A Brief History of Inbreeding
How kinship, culture, and genetics shaped one of humanity’s oldest taboos.
Francisco Ceballos
· 12 min read
public health
A collection of 20 posts
RFK Jr. Must Go
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.
Jeffrey S. Flier
· 5 min read
Podcast #301: Vaccines, Politics, and Public Trust — Jake Scott, MD
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.
Quillette, Jake Scott
· 25 min read
A Baseless Attack on Groundbreaking RSV Therapies
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.
Jake Scott
· 9 min read
RFK Jr.’s mRNA Betrayal: How Political Ideology Trumped Nobel Prize-Winning Science
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.
Jake Scott
· 8 min read
Water Fluoridation: The Science and the Myths
Water fluoridation is a scientifically validated public health measure. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign to eliminate it is unjustified scaremongering.
Henry I. Miller
· 3 min read
Vaccine Hesitancy and the Covid Pandemic
Overselling Covid vaccines during the pandemic has backfired and played into the hands of the anti-vaccine movement.
Roger Bate
· 10 min read
Will the New Vaccine Help Eradicate Malaria?
The malaria vaccine may well help reduce deaths, but we should not exaggerate its efficacy.
Roger Bate
· 7 min read
Masking Uncertainty in Public Health
Had it actually been “following the science,” the CDC would have transparently communicated its uncertainty at every step.
Mark Alan Smith
· 12 min read
Warp Speed: Inside the Operation that Beat COVID—A Review
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.
Josh Morrison
· 7 min read
Vaccinology, Immunology, and COVID-19
Vaccine technology has sped ahead, serving the critical function to break the link between infection and poor outcomes.
Jesse Pelletier
· 6 min read
Podcast #166: Josh Szeps on the Myth of Australia’s COVID ‘Concentration Camps’
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.
Quillette, Jonathan Kay
· 1 min read
Understanding the Motivated Reasoning of Anti-Vax Refuseniks
Vaccine refusal also correlates with a feeling of alienation from the wider culture—what sociologists call “anomie.”
Richard Redding
· 6 min read
COVID-Zero: Was It Worth It?
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.
James Newburrie
· 11 min read
On the Dangers of Big COVID
One need not posit some secret cabal of illuminati lizard people or the creation of a clandestine 5G-COVID bioweapon to make sense of the rise and potential dangers of Big COVID.
Michael Robillard
· 14 min read