Tag: COVID-19

Cartoon character Kirby holding a red sign with large yellow letters that read "STFU." Kirby has a cheerful expression and is set against a blue background.

Dr. Vinay Prasad is Repeatedly Undermining RCTs. Why?

It's quite the journey from "RCT or STFU" to "we will always have a place for controlled clinical studies."

/ June 10, 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
No turbo cancer at ASCO

No turbo cancer at ASCO: William Makis vs. Scott Adams and A Midwestern Doctor instead?

I was in Chicago this weekend attending the ASCO meeting, the largest oncology meeting in the world. Nary a talk or poster about "turbo cancer" was seen, but that doesn't mean there wasn't cancer quack fight online to distract me from the meeting.

/ June 2, 2025
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
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
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
A man wearing a green cap with the words “MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN” adjusts the brim while standing outdoors, with blurred trees and grass in the background.

MAHA and “soft eugenics” revisited: The “autism tsunami,” Dr. Oz, and your “patriotic duty” to stay healthy

Two weeks ago, I referred to the "soft eugenics" of RFK Jr. and MAHA. This week, he and Dr. Oz provide new examples, one about autism, the other about public health.

/ April 21, 2025
Extinction-level event. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

How bad is it? RFK Jr.’s extinction-level threat to science-based federal health policy and public health is here

Five months ago, I called RFK Jr. an "extinction-level" threat to US biomedical science and public health. That extinction is under way.

/ April 14, 2025
Trofim Lysenko

“Make America Healthy Again”: The new Lysenkoism

Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet scientist whose dogmatic science denialism led to mass famine when his ideas were applied to agriculture. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a lot like Lysenko in his science denial. Will his results be as disastrous?

/ March 31, 2025