Brian Vickery

We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology.

And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces.

- Carl Sagan

We cannot get people with even basic scientific literacy back into leadership positions quickly enough.

The highest cost of demagoguery is paid by the eight thousand little souls who starve to death *every day* while their salvation sits in a warehouse.

The Christians who enabled & still support this administration should be haunted the rest of their days by this ungodly cruelty.

Watch the 2 vids 👇🏻

Study finds no evidence aluminum salts in vaccines are tied to higher risk of asthma, other childhood diseases A new large study from Denmark finds no evidence that aluminum salts used in vaccines are tied to a higher risk of childhood diseases.

A very big study from Denmark generates some reassuring findings about aluminum in childhood vaccines, finding no association between aluminum and development of a number of illnesses, including asthma. www.statnews.com/2025/07/14/a...

YouTube video by American Academy of Pediatrics Protecting Kids: Why Pediatricians Are Suing the Government | AAP

The American Academy of Pediatrics is proud to stand with leading public health organizations by taking legal action to protect the integrity of our immunization system to defend science, evidence-based medicine, and the policies that keep children safe. www.youtube.com/watch?v=DODV...

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Very important study

Vaccines have saved 150 million children over the last 50 years Every ten seconds, one child is saved by a vaccine against a fatal disease.

Read more about the role that vaccines have played in reducing child mortality: ourworldindata.org/vaccines-chi...

Please enjoy some basic facts about thimerosal, a favorite boogeyman of the anti-vax movement, from our friends at Rollins at Emory, the #2 ranked school of public health in the country according to USNWR.

A great post to pin. Vaccines are safe, cost-effective, & prevent serious infections leading to things like deafness, paralysis, cancer, & death. They have probably been the single most important advance in the history of medicine and they are under unnecessary attack.

XO, a pediatric immunologist

EVERYONE wants that. And, it is in our own best interest to give ourselves the best shot at a livable future, since they will be our caregivers and heirs. They will be our leaders. They are our greatest asset.

I mean, WTF are we doing?

In Gaza, in Africa, at the border, in the gender clinic, in your town or the next one over, anywhere and everywhere.

And not just because I’m a pediatrician. Ensuring the health, well-being, and economic security of the next generation is the most nonpartisan issue I can think of. (2/)

Read this.

“The evidence overwhelmingly shows that ensuring children have access to care leads to better outcomes and that Medicaid improves their health and economic well-being into adulthood.”

Of all the s*#t happening in the world, the needless suffering of children is the biggest atrocity(1/)

The ripple effect from the cruelty and fear of these raids is profound. Pediatricians from around the country are seeing an increasing rate of children not showing for their medical appointments due to fear. To enact policies that instill fear of accessing basic needs is truly a low of lows.

Ardem Patapoutian's story is not just the American dream, it is the dream of American science. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1986 at age 18 after fleeing war-torn Lebanon. He spent a year writing for an Armenian newspaper and delivering Domino's at night to become eligible for the University of California, where he earned his undergraduate degree and a postdoctoral fellowship in neuroscience. He started a lab at Scripps Research in San Diego with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, discovered the way humans sense touch, and in 2021 won the Nobel Prize. But with the Trump administration slashing spending on science, Dr. Patapoutian's federal grant to develop new approaches to treating pain has been frozen. In late February, he posted on Bluesky that such cuts would damage biomedical research and prompt an exodus of talent from the United States. Within hours, he had an email from China, offering to move his lab to "any city, any university I want," he said, with a guarantee of funding for the next 20 years.

Man comes to the US from Lebanon. Starts out delivering pizzas, becomes a Nobel winning neuroscientist. Trump freezes his funding, he gets an email from China offering to move his lab “any city, any university I want" with guaranteed funding for 20 years.

What are we doing?

👏🏻 Slashing 👏🏻 federal 👏🏻 investment 👏🏻 in 👏🏻 research 👏🏻 is 👏🏻 a 👏🏻 major 👏🏻 strategic 👏🏻 mistake 👏🏻

Children like Evan are dying needlessly and we have willfully turned away from them, led by an addled man-child who in large part made his own fortune with the help of government grants.

Cutting PEPFAR & similar relief programs should be viewed as a crime against humanity, full stop. Watch👇🏻

This baby is alive because the NIH and other US federal agencies supported research and development of CRISPR technology.

How many babies will die due to cuts in federal research funding?

How many babies would have to die for the richest people in the world to be willing to give up their tax cuts?

Did you know…

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We didn’t come this far for my daughter to be subject to this kind of bullshit from delusional old white male billionaires.

Out of the way, grandpa. Thanks for making a giant mess (again) that our kids will have to clean up for you once you’re gone.

@ossoff.senate.gov @ossoff.bsky.social knows this very well because his wife is an academic physician. But we need the entire country to mobilize on this issue and pester Congress. The NIH - really all of HHS but especially NIH - is a crown jewel of American life and must be saved (end)

And in case you were thinking, ah well they can just go work for a company then - the private sector doesn't do this kind of research. They are driven by quarterly earnings and not the fundamental pursuit of knowledge. If this brain drain continues, it will be literally catastrophic for the US (7/)

BTW the same thing is happening at CDC, FDA, and other HHS branches. These are some of the most highly trained, talented, smartest individuals in the country - creative, motivated, tough, disciplined people who can see things that nobody else sees and pursue them for years (6/)

Besides the obvious impacts of, like, not discovering cures for bad diseases, THIS WILL HAVE GENERATIONAL EFFECTS ON ECONOMIC ACTIVITY, JOB CREATION, AND AMERICAN SUPREMACY. Even if the next administration desires to reverse this trend, all of these folks heading overseas will be gone (5/)

But now, if the Trump administration actually slashes federal research budgets as has been leaked, from $47B at NIH to $27B, those researchers and labs will look for sources of capital elsewhere, or decide to close up shop - hard decisions that CEOs sometimes have to make (4/)

By writing grants to NIH, NSF, foundations, etc. & also in some cases with philanthropy. It is a hustle, even for established tenured professors - because they have more mouths to feed - & it *has always been* existentially challenging for young researchers because < 10% of grants get paid (3/)

Every research scientist - even and especially the famous prize-winning ones - is essentially the CEO of a small business. They are not salaried by their institutions. What the institution pays them is essentially a pass-through of the capital that they themselves have gone out and raised (2/)

We are beginning to see in the data evidence of the brain drain which is entirely predictable, and which Dr. Collins spoke about last week on 60 Minutes. It is essential that the general public understand the nature of scientific research funding so that we can collectively advocate for NIH (1/)

Sam Altman Admits That Saying "Please" and "Thank You" to ChatGPT Is Wasting Millions of Dollars in Computing Power Sam Altman says OpenAI is spending "tens of millions of dollars" processing chatbot queries made with proper etiquette.

Using an LLM to generate a 100-word email requires .14 kilowatt-hours worth of electricity, enough to power 14 LED lights for an hour. If you were to send one AI email a week for a year, you'd use 7.5kWh, equal to an hour's worth of electricity consumed by 9 households. futurism.com/altman-pleas...