Public opinion driven by fear has immense influence in our society, especially when it comes to science and health topics.

A poorly conducted study becomes a clickbait media article that misrepresents the data, the study’s flaws, and the real-world implications, and it goes viral when other outlets pick it up. The claims circulate among the public and eventually become cultural belief. When those beliefs are repeated enough, they shape consumer behavior, corporate decisions, and medical practice—even as scientists and skeptics try to correct the record.

The paraben story is a case study in how the irrational fear of chemicals undermines science and public health. What began as public outcry after media outlets amplified a terribly done study vilified a misunderstood and incredibly safe class of preservatives.

Parabens are among the safest, most studied preservatives in modern consumer and medical products, yet ask a random group of people and they’ll tell you they’re toxic, causing “endocrine disruption” and cancer. They don’t.

The science has been consistent for decades, but misinformation is winning the discourse war. The result? Public harm. Not hypothetical dangers, but real-world consequences: unfounded fears of safe substances, contaminated consumer products, preventable skin and eye infections, increased allergic reactions, and distrust of scientific experts.

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Science Misinformation Spreads Faster Than Nuanced Reality

Nearly all anti-science rhetoric follows the same pattern: a weak or poorly interpreted study is mischaracterized by someone without the training to evaluate the data. That distortion is then amplified by media outlets, influencers, celebrities, and/or politicians, and suddenly a fringe claim carries mainstream legitimacy.

Misinformation spreads faster than correction in part because only 28 percent of Americans have civic science literacy—the ability to find, understand, and apply scientific information to decisions about health and policy. That gap exists among our lawmakers too, which helps explain why laws and regulations often diverge from the body of evidence.

One of the most powerful drivers of science misinformation is chemophobia, which is baked into our cultural narrative and crosses ideological lines. Chemophobia is the reflexive fear of “chemicals,” especially synthetic ones, regardless of dose, exposure, or evidence of harm. It thrives on the idea that natural equals safe and chemical equals dangerous—a belief system that fuels everything from vaccine fear to food panic to the booming “clean beauty” industry (Love 2025).

Fear of parabens is a textbook example of what happens when chemophobia supersedes decades of scientific data.

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Parabens Are Incredibly Safe Preservatives

I’m sure you’ve seen a skincare or beauty product with a label that says “free from parabens” or “no parabens” or something similar, right? And you may have thought: “Wait, do I need to be avoiding parabens?”

The answer is no, but you can thank social media and the misinformation landscape for the mistake. Public outcry, chemophobia, and low science literacy have created a marketplace that pressures companies to change chemical formulations because of false claims (Love 2025).

Parabens are a class of chemicals that share a naming convention, not identical behavior. They are esters of 4-hydroxybenzoic acid, and just like not all “alcohols” act the same in the body, not all parabens behave the same either.

Parabens, like all preservatives, prevent harmful contamination by inhibiting the growth of bacteria, molds, and yeasts that could harm you. Parabens are very stable, low cost, and work on a broad array of microorganisms. As a result, parabens have been safely used as preservatives since the 1920s in cosmetics, skincare products, and medicines.

However, over the past several decades—and with the rise of social media—the appeal to nature fallacy and the “clean beauty” industry has painted synthetic chemicals, including parabens, as dangerous.

The ‘Study’ That Sparked the Panic

The paraben panic traces back largely to a deeply flawed 2004 paper in the Journal of Applied Toxicology—a study that should never have been published in the first place (Darbre et al. 2004).

The authors used analytical chemistry techniques to screen twenty previously frozen breast tumor samples, searching for trace amounts of parabens.

There were no healthy control tissues, no exposure histories, and no dose-response data. No biological mechanism was explored. The problems in the study design were fundamental, which is why this never should have passed peer review:

• No control group equals no healthy tissue baseline: You can’t imply a cancer link without knowing what’s in healthy tissue.

• No biological relevance: The authors insinuated a relationship between parabens and cancer formation, yet no biological pathway was studied.

• Vanishingly small concentrations: Paraben levels reported were on the order of parts per billion, which, for context, would be equivalent to one second of time in 31.7 years.

• Contamination concerns: The blank values (controls run to verify the sensitive instrumentation is operating properly) were often higher than the “measured” sample values.

This approach is like adding together rubbing alcohol (isopropanol), beer (ethanol), and antifreeze (ethylene glycol), reporting them as “total alcohols,” and then declaring that amount of alcohol is dangerous.

