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fungusamongus.bsky.social

@fungusamongus.bsky.social
1K followers 1.1K following 0 posts

Assistant Professor of Microbiology & Genetics at a SLAC 🧪 Fan of SciFi and Fantasy

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Microbiology Society @microbiologysociety.org · 17/09/2026
It’s International Microorganism Day! For a third year running, some of our Champions have told us about their favourite microbes and our very talented Champion, Eliza Wolfson, has brought these to life with her illustrations! @eliza-coli.bsky.social @femsmicro.org
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Erin Biba @erinbiba.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
This is a *fantastic* video that explains exactly WTF is going on with Taylor Farms and how tracing works TLDR: - they are responsible - the false positive was only on one of several samples - it’s difficult to test parasites - there may still be other sources - Taylor Farms is being shady AF
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Pam Herd @pamherd.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
The number of NIH competitive awards is down 50% from 2025, and down ~70% from prior years. Even if they catch up by the end of the year, only wealthy institutions can bridge these huge funding gaps.They're killing science-and violating the constitution-by weaponizing the bureaucracy
figure showing the trends I detail in the tweet text
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Prof Sheena Cruickshank @sheencr.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
Moderna have announced that they won't run new phase three trials now with massive impacts for new vaccine development- why- its because of RFK Jr and his anti-vaccine campaigns and cancelling mRNA vaccine research which affect the sales the company can then make 🧪🧵 #PublicHealth
biospace.com
Moderna Won’t Run Phase III Vaccine Trials as Skepticism Grows in US: Bloomberg
Growing opposition to vaccines in the U.S., driven by recent government policy changes, makes it difficult to see a return on investment in vaccine development, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said this w...
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ProPublica @propublica.org · 22/12/2025
By the time Tor Top’s mother was sick with cholera, the nearby clinic had been shuttered for two weeks. He bundled her into a rented canoe and paddled toward the nearest hospital, eight hours away. Less than halfway into the journey, his mother died.
propublica.org
Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera.
Behind closed doors in Washington, top advisers made a series of decisions that had devastating repercussions for the poorest country on earth. We went to South Sudan and found people who died as a re...
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Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 11/07/2025
Dr. Gonsalves has written a piece that is equal parts brilliant and tragic. Read it and use it as motivation to keep fighting the destruction of US science infrastructure. @gregggonsalves.bsky.social
thenation.com
America Is Sliding Into the Abyss
Our science and health infrastructure lies in tatters. Once-dead viruses are roaring back to life. Many people will die. In other words, we’ve reached the point of no return.
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 02/06/2025
Researcher Amita Gupta has spent more than a decade planning and running a $70-million trial to study a new tuberculosis drug, enrolling ~6,000 participants in 13 countries. It might all have been for nothing. That's because a new NIH policy has abruptly cut off billions to trials abroad. 🧪
nature.com
NIH grant cuts will axe clinical trials abroad — and could leave thousands without care
US agency’s new policy could abruptly end studies of infectious diseases and cancer, leaving researchers scrambling for funds.
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Dr. Sven-Eric Jordt #TobRegSky @sejordt.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
NIH stops development of HIV vaccine, terminates grants to consortia, including at Duke University. www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
‘Devasting.’ NIH cancels future funding plans for HIV vaccine consortia
Researchers decry agency’s decision just as new leads reinvigorate search for long-sought vaccine
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 22/05/2025
NSF Physics was cut by 85%, basically wiping out most of its capacity for supporting research. NSF Astronomy was cut by 53% Undergrad education was cut by 71% and research on learning by 79% Graduate education was cut by 100% to ZERO. #GiftLink ⚛️🔭 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades (Gift Article)
The lag in funding extends far beyond D.E.I. initiatives, affecting almost every area of science: chemistry, computing, engineering, materials and more.
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Scott Delaney @scott-delaney.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
All NIH and NSF grants for my entire team--and for all of Harvard, I guess?--have been terminated. As provocative as that sounds, the practical effect is probably not much. Everything was already frozen. 🤷‍♂️ On the upside, it makes tracking terminated grants easier. No more guesswork at Harvard!
