Jay Bhattacharya and the NIH

Faith & Science Conversation
83

Not statewide, but the LA school district had a mandate for 12 yo and above. They tried to implement in 2022, but I’m not sure how far they got with it. A year later it looks like it was rescinded.

Edit:

I just started watching this and it’s good to be reminded why people lost trust

https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1744055716024074327?t=wjGgrFwfr7LWpMy1fIHYjg&s=09

(the video is only a couple minute teaser for an upcoming documentary that I look forward to seeing… it briefly mentions doctors and scientists did lose grant money as a result of signing the GBD)

1 Like
85

Yeah and the current head of the NIH is saying yOu CaN’t EvEn ReSeArCh it. As in they were literally researching the exact thing you want them to (as in how to regain the trust in the American people with vaccines), but the funding was pulled. I think the leaders of these organizations are fine with further eroding trust in vaccines in our country - to what end? I’m not sure.

4 Likes
86

Why spend millions on what a good admission of wrong doing will provide for you?

87

I thought people lost trust in the vaccines because lots of people were telling them that they didn’t work and would kill them. Could we get an admission of wrong-doing from those people?

9 Likes
88

Did people lose trust in car safety when wearing a seatbelt was made mandatory in much of the US?

I’m with @glipsnort on this one. It isn’t the government who is to blame here. It is the people who spread misinformation and unnecessary fear about vaccines. Perhaps this is more of a generational thing. Us Gen-Xers lived at a really interesting crossroads where vaccines common today were just being introduced, such as the mumps vaccine. I grew up watching TV shows where the child characters had to go through mumps infections. Our parents had scars from smallpox vaccines. Our grandparents generation included people who were living with the long term effects of polio infections. My grandmother nearly died from a measles infection, something almost no one experiences today in developed countries. A modern comparison would be the chickenpox vaccine. At least for my generation, the attitudes towards vaccines is absolutely perplexing, and doubly so for us that are working in the field of infectious disease.

9 Likes
89

I would love to hear someone at the NIH explain how the prevention of almost 250,000 deaths is not in the interest of the American people. We have spent money and lost many people fighting wars that started over much lower death tolls, and yet we can’t even prioritize preventative care that could save hundreds of thousands.

8 Likes
90

The NIH is now planning on terminating research on SARS-CoV-2 itself and how to treat it, not just on vaccine hesitancy.

“Among the terminations at the NIH is a $577 million programme to identify and develop antiviral drugs against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and six other types of viruses with pandemic potential.” (from Nature)

Nothing like principled Christians to make the world a better place.

7 Likes
91

There does seem to be something of an inversion here (or maybe not an inversion - but more a revelation of how things have been standing for a while?)

It is some of the self-identified Christians here in the forum who are quickest to toss aside truth, science, objectively agreed upon facts … and we have atheists here who demonstrate a higher commitment to sticking to truth and reality! Maybe it’s one of those observations like what Jesus made to the religious leaders of his time … "Hey - look who all is entering the kingdom ahead of you! … all these outsiders are getting it while you double down on your own wayward stuff!) Who’d have thunk we’d have so many Christians in this country who are now obliged to look up to nonbelievers as the better exemplars of adhering to Christ-like morality and truth! Maybe history continues to reveal itself after all as the fruit of various trees ripens to reveal the kind of tree each one is!

3 Likes
92

They’re bailing us out by poaching our best scientists. Universities in France and the UK are already recruiting. It’s no different than New Mexico actively recruiting OB-GYNs from Texas, which is also happening.

On the clinical trials front, my wife has seen several vaccine trials put on indefinite pause. Other trials are moving forward at the moment, but who knows? On the plus side, she tells me the European pharma giants will probably still fund US research and trials that aren’t dependent on NIH politics.

That changed when the APA issued the DSM-5 in 2013. Gender Identity Disorder (on the level of a personality disorder) was replaced by Gender Dysphoria (a “condition” rather than a disorder).

I agree with the change in terminology, but it still helps me to think of it mostly in terms of mental illness. Psychological pain is just as real as physical pain, and if we can treat the latter with drugs and surgery, I see no reason why we shouldn’t treat the former the same way.

image
image819×553 151 KB

Nah, the numbers are still tiny. Utah passed legislation banning trans kids from playing high school sports when there was exactly one trans kid involved. It’s just a culture war “trans panic” with no basis in fact. Sweden put a pause on gender-affirming care for adolescents, and it wasn’t because the numbers were exploding. It was because their own populist legislators were waving around the same flawed research as our GOP does here. Calmer heads eventually prevailed.

Good gosh. Are you a scientologist? Or a cosplay medievalist?

Abigail Shrier has a JD and is an opinion writer and culture warrior, not a scientist. Much like yourself, minus the writer part.