Yes, they’re all technically alcohols—but their effects on the body could not be more different: One can kill you in tiny amounts; one is safe on your skin but dangerous to drink; and one can be consumed in reasonable doses without risk of death.

You can’t lump multiple chemicals together and pretend they’re the same just because they are in the same broad category. That’s basic chemistry—and ignoring that is wrong and reckless.

Even if the study was well-conducted, it would have only shown detection, not causal relationship. Yet the authors made unfounded claims that fueled the resulting media headlines: bad chemicals are messing with hormones and causing cancer. Even while no scientific data supported this, public outcry followed those headlines, which fueled more misinformation, policy, product reformulation, and public harm.

The Estrogen Myth Accelerated Paraben Fears

One claim cemented the fear: that parabens are endocrine disruptors—specifically, that parabens act like estrogen and therefore interfere with normal hormone signaling.

That phrase sounds terrifying, which is exactly why it sticks. If you spend enough time online, you might be led to believe that everything is an endocrine disruptor—plastics, sunscreens, soy, receipt paper, cleaning products, candles, you name it. Some healthcare professionals buy into this, using this label as if it were a diagnosis, not an unsupported hypothesis.

In the lab, you can make almost any compound look “hormonal” if you drown cells growing on a piece of plastic with enough of it (Okubo et al 2001).

Guess what? If you pour pure water on cells in a Petri dish, they explode. That isn’t what happens when you drink water. And that means parabens don’t necessarily behave the same way in a human body as in a Petri dish either.

In cell biology, these labels don’t mean anything. What matters is legitimate biological exposure and effect. To truly be an endocrine disruptor, a substance must not only get into the body in a measurable dose but then must bind hormone receptors strongly enough and at a high enough level to trigger hormone signaling in real tissues in your body, not just in a Petri dish.

Do parabens outcompete estrogen in your body? No.

Butyl- and propylparaben bind 10,000 times more weakly than estradiol, the biologically active version of estrogen.

Methyl- and ethylparaben bind 100,000 times more weakly.

The weakness of these interactions mean there is no biological plausibility that parabens are outcompeting your hormones—even more so because your body absorbs only tiny percentages of the parabens you’re exposed to and then rapidly excretes them.

Unfortunately, once the phrases “hormone disruptor” and “synthetic chemical” enter public discourse, fear becomes almost impossible to reverse.

Harmless Parabens

More than 300 studies across toxicology, epidemiology, animal models, and clinical research have reached the same conclusion: parabens in consumer and medical products are safe (Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel 2008).

Parabens are rapidly metabolized and excreted; they do not accumulate in the body. In cosmetics, parabens are typically present at 0.01–0.3 percent. Even assuming high use of paraben-containing products, only 1–10 percent of the amount you’re exposed to is absorbed through the skin—translating to microgram-level exposure, far below any level of concern.

Animal studies reported reproductive effects at ingested doses above 1,000 mg/kg/day—100 times higher than the human acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 10 mg/kg/day—and thousands of times greater than real-world topical exposure. Even extreme, unrealistic cosmetic use doesn’t approach doses associated with harm in animal studies.

That’s why global safety authorities from the FDA to the WHO to the European SCCS consistently agree: parabens are safe when used as preservatives. But decades of data and expert consensus haven’t stopped misinformation. Even now, more than twenty years after that deeply flawed study ignited public fear, headlines continue to undermine science. You can guess what happened.

Paraben Outcry Led to Public Harm—Not Public Safety

Public pressure led companies to abandon parabens and reformulate products with alternative preservatives. This wasn’t because alternatives are superior but because companies were conceding to their customers’ false beliefs. Parabens have broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity, are stable, and are inexpensive.

The replacements? Less effective, less stable, and more expensive. For example, many companies shifted to methylisothiazolinone (MIT), a preservative with high allergenic potential (Aerts et al. 2017). As a result, a surge in contact dermatitis and skin allergies has emerged (Reeder et al. 2023; Scherrer et al. 2015; Cahill et al. 2014).

Most dangerously, microbial contamination is present in under-preserved products produced by companies that just opted out of preservatives. Preservatives are used for a reason, but the “clean, chemical-free” beauty industry has swarmed shelves with preservative-free products. Soaps, lotions, baby wipes, powders, and oils marketed as “clean” or “chemical-free” are routinely recalled for contamination with bacteria such as Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus aureus, and Burkholderia cepacia—pathogens that cause serious illness and infections, particularly in infants and immunocompromised people.

