Seth Trueger

nows as good a time as any to join bluesky, here's some #medtwitter starter packs bsky.app/profile/kiswan…

1 more week to apply! In partnership with the Society of Bedside Medicine and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, we are accepting applications for the Bedside Medicine Scholars Program, a 1-year $40K award. Submit your letter of intent by Dec 17: bedsidemedicine.org/bedsidefellows

I treat patients who skip care because they fear the bill more than the illness. Medical debt bankrupts more families than anything else. If we’re going to make life more affordable we need universal healthcare!

2 more weeks to apply! In partnership with the Society of Bedside Medicine and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, we are accepting applications for the Bedside Medicine Scholars Program, a 1-year $40K award. Submit your letter of intent by Dec 17: bedsidemedicine.org/bedsidefellows

@BedsideMedNU in @NEJM: x.com/NEJM/status/19…

18/ Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan and/or the co-Editor-in-Chief of Vaccine: It is completely unscientific to suggest that studies are invalid if they do not conclusively rule out vaccines as the cause of autism. You can't prove a negative using the scientific method. This is a manipulative way of invalidating a large body of evidence that shows that there is no detectable link between vaccination and autism. I find it ironic that the current leadership of HHS is so obsessed with trust, because by publishing obvious falsehoods under the banner of a national public health agency, CDC has annihilated its trustworthiness. I think this is going to be used to support efforts to shitcan the MMR and aluminum salt adjuvanted vaccines. There is the potential for 14 or so vaccines to be descheduled at the next ACIP meeting on Dec 4-5. It will be cited as if it is evidence, even though it's completely invented.

17/ Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, prior NIAID Director The statements on the CDC website are wrong. They will sow even more mistrust in the community, who deserve to have access to the best evidence-based information that can help them avoid the tragic consequences of infections we’ve come close to conquering, like polio and measles.

16/ Charles Holmes, MD, Distinguished Scholar, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, and Professor of Medicine, Georgetown University Potential links between vaccines and autism have been extensively studied and there is no credible scientific link. As a clinician and scientist, it’s disturbing to see the CDC website- traditionally a source of the best scientific knowledge - being altered to cast doubt on settled science. Rather than supporting the health of families, this action may have the adverse effect of undermining confidence in childhood vaccines that have saved millions of lives in the US and around the world.

15/ Dr. Fiona Havers, infectious diseases physician and vaccine expert;  former CDC official and vaccine expert: Changing CDC’s website to link vaccines and autism is a new low for this administration and another example of RFK Jr.’s abuse of his power as HHS Secretary. Career CDC scientists who in the past carefully vetted scientific information have been pushed aside. RFK Jr. has replaced them with anti-vaccine political appointees and “special advisors” who are now using CDC as a megaphone to spread misinformation about vaccines. This is particularly dangerous when we are seeing dropping vaccination rates and more Americans dying from vaccine-preventable diseases.

@Atul_Gawande 14/ Dr. Debra Houry, former CDC Chief Science and Medical Officer: CDC should be a data driven agency based on science and not ideology, but when you take the scientists out of the process you get rhetoric that can harm families.

13/ Dr. Mandy Cohen, former CDC Director There is overwhelming evidence that vaccines do not cause autism. This change to CDC language undermines the agency’s scientific integrity, damaging its credibility on vaccines and other health recommendations. Most concerning, it risks endangering children by driving down vaccination rates and leaving kids vulnerable to preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough.

12/ Dr. Peter Hotez, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and vaccine scientist at the Baylor College of Medicine who is also the father of a young adult with autism: I consider what they did extremely dishonest. They’re promoting dangerous health disinformation. As I’ve detailed in my book, Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel’s Autism, we have massive evidence showing no link between vaccines and autism and also a lack of plausibility given what we’ve learned about how autism genes operate in early fetal brain development. What the CDC did is part of a larger MAHA DHHS war on biomedicine and vaccines. See also his new paper: bakerinstitute.org/research/reaff…

11/ Bruce Gellin, MD, MPH, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health and Director, US National Vaccine Program Office (2002-2017) That RFK, Jr believes vaccines cause autism is a sad example that you only see what you believe — a far cry from gold standard science.Other than the settled science of the health risk of smoking, there is no better example of the value of replication studies — the many studies by different investigators in different populations around the world  — that have failed to demonstrate that vaccines cause autism.