No, if you look at the previous quote noting differences from DSM-IV to DSM-5, the criteria were tightened and made more specific. That’s especially true in more detailed diagnostic criteria between adults, adolescents and children.

Gender dysphoria thus is considered to be a multicategory concept rather than a dichotomy, and DSM-5 acknowledges the wide variation of gender-incongruent conditions. Separate criteria sets are provided for gender dysphoria in children and in adolescents and adults. The adolescent and adult criteria include a more detailed and specific set of polythetic symptoms.

I hope you’re not referencing Covid vaccines, because there’s no such thing as natural immunity against that virus. Millions have been infected multiple times in this country alone.

Amen

As I said earlier, my wife has seen a promising oral Covid vaccine study basically canceled. A bunch of others, including a combo Covid-RSV vaccine study, put on “indefinite pause.” None of this makes us healthier as a nation. It’s simply right-wing revenge against Francis Collins’ role combating disinformation during the pandemic.

4 Likes
93
  • Transition to a private thread is long overdue, IMO.
2 Likes
94

Why? There’s an open war on science happening before our eyes. Burying it in the sand won’t make it go away.

2 Likes
95
  • And this thread is going to turn the tide in the favor of science and change the OP author’s mind? By all means then, continue…
1 Like
96

Every raindrop counts. Or fall into despair and silent resignation if that’s your choice. By all means then, continue…

Edit: Sorry. Forgot to add the bullet point for emphasis.

  • Every raindrop counts. Or fall into despair and silent resignation if that’s your choice. By all means then, continue…
97

*There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique.

Is it, then, possible to imagine a new Natural Philosophy, continually conscious that the ‘natural object’ produced by analysis and abstraction is not reality but only a view, and always correcting the abstraction? I hardly know what I am asking for."

-CS Lewis The Abolition of Man

1 Like
98

I look with others for the new natural philosophy.

1 Like
99

The evangelical saint C.S. Lewis was wrong about a great many things, which includes placing the “wisdom of earlier ages” in contradiction to science. (He was also spectacularly wrong in thinking the moral argument for God was convincing in Mere Christianity, but that’s another thread.)

Natural philosophy was and is another spectacular failure. Lewis’s observation that analysis and abstraction is “only a view, and always correcting the abstraction” is simply the scientific method, always correcting the hypothesis and/or conclusion in the light of incoming data. Or, he could be a Postmodernist, saying one’s view of the object always changes depending on one’s vantage point.

Who knows? Lewis is vastly overrated.

Keep looking. It’s a failure so far.

1 Like
100

I’m optimistic this is going to be an interesting generation.

Did you see Wes Huff’s interview with Rogan?

While they were mostly talking about ancient history, there was a cool moment at the end of the interview where Wes asked Rogan who he believes Jesus to be. Rogan said that Jesus is either an archetype for the Christ consciousness or the Son of God himself, “and that this should be a question is a miracle in itself.”

On the philosophy (metaphysics) front, it’s pretty remarkable the immediate effect of an uncaused cause will appear to come from nothing

101

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) failed us during the COVID-19 pandemic, by advocating for unscientific school closures, lockdowns, masking and vaccine mandates, and by stifling scientific debate. NIH used to have broad support from the public across the political spectrum, but that ended during the pandemic.

Martin Kulldorff

https://publichealth.realclearjournals.org/perspectives/2025/03/a-blueprint-for-nih-reform/

102

Renaming depression with anachronistic terms doesn’t demonstrate anything but your opinion. Unless you have an up-to-date diagnostic manual and the research those diagnoses are based on.
Otherwise, you’re just making it up.

I heard Trueman “preach” on the topics in this book. He prefaced his sermon claiming for himself the true charge that the job of historians is to complicate history. He then proceded to oversimplify history so that he could evaluate it according to his particular theological view.
As with many christians handling ideas they don’t like, he did it with prejudice and inaccurately.

Trueman seemed unable to recognize the difference between his particular theological stances and absolute truth. The civil rights that he values, particularly privacy and equality, were not to be extended to other adults with different sexual mores or even to women (the evils of feminism).

His conclusions seemed to be that the world is a more christian place with a repressive Victorian sexual ethic and views on gender.

2 Likes
105

I assume you posted this because you believe Kulldorf makes good arguments or points?

Yeesh this isn’t even a real journal. I don’t know where to even begin, but the attack on real science by this right wing propaganda machine is exhausting. It’s been decades in the making starting with evolution, then climate change, and now is pretending there’s some big coverup of true scientific discourse. It’s the same old tired playbook by people who fail to do actual real science- it’s much easier to claim foul than to publish real papers.

Here’s one writeup about this pseudoscientific journal amongst many:
https://www.science.org/content/article/new-journal-co-founded-nih-nominee-raises-eyebrows-misinformation-fears

2 Likes