Parabens are also used in medical products—antifungal creams, corticosteroids, ophthalmic solutions, injectable medications, and some vaccines. When preservatives are weakened or removed, contamination risks rise.

Aside from the fact that almost every single person uses some skincare or cosmetic products (lotions, face wash, sunscreens, shampoo/conditioner), misinformation forced reformulation in medical products—including antifungal creams, corticosteroids, antibiotic ointments, eye drops, contact lens solutions, and injectable anesthetics.

These medical products have also faced contamination from ineffective preservation. In eye products, that means keratitis and possible blindness (U.S. Food and Drug Administration 2024; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2023). In injectables, it means cellulitis, sepsis, and systemic infection. Chemophobia doesn’t just change labels; it harms society.

The Real Lesson of the Paraben Panic

The paraben panic isn’t really about parabens. It’s about what happens when fear replaces evidence—when public opinion about “chemicals” overrides a century of toxicology, microbiology, and regulatory science. It’s how misinformation—accelerated by headlines, social media, and wellness influencers—reshapes markets, medical practice, and individual beliefs in ways that make us less safe, not more safe.

The snowball effect of science misinformation is a public health threat.

The paraben case is one example that illustrates the pattern: when falsehoods spread unchecked, they don’t just mislead; they change outcomes. “Free from parabens” products are not a win for health and safety. They show how fear beats facts—and how misinformation, once mainstreamed, becomes a driver of real-world harm.

Anti-science rhetoric, clickbait, and legislative policy that ignores evidence don’t just confuse people. They produce contaminated products, preventable infections, and unnecessary allergic reactions, eroding trust in expertise. When myths are legitimized, everyone pays the price.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

References

Aerts, Olivier, An Goossens, Jo Lambert, et al. 2017. Contact allergy caused by isothiazolinone derivatives: An overview of non-cosmetic and unusual cosmetic sources. European Journal of Dermatology 27: 115–122. Online at https://doi.org/10.1684/ejd.2016.2951.

Cahill, J.L., R.W. Toholka, and R.L. Nixon. 2014. Methylisothiazolinone in baby wipes: A rising star among causes of contact dermatitis. Medical Journal of Australia 200(4): 208. Online at https://doi.org/10.5694/mja13.10946.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2023. Outbreak of extensively drug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa associated with artificial tears. CDC Health Alert Network (HAN) Advisory 00485 (February 1). Online at https://www.cdc.gov/han/2023/han00485.html.

Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel. 2008. Final amended report on the safety assessment of methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben, isopropylparaben, butylparaben, isobutylparaben, and benzylparaben as used in cosmetic products. International Journal of Toxicology 27(Suppl. 4): 1–82.

Darbre, P.D., A. Aljarrah, W.R. Miller, et al. 2004. Concentrations of parabens in human breast tumours. Journal of Applied Toxicology 24(1): 5–13. Online at https://doi.org/10.1002/jat.958.

Golden, Robert, Jay Gandy, and Guenter Vollmer. 2005. A review of the endocrine activity of parabens and implications for potential risks to human health. Critical Reviews in Toxicology 35(5): 435–458. Online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10408440490920104.

Love, Andrea. 2025. From food dyes to vaccines: Fear of chemicals endangers us all. Skeptical Inquirer 49(6) (November/December). Online at https://skepticalinquirer.org/2025/10/from-food-dyes-to-vaccines-fear-of-chemicals-endangers-us-all/.

Okubo, T., Y. Yokoyama, K. Kano, et al. 2001. ER-dependent estrogenic activity of parabens assessed by proliferation of human breast cancer MCF-7 cells and expression of ERα and PR. Food and Chemical Toxicology 39(12): 1225–1232. Online at https://doi.org/10.1016/S0278-6915(01)00073-4.

Scherrer, M.A., V.B. Rocha, and A.R. Andrade. 2015. Contact dermatitis to methylisothiazolinone. Anais Brasileiros de Dermatologia 90(6): 912–914. Online at https://doi.org/10.1590/abd1806-4841.20153992.