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Wim Meijer @wimgmeijer.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
NIH’s Vaccine Research Center once had a 400-person workforce developing and clinically testing vaccines and antibody treatments for dangerous infectious diseases.. Now, after a steady firing of key contractors by the Trump administration, the VRC is reeling.. 🧪🦠 www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
NIH’s key vaccine center slammed by contract cuts
Antibody and vaccine work is slowed after the National Institutes of Health loses as many as 2200 contract workers
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Sharon🇺🇦Johnston @sharonjohnston.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Were you aware that Trump is destroying previous scientific research data? Not just discontinuing the funding of it. Not just hiding it from US. Literally DESTROYING IT. www.bbc.com/future/artic...
bbc.com
Inside the desperate rush to save decades of US scientific data from deletion
Swathes of scientific data deletions are sweeping across US government websites – with decades of research at risk. Now, scientists are racing to save their work before it's lost.
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TAGHIVscience @taghivscience.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
abcnews.go.com
CDC allegedly cancels Emory's HIV self-testing program after not enough workers left to oversee it
On April 22, the CDC allegedly informed Emory University in Atlanta that its large HIV self-testing program was being canceled two years early.
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Brittany Trang @brittanytrang.com · 02/05/2025
Scientific research is going to be hit by tariffs: Lab research supplier Millipore Sigma is going to add temporary surcharges on all orders shipped to the US. More @statnews.com @pharmalot.bsky.social: #chemsky #sciencesky 🧪🩺🧫💉⚗️ www.statnews.com/pharmalot/20...
statnews.com
Millipore Sigma will add temporary tariff surcharges on products shipped to the U.S.
Millipore Sigma, one of the largest suppliers of medical research products, will start adding a temporary tariff surcharge to all product orders shipped to the U.S.
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Alexander Tin @alexander-a-tin.bsky.social · 03/05/2025
Nearly all of remaining staff at CDC's NIOSH received lay off notices today, we're told This is an org chart shared with us illustrating eliminated divisions to date Cuts had already upended approvals of new N95 respirators and probes of firefighter injuries www.cbsnews.com/news/worker-...
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Megan Ranney MD MPH @meganranney.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
⚠️ A few important pieces of health news this week: 1. The longest-running longitudinal study of women's health (which has helped us figure out how to prevent cancer, reduce osteoporosis, reduce perimenopause symptoms, and more) has essentially been shuttered. www.npr.org/2025/04/23/n...
npr.org
Funding cut for landmark study of women's health
The Women's Health Initiative, begun in the 1990s, has made many important discoveries. Now funding to collect more research data will end in September.
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Dr. Jen Gunter @drjengunter.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Let’s dream up to ways to shit on women. Oh hey, let’s cancel the largest clinical trial ever for women www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women
The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings
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Alt CDC (they/them) @altcdc.altgov.info · 21/04/2025
HHS Eliminated Programs - Updated Here is an updated list of all programs eliminated in the 2026 HHS Budget. Reach out if you have information or clarity on the cuts. These cuts will impact Every Single American. Email altcdc1@pm.me for PDF and xlsx.
A list of all  agencies and programs the Trump administration is seeking to eliminate. An accessible PDF is available from altCDC. Email altcdc1@pm.me.
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Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
If anyone wants to know what happens next, check out @deborahb.bsky.social's book "The Poison Squad," full of grisly tales of death and illness that led to the founding of the FDA over a century ago. www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/312067...
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Alexander Berger @albrgr.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
New preprint finding that eliminating US global health funding over the next fifteen years would cause: - 15.2m deaths from AIDS - 2.2m deaths from TB - 7.9 additional child deaths
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Scott L Greer @scottlgreer.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
"It's now been eight days since both Dorcas and her mom, Theresa, took the last of their HIV medications. A single mom and an only child, they've always taken their medicine together at 8 p.m. each night. The change in routine has confused the little girl." www.npr.org/sections/goa...
npr.org
Haunted by hopelessness: 12 Zambians share their stories as HIV drugs run out
Mothers and children, husbands and wives, doctors, truck drivers and religious leaders are all grappling with the fallout from the sudden U.S. cuts in aid.
