Tag: Department of Health and Human Services

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Quackery

RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary will be a catastrophe for public health and medical research

RFK Jr. being RFK Jr.
RFK Jr.

President-Elect Donald Trump has nominated antivax activist, conspiracy theorist, and all around crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. We are so screwed.

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Antivaccine nonsense Politics Quackery

“MAHA”? Antivax conspiracy monger RFK Jr. is not the one to “make America healthy again”

RFK Jr and Donald Trump: MAHA?
RFK Jr and Donald Trump.

Shortly after endorsing Donald Trump for President, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed he and Trump will “make America healthy again.” His proposals to do that range from semi-reasonable to outright quackery.

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Antivaccine nonsense Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Monitoring COVID-19 vaccine safety during a pandemic

National Vaccine Program Office is at HHS
The headquarters of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is seen in Washington Nov. 4. A rule issued in August by the department mandates coverage of contraception and sterilization in most private health insurance plans. The U.S. bishops, saying the directive does not offer appropriate exclusions for religious institutions, view the mandate as an attack on religious liberty. (CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec) (Nov. 4, 2011) See HOUSE-CONSCIENCE Nov. 2, 2011.

Last year, the Trump administration essentially disbanded the National Vaccine Program Office, folding it into an office focused on infectious diseases. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. What does this mean for monitoring the safety of the soon-to-be-approved COVID-19 vaccines?

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Clinical trials Politics Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Federal biomedical science policy under Donald Trump, nearly 100 days in

In less than two weeks, the Trump administration will have passed that magical “first 100 days” marker. Let’s check in and see how Donald Trump is shaping federal biomedical policy thus far. Hint: It’s deregulation über alles.

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

Stanislaw Burzynski versus regulations protecting human research subjects, revisited

Here we go again. Every time I think I can get away from this topic for a while, I get sucked back in. Indeed, it seems that hardly a week can go by when I don’t find myself pulled inexorably back to this horrible, horrible clinic and what I consider to be the abuses of […]