Reeder, Margo J., Erin Warshaw, Srikanth Aravamuthan, et al. 2023. Methylisothiazolinone and allergic contact dermatitis. JAMA Dermatology 159(3): 267–274. Online at https://doi.org/10.1001/jamadermatol.2022.5991.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 2024. Alcon Laboratories issues voluntary nationwide recall of one lot of Systane Lubricant Eye Drops Ultra PF, Single Vials On-the-Go, 25 Count. Recalls, Market Withdrawals & Safety Alerts (December 21). Online at https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/alcon-laboratories-issues-voluntary-nationwide-recall-one-1-lot-systane-lubricant-eye-drops-ultra-pf.

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The Surgeon General Is Supposed to Be the Nation’s Doctor, Not Its Wellness Influencer

Let’s start with a basic question:

What qualifications should the Surgeon General of the United States have?

Historically, the answer has been boring, which is a good thing. Practicing physicians and public health leaders with deep experience (think decades-long careers) in clinical medicine, epidemiology, or health system leadership. People trained to critically evaluate evidence, communicate nuance and uncertainty responsibly, and make recommendations that will impact hundreds of millions of people.

The Surgeon General’s job is simple but serious:

To translate robust, well-supported, and credible scientific evidence into clear, population-level guidance that protects millions of people all at once–that’s public health.

Casey Means’ nomination is incredibly alarming. The issue here isn’t just that she’s unqualified. It’s that the US government is willing to replace scientific expertise with influencer credibility when it comes to national health leadership. Casey Means’ sole public health contribution has been to tell healthy people to obsess over blood glucose and reject scientific innovations that objectively improve quality of life.

We haven’t just lost the plot: our Federal government has failed us.

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Casey Means has Zero Credentials to Serve as Surgeon General.

Casey Means is routinely described as a “Stanford-trained physician,” a phrase doing a lot of work. Our media outlets and our ranking government officials should know better. What’s almost always omitted is that she didn’t finish medical residency and hasn’t practiced as a board-certified physician. Casey Means graduated medical school. That’s it. She has an MD, a degree conferred to everyone successfully completing 4 years of medical school.

Quick note: part of my PhD requirement was teaching clinical courses to medical students. I can tell you (as would all responsible MDs) that graduating medical school does not equip someone to practice medicine, much less make medical recommendations to over 330 million people.

Medical residency is not a bureaucratic technicality. It’s where newly-minted MDs learn clinical decision-making under uncertainty, evidence-based treatment standards for their specific narrow field of expertise, patient risk management, and real-world medicine in practice.

Casey started an ENT residency (ear, nose, and throat, or officially, otolaryngology), a 5-year surgical program focused on head, neck, and plastic surgeries. Casey dropped out of that program 4 years in, later claiming she was disillusioned with the failures of medicine. That, my friends, is utter bullshit. An ENT residency is far less exposed to the failures of our for-profit healthcare system than family, emergency, pediatrics, OB/GYN, or internal medicine. The point is:

• Casey has never practiced medicine independently.

• She is not Board-Certified in any medical field.

• She is also not a scientist.

• She has not conducted medical or scientific research.

• She has not led any large-scale public health initiatives.

• She has not demonstrated any expertise in public health.

• Her residency program had nothing to do with metabolic health or endocrinology, yet she positions herself as an expert in that field.

Means was cynical about the for-profit healthcare industry, so she probably got involved in philanthropy and public health efforts, right? Wrong.

Means co-founded a for-profit wellness company called Levels.

Totally sounds like something someone would do if they wanted to better people’s health, right?

This pivot is important.

Casey Means is a Wellness Influencer, not a Public Health Leader

The deeper issue is that wellness entrepreneurship and public health are diametrically opposed.

Public health aims to minimize harm across all populations using infrastructure and systems that benefit the whole. Wellness businesses monetize perceived optimization gaps of an individual person by convincing you health is solely your responsibility.

Wellness businesses treat health as an individual optimization project that can be monetized: if you just track your “biomarkers,” have a perfect diet, buy recommended products and engage in certain behaviors, then you’ll have health perfection. It positions health as your responsibility, and if you’re unwell, well that’s your fault.

In Casey’s world, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, find an extra $300 a month, and buy what she’s selling you, literally.

Public health is opposite this: it focuses on systemic population-level measures that improve health outcomes regardless of an individuals “optimization” status. Clean water. Plumbing. Vaccinations. Food Safety. These things prevent illness and death whether someone got a full 8 hours of sleep or ate 30 grams of fiber every day.

The Surgeon General is not a podcast personality or a wellness profiteer. The Surgeon General’s job is not to promote unfounded personal biohacking measures. It’s to protect the health of our entire population through evidence-based policies.