10/ Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious diseases physician in Texas and prior WHO medical officer: I’ve worked on the frontlines of Ebola, COVID-19, and mpox, and seen the very real benefit of these tools. The science is clear, vaccines do not cause autism and they save the lives of parents, children and communities.Reopening the vaccine–autism debate ignores decades of rigorous evidence and risks fueling dangerous misinformation which will lead to countless deaths in the US and around the world.The benefits of vaccines are undeniable — HPV prevents cancers, measles vaccine prevents millions of deaths, and hepatitis B vaccine stops lifelong liver disease and cancer.What families need now is clarity, not confusion. The evidence is strong, and vaccines remain one of our safest and most effective tools to protect children.I have worked on the frontlines of numerous infectious diseases outbreaks and watched misinformation spread faster than viruses. If we undermine trust in vaccines, we undermine one of the most effective tools we have to protect children.

9/ Megan L. Ranney, MD MPH, Dean, Yale School of Public Health Numerous large studies (across multiple data sets, multiple analytic methods, multiple countries, multiple investigators, and millions of children) have shown NO link between vaccines and autism.We certainly need more high-quality research on causes of autism, but I would love to see our country’s limited research funds dedicated to topics that are understudied, like the influence of genetics and of environmental exposures, rather than to a topic that has already been evaluated in depth.

8/ Dr. Jesse Goodman, former FDA Chief Scientist, now Professor of Medicine at Georgetown University and Director of its Center on Medical Product Access, Safety and Stewardship (COMPASS): The changed CDC website does not reflect the conclusions of CDC's scientists and experts or of the medical and scientific community that there is no good evidence that vaccines cause autism. That conclusion has been supported by numerous exhaustive reviews, including those by groups such as the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The changed website ignores or misrepresents the majority of studies, involving millions of people, that have shown no relationship of vaccines to autism and, instead, cherry picks a few, most with problems in their methods, to imply an association. This distracts and detracts from needed research to better understand autism. This misrepresentation of the facts is unprecedented for a US government public health agency and signals that one may no longer assume that information from CDC political leadership posts is reliable.This action will further sow doubt in vaccines, resulting in more children being unvaccinated. This will likely result in more disease, hospitalizations, and deaths from preventable diseases like measles, which, contrary to the HHS Secretary's claims, do occur in previously healthy and well-nourished children. Infectious diseases such as measles, whooping cough, and diphtheria are real and can be serious, and vaccines have helped make them rare in the US, but that success is threatened. Parents should be deeply concerned. Today's action further undermines needed trust in government and makes America less safe and less healthy.

7/ Dr. Daniel Jernigan, former director of the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases: Without any input from CDC scientists, the Secretary has ordered decades of research to be replaced with opinion and ideology.  He is firmly moving CDC from evidence-based decision-making to decision-based evidence-making.  The Secretary has blatantly disregarded his agreement with Senator Cassidy that he made during his senate confirmation that "CDC will not remove statements on their website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism."  Instead, the Secretary changed everything but the statement “Vaccines do not cause autism” and added an asterisk indicating that the single sentence alone has not been removed due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.  This is shallow and cynical.  Cassidy asked for a promise, the Secretary gave him an asterisk.  If the nation’s top health official can’t keep his word, how can Americans trust him to lead the department responsible for protecting over 300 million people?

6/ Syra Madad, Epidemiologist at the Harvard Belfer Center and Chief Biopreparedness Officer, NYC Health + Hospitals: When a nation’s foremost public health agency undermines its own scientists, it erodes the trust that protects us during outbreaks and crises. Public health must be rooted in rigorous data, not political narratives that amplify misinformation. Rewriting decades of scientific consensus doesn’t change the facts, it only endangers the public. The CDC’s sudden shift on vaccines and autism is not a correction of science but a capitulation to politics. The evidence has been clear for years: vaccines do not cause autism.

3/ Dr. Mark Rosenberg, former Center Director at CDC and former assistant surgeon general: To say that scientists have ignored valid findings about the association of vaccines and autism, and that this is the gold standard of science is to make a mockery of the English language. Worse than that, it is a betrayal of children, parents and future children still to be born. Given the traditional role and authority that CDC has globally, it poses a risk to the health and well-being of children in the United States and all around the world. This is the kind of situation where Congress is supposed to provide responsible, adult, and scientifically valid oversight. Who can step in when Congress abdicates its role? What Kennedy has done to CDC‘s website and to the American people, makes Senator Cassidy into a total and absolute fool.

4/ Amesh Adalja MD, Senior Scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security: The website changes are RFK Jr signaling to the anti-vaccine movement, from which he emanates, that he’s doing their bidding and he’s one of theirs. He and his nihilistic Dark Age compatriots have transformed the CDC into an organ of anti-vaccine propaganda.

2/ Dr. @Atul_Gawande, Professor of the Practice, Harvard Medical School: We are witnessing a poisonous effort to destroy a key pillar of public health. Vaccines are responsible for 40% of the reduction in child mortality achieved in the last half-century. The CDC website has been lobotomized. Where it once presented the decades of evidence debunking the false claims of a link between vaccines and autism, it has now been replaced with junk science.