Chris Fetsch

We figured out to *cure cancer* (ref: last year’s pancreatic cancer trials) and the Trump administration decided “nah.” That a society could reject a cure for cancer is astounding.

wow. this doesn't seem real.. tell me it's real.

thehill.com/homenews/sen...

You have about 24 hours to voice your opinion, please do!
🧠📈

👇🏻👇🏻Fantastic article written by @jasonsynaptic.bsky.social on why we still need Animal Research. 🧫 🧬 🧪 🧠
#neuroskyence
#academicsky

Comment! Word is the number of comments really matters. One should not assume that advocates of reducing animal research are fully aware of the field-specific reasons why it remains necessary for most biomedical questions. Explain it to them.

FDA-NIH Workshop: Reducing Animal Testing The FDA is hosting a workshop on reducing animal testing. The workshop is open to current FDA and NIH employees.

Science peeps action alert - time for comments at this link. Let FDA/NIH know that NAMS are not ready for prime time.... #Neuroskyence #MedSky #academicsky

www.fda.gov/news-events/...

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.

A broad group of National Institutes of Health (NIH) public servants have taken action with the "Bethesda Declaration" that targets the NIH and HHS Leadership. Join these courageous and committed professionals by adding your name now. actionnetwork.org/forms/add-na...

After the brutal reality of dealing with student papers in the ChatGPT era finally hit me, here are a few tactics that I've found at least somewhat effective in getting students to do their own writing: 🧵

I've received additional confirmation, as well as an email I can share publicly.

See the directive NIH grants management staff received from Michelle Bulls, director of extramural policy at NIH:

I had been doubtful that we were going to have a "this is the crisis moment" with Trump, as opposed to "everything about this is a destructive catastrophe."

But the Abrego Garcia case is the crisis moment.

1/

Opinion | This Is How Universities Can Escape Trump’s Trap, If They Dare It’s been tried in other countries facing authoritarian crackdowns. It works.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/o...

No evidence linking Tufts student to antisemitism or terrorism, State Dept. office found An internal memo, prepared before Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk was detained by ICE, raises doubts about the Trump administration’s claims that she supports Hamas.

This Tufts student was grabbed off the street, cuffed and taken out of state solely because she co-wrote a completely respectful oped in the student paper.

And Rubio’s State Dept now admits they have nothing more damning than that.

Gift link wapo.st/4j8d5Uh

going to start calling myself a centrist and then listing all my leftist views as proof, just going to start moving the overton window by force

There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead. No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.

One of many moments in Omar El Akkad’s new book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” that will stop you in your tracks.

The decision a lot of universities face now is whether to:

-- have their federal funding pulled because they stood on principle to protect their students and the integrity of their research, or

-- have their funding pulled anyway just because they exist, regardless of how cravenly they submit.

I defy Bret Stephens to go to Columbia or Berkeley for one single day. Just an absurd caricature. Turn off your laptop (which is feeding you a handful of extreme, unrepresentative anecdotes) and walk around.

Oh hell yeah.

Last year, I was overjoyed to receive an NIH NRSA fellowship to study toddler brains and caregiving effects on memory at Columbia. Last night, my grant was terminated.

Don't obey in advance!

www.dorfonlaw.org/2025/03/wait...

red button meme with options of "mention the collapse of democracy, science, and freedom in the US" vs "fine"

Me, whenever I'm asked how it's going

1. You feel powerless? Don’t know what you can do to resist the rise of fascism?
Here is an answer: Good Things.
Fascism inflicts pain and harm as a matter of doctrine.
Kindness, care and conviviality defend us from it.
The more we build community, the less it can take root.
🧵

the leap from disappearing the undocumented to disappearing visa holders to disappearing green card holders to disappearing naturalized citizens to disappearing natural born citizens is no leap at all, but a series of tiny steps

block the path

What to do about PhD admissions this cycle. Can we think creatively about ways not to lose this cohort? None of the ideas below are great, but maybe some are better than nothing: 1/

"Meep."

I think Beaker's expression captures a bit of how we all are feeling lately, but it was an inspiring day overall. Francis Collins was my favorite speaker (and music act).

#standupforscience
@standupforscience.bsky.social

As a former Fulbright Scholar (in Chile), I personally understand how terrifying this is. U.S. citizens around the world & foreign nationals in the U.S. — all Fulbright Scholars — have now had their incomes eliminated & are stranded.

DOGE is an illegal, criminal operation that must be shut down.

Trump tweets: All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I need the institution where I teach (NYU) to respond clearly and unequivocally saying this is unconstitutional and they will not be adhering to it. This is a red line.

I need scientists 🧪 to *THINK*: Do you really believe *only* $8mil went to research w/ transgenic mice, one of the most common tools in modern biomedicine?

Or maybe fascists are targeting trans people everywhere they can, including research using animal models of gender affirming hormone therapy?

Novel idea that agents can underweight time spent outside versus inside reward pursuit, still obeying a reward maximization rule (i.e., not suboptimal). Maybe we should rethink what it means to be impulsive? New reviewed preprint in eLife by @hushulab.bsky.social elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

We need to learn and adapt. Every single Senate Dem vote for Rubio. It got us nothing. "Rollover and play dead" got us nothing. Fight back or lose the democracy. Full stop.

t.co/7JNWcY7CFN

Urge congress to oppose the SPARE act