The fact that Casey has zero relevant credentials for Surgeon General should have been immediately disqualifying. Yet, here we are.

Selling Medical Anxiety As Preventive Health

Casey and her brother Calley love to scream about the “overmedicalization” of Americans, yet are the ones directly contributing to it. As mentioned, Means founded a for-profit wellness company called Levels.

Levels sells continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) to non-diabetics, paired with an expensive app that requires a monthly subscription fee, plus a myriad of auxiliary services like meal plans, and supplement recommendations. Conveniently, you can buy all these products directly through Levels or through her brother Calley’s wellness company, TrueMed.

The premise of Levels? That tracking blood glucose when you don’t have diabetes will help you “optimize” your health and longevity.

The problem? Multiple studies have shown that tracking blood glucose via CGMs for those without diabetes doesn’t offer a health benefit. Unsurprisingly, continuous blood glucose monitoring in non-diabetics demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of readings fall within the normal physiological range (70-140 milligrams (mg) glucose per deciliter (dL) of blood). In other words? Those metabolic systems are functioning properly already.

That’s why actual medical experts, including all major medical and endocrine professional organizations, don’t recommend it.

When you eat (anything), your body senses and responds in a way that enables you to function optimally and maintain a relatively constant balance. That is called homeostasis. Non-diabetics have normal and expected fluctuations in blood glucose, or excursions, within a well-characterized range between 70 and 140 milligrams (mg) glucose per deciliter (dL) of blood. This is tightly regulated by your organ systems, especially the insulin-producing ꞵ-islet cells of your pancreas.

So if you’ve got a functioning pancreas, you don’t need to add stress to your life by trying to track and hack blood glucose. Yet the wellness industry messaging around CGMs tries to convince you that:

• normal glucose fluctuations are harmful

• common foods are metabolically dangerous and your diet must be constantly ‘optimized’

• Constant biological surveillance is essential for health

In their world, normal physiology is pathology-adjacent. This is medicalization disguised as empowerment. Casey Means and her colleagues do this, not because they care about your health, but because they want to monetize your fear of worse health. Let’s not even mention that it’s difficult to “hack” your blood glucose and runs the risk of malnutrition or disordered eating.

Public health aims to reduce unnecessary medicalization. Wellness influencers do the opposite–they fabricate medical issues, convince you to medicalize essential bodily processes, and monetize it. The Surgeon General should be reducing health anxiety, not normalizing it, and certainly not profiting off of it.

Casey Means Doesn’t Know What “Root Cause” Means

A core theme of Means’ public messaging is that metabolic dysfunction underlies most chronic diseases. That’s the premise of her and her brother’s book, Good Energy. Ironically, neither of them have any expertise in endocrinology, cell biology, or physiology, but I digress. This concept sounds plausible, because metabolism is important. But it’s an egregious oversimplification they use to sell false promises.

This is a hallmark of pseudoscience: using oversimplified nuggets of truth to make claims sound credible. It’s reused and recycled: adrenal fatigue, leaky gut, food sensitivities, and toxic mold syndrome all leverage the same tactic (click the links to read more detail on those). Casey routinely legitimizes these other adjacent pseudoscience claims, too.

Let’s be absolutely clear:

Chronic disease is a huge catchall that includes conditions like cancers (hundreds of diseases themselves), lifestyle diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, autoimmunity, and more. Lumping chronic disease into a single bucket is flawed to begin with, but more than that, chronic disease is multifactorial and influenced by:

• genetics

• aging demographics

• improved survival of premature infants

• infectious disease history

• healthcare access

• socioeconomic factors

• lived environment

• public policy

• medical innovation and technologies (including improved survival of vulnerable populations)

Much of these are under the umbrella of social determinants of health – yet that has never been a topic of discussion for Casey.

Casey claims we don’t focus on “root causes” in science and medicine, but since she’s an expert, she knows that ALL medical issues are related to metabolism–not even metabolism, but just blood glucose excursions. She’s got the solution too: buy her glucose monitor and app!

I guess she missed the fact that literally all of science and medicine is based on identifying and addressing root causes – it’s called etiology. Maybe she slept through that lecture in medical school.

Let’s talk about some root causes:

The root cause of over 90% of cervical, anal, penile, oropharyngeal, vulvar, and vaginal cancers are HPV viruses (yes, it ISN’T JUST causing cervical cancer).

