A collection of 21 posts
What large-scale genomic data reveals about consanguinity, inherited disease, and the uneasy politics of discussing biological risk.
How kinship, culture, and genetics shaped one of humanity’s oldest taboos.
By firing experts, cancelling important research funding, and promoting conspiracy theories, RFK Jr. threatens to undermine some of America’s most important public health achievements.
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with Stanford infectious diseases expert Jake Scott about the perils of rolling back immunisation treatments for COVID, RSV, and measles — and the misinformation spread by figures such as RFK Jr.
A member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is spreading misinformation about new antibody treatments that protect children from serious Respiratory Syncytial Virus infections.
Every layer of institutional knowledge validated this public-health technology. Yet it’s being overruled based on a politically torqued misreading of what vaccines are supposed to do.
Water fluoridation is a scientifically validated public health measure. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign to eliminate it is unjustified scaremongering.
Overselling Covid vaccines during the pandemic has backfired and played into the hands of the anti-vaccine movement.
The malaria vaccine may well help reduce deaths, but we should not exaggerate its efficacy.
Had it actually been “following the science,” the CDC would have transparently communicated its uncertainty at every step.
While the overall U.S. response to the pandemic was tragically deficient, we can learn a lot from the public-private partnership that sped vaccine development.
Vaccine technology has sped ahead, serving the critical function to break the link between infection and poor outcomes.
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay interviews ABC presenter and podcaster Josh Szeps about Australia’s unique experience in managing the COVID pandemic—and the urban legends the country’s quarantine system has spawned among right-wing pundits on the other side of the world.
Vaccine refusal also correlates with a feeling of alienation from the wider culture—what sociologists call “anomie.”
If COVID-19 was your ancestor’s saber-tooth tiger, then the lives lost every day to COVID-Zero is the cost of running away.