Category: Politics and Regulation

A man in a suit speaks at a podium with the U.S. presidential seal, gesturing with his hands, while another man in a suit stands behind him, listening attentively.

RFK Jr. Sacks Entire CDC Vaccine Committee

I’m sure you are as sick of reading about RFK Jr. as we are of writing about him, but this is the world we live in. We cannot let outrage fatigue cause us to take our eye off the ball. If nothing else, SBM needs to chronicle every anti-science move that this administration makes. As most people, and certainly most readers here,...

/ June 11, 2025
Mehmet Oz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Marty Makary, Jay Bhattacharya, Vinay Prasad

Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad embrace a “more fluid concept of evidence” at the FDA

Last Thursday during a roundtable on stem cell therapies, new FDA Commissioner Marty Makary referred to EBM levels of evidence as an artificial and dogmatic construct. Apparently Dr. David Katz's "more fluid concept of evidence" now reigns at the FDA—selectively.

/ June 9, 2025
Two hands are raised above the surface of a body of water, suggesting a person is struggling or in distress, possibly drowning, with a clear blue sky and calm water in the background.
A man wearing glasses and a suit, identified as Dr. Mark Geier, speaks into a microphone at a hearing. The C-SPAN2 logo appears on-screen, with “Geier” and “Genetic Consultants of Maryland” displayed. Several people sit in the background.
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The MAHA Report: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (mostly the bad and ugly)

President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary's MAHA report has landed. It's a mix of the good (a little), but mostly the bad and the ugly (a lot).

/ May 26, 2025
James Lyons-Weiler

Attacking vaccines through the misunderstanding of medical ethics

Since becoming HHS Secretary, RFK Jr. has been deceptively weaponizing principles of evidence-based medicine against vaccines. Will weaponizing research ethics be next? It might if the ideas of one of his advisors, James Lyons-Weiler, are any indication.

/ May 19, 2025
A man in a suit, labeled as "Secretary KENNEDY," speaks passionately into a microphone at a hearing. He sits between two men in suits, with an audience, cameras, and microphones visible in the background.

Senator Hassan Sets Secretary Kennedy Straight

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's reckless insistence on undermining confidence in vaccines and reckless elevation of the wholly unqualified David Geier to a potentially influential role at HHS

/ May 18, 2025
National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Lysenkoism 2.0 and the dismantling of the NIH

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "make America healthy again" is basically Lysenko 2.0. It's come to the NIH and is destroying the crown jewel of US biomedical research with ideology and cronyism.

/ May 12, 2025
Two men in suits, identified as Dr. Mark Geier and David Geier, appear on a Fox 19 news broadcast. Both are seated indoors in front of a wooden cabinet and bookshelves, with name labels shown at the bottom.

David Geier, Mail Order Pharmacist

David Geier was in the drug business. What was he selling before the FDA stepped in?

/ May 10, 2025
EBM hierarchy

HHS is weaponizing evidence-based medicine to falsely portray vaccines as unsafe

Last week, HHS announced that all "new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials." Sounds good? Not so fast. This is really a deceptive weaponization of evidence-based medicine to undermine confidence in vaccines and eliminate at least some of them.

/ May 5, 2025