The solution? The HPV vaccine. Yet Casey Means demonizes this incredibly effective and safe preventive medicine.

The root cause of dental caries is demineralization of dental enamel, which occurs when normal mouth bacteria acidify your mouth through metabolizing food molecules.

The solution? Fluoride. Fluoride integrates with dental enamel and enables it to tolerate a more acidic environment, not only strengthening enamel but expanding the protection range. Yet Casey Means demonizes public water fluoridation, held by legitimate experts as one of the top public health achievements of modern medicine.

The root cause of type 1 diabetes is an inappropriate immune response where immune cells destroyed those insulin-producing ꞵ-cells in your pancreas. That’s one of the ~90 currently identified autoimmune disorders. Ironically, the immune-mediated destruction creates a metabolic disorder where someone with T1D does actually need to track blood glucose to supply their body with the insulin their pancreas no longer produces, but this one isn’t gonna be fixed with Casey Means’ app, either. It needs actual medical intervention, not wellness vibes.

I could go on, but I already wrote a long piece on “root cause” as a topic. Casey Means doesn’t know anything about root cause, but she and the rest of the wellness industry has co-opted this fundamental of biomedical science to sell snakeoil.

Raw Milk and Romanticizing The Days Before Modern Medicine

Here’s another: The root cause of milk-borne illnesses are pathogenic microorganisms found in the feces (and digestive tracts) of cows.

The solution? Pasteurization. One of the most successful public health interventions merely involves heating milk to 161°F for 15 seconds to inactivate nearly all disease-causing bacteria, protozoa, and viruses found in milk. Yet Casey Means promotes consuming raw milk and legislation to relax sale of disease-ridden dairy products.

Encouraging people to consume raw milk isn’t a weird lifestyle habit—it’s about eschewing centuries of scientific innovation that enables humans to live longer and healthier lives.

Romanticizing “natural” food systems while minimizing well-documented risks ignores centuries of public health progress built on microbiology knowledge. This is the same microbiology that underlies all infectious disease prevention, from hand washing, food safety, water treatment, and vaccines. This behavior is not just anti-science, it puts people at risk for illnesses we shouldn’t be contending with, because we solved the root causes already.

The Surgeon General should be explaining why pasteurization works, not spreading dangerous narratives that food safety is optional.

Casey Means Hides Anti-Vaccine Rhetoric in Plain Sight

Casey Means does not brand herself as anti-vaccine, but don’t be fooled. Today, the modern anti-vaccine movement is framed as:

• emphasizing metabolic health and lifestyle as superior immune protection over vaccination

• amplifying “natural immunity” narratives without proportional discussion of risk of infectious disease

• portraying chronic illness patterns as a failure of modern medical systems rather than a consequence of preventing infectious diseases

This messaging shifts people’s risk perception and erases the notion that health is a societal issue, and we should act with shared responsibility.

Population-level control of infectious diseases depends on vaccination rates, not personal wellness status. High vaccination coverage reduces the amount of spread of microorganisms at a population level, thereby reducing the number of people who will get sick, the number of severe outcomes, the number of deaths. These large-scale health impacts are irrelevant to whether someone eats perfectly, sleeps optimally, or tracks glucose fluctuations.

Measles isn’t back in the US because people aren’t eating as much spinach as they did in 2000. Measles is back because people aren’t getting vaccinated anymore.

When influential figures in the public sphere claim individual optimization is the primary protection against infectious disease, the public then believes that vaccines are secondary and optional. This belief is directly linked to declining vaccine confidence and vaccination rates.

The Surgeon General must unequivocally strengthen confidence in vaccines, not discourage safe and effective measures that prevent premature disease and death. There is no ambiguity in the scientific evidence when it comes to vaccinations, and anyone who suggests there is is not equipped to have a health leadership role.

This Appointment Is About More Than Casey Means: It’s What Happens when Expertise is Replaced by Vibes

The Office of the Surgeon General led anti-smoking campaigns during immense cultural and political resistance. It normalized HIV prevention amidst fear and stigma. It shaped vaccination confidence across decades. These successes have saved millions of lives. But to get buy-in from Americans, they required credibility that was earned through expertise, backed by robust scientific evidence.

Now, if someone talks about health confidently enough and has a large enough social media following, they qualify as a national health authority, even if what they say is objectively wrong. Even if what they say already harms millions of people–and will harm even more if they are installed as a shaper of national health policy.

