By gatekeeping health data, the AI Action Plan risks hardwiring bias into the future of American medicine.

The fallout over Anthropic and the Trump administration isn’t just a national security story

It highlights a massive and looming public health risk

I recently wrote for @theatlantic.com about what happens when health data is pushed through an ideologic filter

www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

Study Warns of Large Increase in New HIV Cases in U.S. if Ryan White Program Ends Colorado and several Southern and Midwest states would see the biggest increases in incidence

Worried about this one

www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcover...

How Deciding to Donate a Kidney Saved My Own Life Jessica Lahey's act of altruism had a very unexpected benefit.

How Deciding to Donate a Kidney Saved My Own Life

greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item...

Kansas informs trans residents their driver’s licenses become invalid on Thursday Some transgender Kansans said they had received the letters from the Department of Revenue. Others hadn’t by Wednesday evening.

Fascism is here and now part #347

www.kansascity.com/news/politic...

15 States Sue H.H.S. Over Revisions to Vaccine Schedule

“H.H.S. Secretary R.F.K. Jr. and his C.D.C. are flouting decades of scientific research, ignoring credible medical experts, and threatening to strain state resources and make America’s children sicker”

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/h...

a man with a beard is touching his forehead with his hands ALT: a man with a beard is touching his forehead with his hands

What’s unfortunate is that there is scientific uncertainty re aspects ofGAC, as with *every* field, such that associations should be cautious about stances, but unavoidably must make judgment calls, which evolve over time via reasonable critique, a process muddied by misleading rhetoric

Example: the AMA opposed state bans on GAC. No mention of surgery in kids. So no recent position change. But the author concluded unexplained changes in association positions is partly why one shouldn’t trust in medical associations in general

Opinion | Medical Associations Trusted Belief Over Science on Youth Gender Care

Manipulative rhetoric

Facts are, shall we say, adjusted to misconstrue positions that then are vigorously rebutted in service of sweeping generalizations aimed at undermining trust in current sources of authority

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/o...

Should we view clinical AI as specially inevitable even amid safety signals that would ordinarily send new technologies back to the drawing board?

#bioethics

What RFK Jr.’s CDC Doesn’t Want You to Know The CDC is withholding critical information about vaccine-preventable diseases from the American public. Why?

What RFK Jr.’s CDC Doesn’t Want You to Know
open.substack.com/pub/pauloffi...
RFK Jr.'s CDC is hiding information about outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases.

RFK Jr. May Eliminate the USPSTF, Original Task Force Members Warn Dismantling the task force would be 'an existential threat to clinical practice,' they said

This is what we may loose: “The task force is made up of volunteer experts who review evidence & provide evidence-based recommendations on screening & other preventive care. By law, recommendations that garner an A or B grade must be covered by insurers without any cost sharing for patients.”

U.S. Newborn Hepatitis B Vaccination Rates Plunge, Reversing Years of Gains National data show rates dropped more than 10 points in 2 years after 2023 peak

Welcome to yesteryear

www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdi...

RFK Jr. May Eliminate the USPSTF, Original Task Force Members Warn

Every single step that the anti-science, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist RFK Jr takes to dismantle the US medical, public health, & health research systems is incredibly painful & distressing

This one would hit so hard

Without the USPSTF, evidence-based screening & prevention would crumble 😢

South Carolina Hospitals Aren’t Required to Disclose Measles-Related Admissions. That Leaves Doctors in the Dark. Physicians across South Carolina, home to the largest measles outbreak in decades, are advising patients without the benefit of real-time data on hospitalizations due to measles-related pneumonia, bra...

“Early in his career, Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at Vanderbilt University…worked with the CDC to implement the measles vaccine. When he tells medical students today that in the 1960s, before the measles vaccine, 400 to 500 kids died of measles & its complications each year, “They’re stunned”

The Trump Administration Is Ending Aid That It Says Saves Lives The State Department will let lifesaving projects expire because “there is no strong nexus between the humanitarian response and U.S. national interests,” according to an internal email.

Seven countries are losing all U.S. humanitarian aid: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Somalia, and Zimbabwe.

these projects are being canceled because “there is no strong nexus between the humanitarian response and U.S. national interests.”

www.theatlantic.com/health/2026/...

Waning prevalence of post-COVID symptoms as immunity became ubiquitous

US universities lean on endowments as costs rise and funding cuts bite Schools increasingly rely on investment proceeds to pay for operations amid squeeze on campus budgets

Universities face stiff headwinds amid anti-science, equity-allergic, free speech purge

giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Opinion | The Human Cost of Trump’s War on Science

“Relentless and all-encompassing” attacks on American science and public health

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/o...