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Billy Hanlon @bhanlon15.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Washington Post: 'Women, minorities fired in purge of NIH science review boards' 'Scientists, with expertise in fields that include mental health, cancer & infectious disease, typically serve five-year terms and were not given a reason for their dismissal' www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025...
washingtonpost.com
Women, minorities fired in purge of NIH science review boards
Scientists, with expertise in fields that include mental health, cancer and infectious disease, typically serve five-year terms and were not given a reason for their dismissal.
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Max Kozlov @maxkozlov.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
NEW: Entire scientific fields have been wiped out by the nearly 800 grants cancelled at NIH, finds a @nature.com analysis of the unprecedented cuts. About half of all 2024 NIH projects related to LGBT+ health or vaccine hesitancy — gone. See the other topics and US states hardest hit here:
nature.com
How Trump 2.0 is slashing NIH-backed research — in charts
Nature analyses which fields of science and US states are being hit hardest by grant terminations.
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
The title tells the story and the 5 graphs amplify it www.nature.com/articles/d41...
nature.com
154 million lives and counting: 5 charts reveal the power of vaccines
But public-health specialists worry that misinformation and funding cuts could affect vaccination rates.
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Kathleen Bachynski @bachynski.bsky.social · 08/04/2025
This is literally sickening. “HHS announced sweeping layoffs last week… As a result of federal funding cuts, New Mexico – which has reported 54 measles cases as part of the outbreak – terminated contracts for 20 temporary workers who were helping order vaccines and check vaccination records.”
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Joshua Weitz @joshuasweitz.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Hitting on themes that many have been had in conversations, on social, blogs, essays, op-eds, and more, @nvpatel.bsky.social describes the ongoing crisis in the @nytimes.com. The fate of American science is not yet written, what we do now shapes the future. 🎁 link: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/03/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | The Uncertain Fate of the Young American Scientist
Young researchers are choosing between staying in science or staying in the United States.
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Katherine Eban @katherineeban.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
NEW @vanityfair.com: When Americans died, were blinded, had eyeballs removed from tainted eye drops, @fda.gov relied on Dr Timothy Pohlhaus, among its few top sterile drug manufacturing experts. He, thousands more, were fired from US health agencies yesterday. www.vanityfair.com/news/story/t...
vanityfair.com
The Expert Who Kept Eye Drops From Blinding You Was Fired Yesterday
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency terminated thousands of experienced public health professionals in an April Fools’ Day massacre. We’re all about to pay the ...
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Your Local Epidemiologist @ylepidemiologist.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Can someone explain to me how this is making America healthy? Because to me, it seems like this isn't about health at all—it's dismantling the very systems that protect us when it matters most.
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Your Local Epidemiologist @ylepidemiologist.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
But beyond jobs, historical knowledge, and projects stopped in their tracks, this will impact Americans' health. Viruses don't pause when government stops working. Bacteria doesn't pause. Worker safety doesn't pause. Chronic diseases don't pause.
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Your Local Epidemiologist @ylepidemiologist.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Who was fired? HIV office? Gone. Environmental health (like heat risk to children with asthma)? Gone. Gun violence office? Gone. Injury prevention? Gone. Communications? Gone. Worker safety? Gone. Division of reproductive health? Gone. Disability health? Gone. TB prevention? Gone.
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Edward Nirenberg @enirenberg.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
Peter Marks’s resignation letter. Everyone should read this.
