Comments closedThe future of America as a superpower in research appears grim. Even on issues he claims he supports, he does not follow scientific evidence. Picking a person like this to lead is like having the wolf guard the sheep.
The call to Angela Rasmussen came out of the blue and posed a troubling question. Had she heard the rumour that key data sets would be removed from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website the next day?
It’s something Rasmussen had thought could never happen.
“It had never really been thought of before that CDC would actually start deleting some of these crucial public health data sets,” said the University of Saskatchewan virologist. “These data are really, really important for everybody’s health — not just in the U.S. but around the world.”
The following day, Jan. 31, Rasmussen started to see data disappear. She knew she needed to take action.
Comments closedElon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency group has made swift work of the billionaire’s goal to scale back or dismantle much of the federal government, end diversity policies and otherwise further President Donald Trump’s agenda.
DOGE employees, many of whom have no government experience, have been going through data systems, shutting down DEI programs and in some cases, whole agencies.
As of Feb. 10, ABC has tracked Musk and his DOGE team gaining access to at least 15 federal agencies.
Comments closedA federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked the National Institutes of Health from cutting research funding in 22 states that filed suit earlier in the day arguing that the plan would eviscerate studies into treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and a host of other ailments.
The funding cuts, announced late Friday, were to take effect on Monday. But the attorneys general of Massachusetts and 21 other states sued. They argued that the Trump administration’s plan to slash $4 billion in overhead costs — known as “indirect costs” — violated a 79-year-old law that governs how administrative agencies establish and administer regulations.
Comments closedLong COVID patients exhibit swelling in an area of the brain linked to memory problems, poor concentration and delayed responses during conversations, researchers have found.…
Comments closedWhen we had the honor of being sworn in as the 70th, 71st, 75th, 76th and 78th secretaries of the Treasury, we took an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution.
Our roles were multifaceted. We sought to develop sound policy to advance the president’s agenda and represent the economic interests of the United States on the world stage. But in doing that, we recognized that our most fundamental responsibility was the faithful execution of the laws and Constitution of the United States.
We were fortunate that during our tenures in office no effort was made to unlawfully undermine the nation’s financial commitments. Regrettably, recent reporting gives substantial cause for concern that such efforts are underway today.
Comments closedThe Trump administration is cutting billions of dollars in biomedical research funding, alarming academic leaders who said it would imperil their universities and medical centers and drawing swift rebukes from Democrats who predicted dire consequences for scientific research.
The move, announced Friday night by the National Institutes of Health, drastically cuts NIH’s funding for “indirect” costs related to research. These are the administrative requirements, facilities and other operations that many scientists say are essential but that some Republicans have claimed are superfluous.
Comments closedA nasal vaccine for COVID-19 – based on technology developed at Washington University in St. Louis – is poised to enter a phase 1 clinical trial in the U.S. after an investigational new drug application from Ocugen, Inc. was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Ocugen, a U.S.-based biotechnology company, licensed the innovative technology from WashU in 2022.
The trial will be sponsored and conducted by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The FDA’s action is a critical first step toward initiation of the phase 1 trial, planned for this spring.
While cases of COVID-19 have fallen dramatically since the early years of the pandemic, the virus continues to circulate and still causes significant illnesses and deaths. The nasal vaccine technology is designed to induce strong immunity in the nose and upper respiratory tract, right where the virus enters the body, thereby potentially stopping transmission of the virus in addition to reducing serious illness and death. Most COVID-19 vaccines are injected into the arm or leg, and while they are effective at reducing illness and death, they do not halt transmission. The new trial will evaluate the safety and efficacy of the vaccine administered via two routes: inhaled into the lungs and sprayed into the nose.
Comments closedIn early February 2020, China locked down more than 50 million people, hoping to hinder the spread of a new coronavirus. No one knew at the time exactly how it was spreading, but Lidia Morawska, an expert on air quality at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, did not like the clues she managed to find.
It looked to her as if the coronavirus was spreading through the air, ferried by wafting droplets exhaled by the infected. If that were true, then standard measures such as disinfecting surfaces and staying a few feet away from people with symptoms would not be enough to avoid infection.
Dr. Morawska and her colleague, Junji Cao at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, drafted a dire warning. Ignoring the airborne spread of the virus, they wrote, would lead to many more infections. But when the scientists sent their commentary to medical journals, they were rejected over and over again.
Comments closedResearchers have uncovered a link between COVID-19 and blood markers linked to faulty proteins in the brain.
In an analysis led by researchers at Imperial College London and the UK Dementia Research Institute, scientists found that people who had previously had COVID-19 were more likely to have increased levels of biomarkers linked to faulty amyloid proteins – a known hallmark for Alzheimer’s disease.
Comments closedThe European Commission has just launched a new tool that supports the tracking of the spread of infectious diseases by analysing wastewater: the European Wastewater Surveillance Dashboard. It displays data from across the EU by bringing together existing national and research-based dashboards.
Comments closedThe Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization (VIDO) at the University of Saskatchewan has been awarded a $24 million grant to help develop a vaccine to protect against wide-ranging strains of coronaviruses.
VIDO’s funding flows from Norwegian-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) into its ongoing development of its pan-sarbecovirus vaccine.
Comments closedThe National Science Foundation canceled all of its grant review panels this week, as the organization works to align its grantmaking process with new executive orders from the Trump administration.
The NSF funds a wide range of scientific research through grants to universities and research institutions. It convenes panels of experts to weigh the merits of those proposals, ultimately informing which receive federal funding. It has a budget of around $9 billion.
Comments closedResearchers have discovered a molecular signature of Long Covid in children, detectable through a blood test and diagnosable with 93% accuracy using AI.
This breakthrough signifies a major advancement in pediatric healthcare, offering hope for early detection and tailored treatments.
Comments closedA flurry of scientific gatherings and panels across federal science agencies were canceled on Wednesday, at a time of heightened sensitivity about how the Trump administration will shift the agencies’ policies and day-to-day affairs.
Several meetings of National Institutes of Health study sections, which review applications for fellowships and grants, were canceled without being rescheduled, according to agency notices reviewed by STAT. A Feb. 20-21 meeting of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee, a panel that advises the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services on vaccine policy, was also canceled. So was a meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria that was scheduled for Jan. 28 and 29.
Comments closedResearchers from the Institute of Science Tokyo and Osaka Medical and Pharmaceutical University said that they have developed a peptide that can bind to the spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2 to prevent COVID-19 infections.
The peptide, which is a short chain of amino acids, has shown effectiveness in experiments involving various coronavirus strains attempting to infect human cell lines and hamsters.
Researchers hope to conduct a physician-led clinical trial for possible preventive and therapeutic treatment.
Comments closedThe Trump administration has instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts, according to nearly a dozen current and former officials and other people familiar with the matter.
The instructions were delivered Tuesday to staff at agencies inside the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, one day after the new administration took office, according to the people with knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Some of them acknowledged that they expected some review during a presidential transition but said they were confused by the pause’s scope and indeterminate length.
The health agencies are charged with making decisions that touch the lives of every American and are the source of crucial information to health-care providers and organizations across the country.
Comments closedA new study that identified 475 patients with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), also known as long COVID, revealed that nearly 85% (403) of these patients had multiple COVID-19 infections over the course of a four-year period (March 2020 to February 2024). Additionally, vaccination independently reduced the risk of long COVID in patients who had received the vaccination prior to contracting the infection.
Comments closed