Tim Lahey

Over the past two days, I’ve been in Washington representing the American College of Physicians at the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). I am deeply concerned by recent decisions th... TikTok video by jasongoldmanmd

Yes

www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8UsgYsH/

Here is Jason Goldman's beautiful, amazing takedown of the whole sham #ACIP meeting today. (2 parts) So glad he said what every expert in the field is feeling today (and all year).

CDC Panel Drops Recommendation That All Babies Get Hep B Shot at Birth Panel adopts shared decision-making policy; dissenters say it endangers children, lacks evidence

"We are doing harm by changing this wording."

www.medpagetoday.com/pediatrics/v...

AI chatbots used inaccurate information to change people's political opinions, study finds A paper published in the journal Science found that chatbots become more persuasive when they share large amounts of information.

Study catches AI chatbots “optimizing persuasiveness … at some cost to truthfulness,” which will surprise zero politicians

www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year Is ‘Cloud Dancer’

Pantone partners with ICE to declare white the color of 2025

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/s...

Americans More Likely to Accept Guidance from AMA than CDC on Vaccine Safety | The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania By a 2-1 margin, Americans would be more likely to accept guidance on vaccine safety from the AMA than the CDC, an Annenberg survey finds.

Annenberg survey suggests Americans trust AMA more than CDC, ie trusted experts can protect people from wing nuts

www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-mo...

Poll Suggests G.O.P. Will Face More Blame if Obamacare Subsidies Go Away

How do we spread this novel idea that citizens vote out rulers who harm them?

www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/u...

What to expect from this week's U.S. vaccine meeting Hep B, routine vaccination schedule, and a firehose of falsehoods

Excellent summary of how to manage disinformation from the bizarro-ACIP

open.substack.com/pub/yourloca...

A dozen former FDA commissioners decry Prasad memo on vaccine regulation Changes to the ways in which the FDA plans to regulate vaccines represent a threat to effective vaccines and public health, 12 former commissioners say.

Experts say Prasad’s shadowy changes to evidence-based vaccine approvals risk real harm

www.statnews.com/2025/12/03/f...

CDC’s vaccine advisory panel faces a crisis of its own making “ACIP has drifted toward inflating speculative risks while downplaying well-established vaccine benefits,” write former CDC officials Demetre Daskalakis, Daniel Jernigan, and Debra Houry.

The health of Americans is at risk as those in power abandon evidence and process, and elevate anecdote and rhetoric in their place. Excellent article (if sad to read) www.statnews.com/2025/12/03/a...

FDA Approves New Drug  That Reverses Effects Of Narcan SILVER SPRING, MD—Praising the drug’s ability to quickly and effectively increase fatalities amongst the nation’s opioid users, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new nasal spray Wednesd...

FDA Approves New Drug  That Reverses Effects Of Narcan

FDA official proposes ‘impossible’ standards for vaccine testing that could curtail access to immunizations

1918 HERE WE COME

www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-va...

RFK Jr.’s vaccine advisers plan biggest change yet to childhood schedule The new chair of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices said the panel plans to vote to end universal hepatitis B vaccination at birth and to scrutinize if childhood shots cause allergies.

I don’t see doctors who can’t interpret vital signs and labs

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Excellent new lit review and meta-analysis of the link between BMI & #tuberculosis, including data from our cohort in Dar es Salaam

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40922029/

Thanks for the great finds. Especially loving Theo Croker, CARRTOONS, Dargz, Maribou State and Loyle Carner

Disrupted Federal Funding for Extramural Cancer Research This cross-sectional study assesses the scale and scope of terminated cancer research grants from the National Cancer Institute.

The US government support of cancer research via NCI
has been severely cut.
And of June 2025, "There were 181 individual terminated NCI funded grants, with a total award amount of $640,867, 956."
jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

ID Things to Be Grateful for -- 2025 Edition Looking back on these annual Thanksgiving posts, I notice an odd pattern: every few years, the intro turns into a kind of apology. As in, Yes, I know the title sounds upbeat, please don’t attack me. T...

Can we really be grateful for anything in the ID world in 2025?

Sure -- plenty of great advances!

Here are a half-dozen to celebrate (and be grateful for) in 2025, believe it or not. #idsky
blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-obser...

Why screening for the deadliest cancer in the U.S. misses most cases A new study reveals that current lung cancer screening guidelines may be missing most cases, prompting calls for changes to detect the disease earlier.

Are lung cancer screening guidelines failing to save lives because of cancer stereotypes (as this suggests) or aligned to the available clinical trials?

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

A Battle with My Blood When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family.

Lovely essay

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

C.D.C. Links Measles Outbreaks in Multiple States for the First Time

SCOOP: CDC officials on Monday linked for the first time the measles outbreak that began in Texas with another in Utah and Arizona, a finding that could end America’s status as a nation that has eliminated measles.
(Gift link)

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/h...

For the first time in my career, I can’t tell people to trust what the CDC website says. And that is an incredibly sad and devastating place for this country to be.

If there was any doubt at all that the CDC is fully destroyed, this page on autism and vaccines on its website confirms it. It's now just another vessel of dangerous health misinformation. I have no words. This is beyond sad.

The latest update to US CDC's website on autism and vaccination is, sadly, a major blow to the credibility of this institution. Because it undermines faith in any impartiality. It's going to take a major effort to reconstruct its status, assuming it even survives the next few years.

Under RFK Jr., CDC promotes false vaccines-autism link it once discredited The CDC’s website now says health authorities ignored evidence of a potential connection between vaccines and autism, despite dozens of studies showing no link.

A monument to Bin Laden built on ground zero

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Methodological concerns raised regarding pivotal studies of non-TB-specific benefits of BCG immunization

“The knowledge that we would have had about how we can enhance population health through those clinical trials will be lost.”

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Opinion | In Memoriam: The Sudden Demise of the AMA Journal of Ethics A great loss for physicians, the profession, and the public

"we mourn the loss of AMA JoE for the field of bioethics. Even more, we mourn what the AMA's sudden elimination of its ethics journal might mean for physicians, the profession, and the public."

www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/seco...

Firearm Homicide in Pregnant Women and State-Level Firearm Ownership This cross-sectional study examines firearm homicide rates in pregnant compared with nonpregnant women and whether estimated state-level firearm ownership is associated with homicide deaths among preg...

New paper reminds us yet again: HOMICIDE is the leading cause of death for pregnant women.

Gun violence & partner violence are related.

All-cause homicide & firearm homicide of pregnant women are higher, in states w/ higher calculated firearm ownership (1/x 🧵

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Working from home #wfh