Peter Marks, MD, PhD
Director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20903
March 28, 2025
Sara Brenner, MD, MPH
Acting Commissioner of Food and Drugs
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
10903 New Hampshire Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20903
Dear Dr. Brenner:
It is with a heavy heart that I have decided to resign from FDA and retire from federal service as Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research effective April 5, 2025. I leave behind a staff of professionals who are undoubtedly the most devoted to protecting and promoting the public health of any group of people that I have encountered during my four decades working in the public and private sectors. I have always done my best to advocate for their well-being and I would ask that you do the same during this very difficult time during which their critical importance to the safety and security of our nation may be underappreciated.
Over the past years I have been involved in enhancing the safety of our nation's blood supply, in advancing the field of cell and gene therapy, and in responding to public health emergencies. In the last of these, during the COVID-19 pandemic I had the privilege of watching the vision that I conceived for Operation Warp Speed in March 2020 in collaboration with Dr. Robert Kadlec become a reality under the leadership of HHS Secretary Azar and President Trump due to the unwavering commitment of public servants at FDA and elsewhere across the government. At FDA, the tireless efforts of staff across the agency resulted in remarkably expediting the development of vaccines against the virus, meeting the standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness expected by the American public. The vaccines undoubtedly markedly reduced morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 in the United States and elsewhere. Many of these same individuals applied learnings from the pandemic during a flawless response helping…ongoing multistate measles outbreak that is particularly severe in Texas reminds us of what happens when confidence in well-established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined.
Measles, which killed more than 100,000 unvaccinated children last year in Africa and Asia owing to pneumonitis and encephalitis caused by the virus, had been eliminated from our shores. The two-dose measles, mumps, rubella vaccine regimen (MMR) using over the past decades has a remarkably favorable benefit-risk profile. The MMR vaccine is 97% or more effective in preventing measles following the two-dose series, and its safety has been remarkably well studied. Though rarely followed by a single fever-related seizure, or very rarely by allergic reactions or blood clotting disorders, the vaccine very simply does not cause autism, nor is it associated with encephalitis or death. It does, however, protect against a potential devasting consequence of prior measles infection, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), which is an untreatable, relentlessly progressive neurologic disorder leading to death in about 1 in 10,000 individuals infected with measles. Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at FDA is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation's health, safety. and security.
In the years following the pandemic, at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research we have applied the same unwavering commitment to public health priorities to the development of cell and gene therapies to address both hereditary and acquired rare diseases. During my tenure as Center Director we have approved 22 gene therapies, including the first gene therapy ever to be approved in the United States. However, we know that we must do better to expedite the development of treatments for those individual suffering from any one of the thousan…
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Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD @prasad.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
“We’re failing to appreciate the people and institutions who’ve propelled these remarkable advances, undermining them without offering credible alternatives, & risking the loss of future breakthroughs that many patients are counting on.” - former FDA head in 1st T term @scottgottliebmd.bsky.social
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Tara C. Smith @aetiology.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
@lenasun.bsky.social has reported that frequently-retracted, notorious antivaxxer David Geier has been tapped by Kennedy to run his autism/vaccine study. Geier is part of a father/son duo that have published bogus papers in this area for decades, often retracted & unethical.
washingtonpost.com
Vaccine skeptic hired to head federal study of immunizations and autism
A long-discredited researcher and vaccine skeptic will conduct a government study on whether vaccines cause autism.
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BK. Titanji @boghuma.bsky.social · 11/03/2025
These cuts mean: - Thousands dying daily from TB, HIV, Malaria, avoidable deaths! - Devastation to global pandemic surveillance making certain next pandemic will come soon. - Children going hungry in war torn zones Human lives are not "waste". This is mass murder! www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
theguardian.com
Rubio says 83% of USAid programs terminated after six-week purge
Surviving aid to be administered by state department in radical narrowing of definition of US national interest
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E John Wherry @ejohnwherry.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
YES. Need to say this loudly and often! This 2.46x is also the short-term ROI. Long-term ROI (more difficult to estimate) may ~10x. Highest for any gov't spending. And the source of discoveries necessary for all new drugs (industry important too but without NIH funded science there's no foundation)
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