If our Senate confirms Casey Means as Surgeon General, the United States government will be signaling that scientific expertise is no longer required for scientific leadership. At that point, we are no longer debating health policy. We are redefining what counts as expertise.

When a country replaces evidence with wellness vibes, it doesn’t just lose good guidance. It has officially detached itself from reality.

The more our government normalizes influencer rhetoric, the less reversible the damage will be. Now, leadership roles that should demand the utmost experience, knowledge, and authority will be selected based on how viral their social media following is. Influence can substitute for experience. Narrative can substitute for evidence. Wellness ideology supersedes rigorous science.

We are seeing the consequences already.

Lower vaccine uptake, distrust of credible experts and healthcare professionals, endorsement of pseudoscience, delayed treatments for medical issues. This adds up to worse health outcomes, increased strain on an already flawed and strained healthcare infrastructure, and more preventable illness and death. You won’t see it happening on an individual level until it’s too late to put the horse back in the barn. We’ve been watching this unfold for the last several decades. Now that we are stacking our highest levels of public health leadership with conspiracists and contrarians, expect it to accelerate.

And importantly: real experts become easier to dismiss as just another opinion. Audience size is not the same as expertise. But public health dies when expertise stops mattering. And public health decisions impact millions who don’t get to opt out of the consequences.

Public health is not biohacking. It’s not metabolic optimization. It’s definitely not raw milk nostalgia. Public health is not a lifestyle brand. And the Surgeon General should not be a wellness influencer.

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Hi everyone—If you’ve noticed, I haven’t been writing much lately.

Not because science slowed down.
Not because misinformation took a break.
And not because the wellness industry suddenly discovered evidence, humility, or basic biological constraints.

The past several months have been a convergence of life chaos—moving into a new house, work travel, and navigating my cat Maxwell’s cancer treatment—all when scientific institutions, and us scientists within them, are increasingly being targeted by the very federal agencies meant to uphold evidence-based public health guidance.

So ImmunoLogic paused briefly so I could focus on my full-time career in life sciences (as much as the MAHA movements wants to call me a shill, writing this newsletter doesn’t pay the bills) and all of those life priorities.

At the same time, the wellness ecosystem and its MAHA activists haven’t slowed. They continue to launder pseudoscience into legitimacy, all while people and ecosystems are placed at risk. Ironically, today happens to be kick-off grifter extraordinaire, Casey Means’ Senate Confirmation hearing for Surgeon General, a role she is woefully unqualified for.

And as I said during RFK Jr’s hearing, during Mehmet Oz’s hearing, during Marty Makary’s hearing… if our Senators confirm her, we will all be harmed, in the immediate future and for generations to come.

People will make health decisions based on falsehoods—because our government is legitimizing pseudoscience

Every January, POLITICO magazine publishes 15 Black Swan events they source from thought leaders across a wide array of fields: economists, scientists, historians, journalists, you name it. I was honored to contribute one for the 2026 edition.

At the same time, I am horrified but unsurprised, to see my prediction not just coming to fruition, but accelerating rapidly.

If you missed it, my 2026 Black Swan:

The FDA completely legitimizing wellness industry pseudoscience

BY ANDREA LOVE

Andrea Love is a biomedical scientist and science communicator.

I think the Black Swan for 2026 is already underway: the FDA completely legitimizing wellness industry pseudoscience.

Already, we’ve been seeing the FDA encouraging people to conflate pseudoscience for evidence-based medicine as FDA Commissioner Marty Makary erases the boundary between evidence-based medicine and the wellness industry under the guise of access, innovation and “repairing trust.” He and others are positioning the FDA not as a scientific safety guardrail, but a facilitator of “health choice.”

They frame evidence standards as elitist, favoring anecdotal claims to justify unscientific policy changes that will endanger the public.

There are early signals: enthusiasm to relax regulatory requirements for FDA approval; moving to fast-track direct-to-consumer health tests that lack clinical validation; and elevating supplements to quasi-therapeutics rather than unproven and potentially unsafe products immune from oversight thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. If FDA leadership erases the remaining guardrails that exist, expect a rapid expansion of FDA-adjacent products that appear legitimate to the public. People will not be empowered — they will be less healthy.

What makes this a Black Swan is that people will believe they are still following science as these claims come from our federal health agencies.

People will make health decisions based on falsehoods rather than validated evidence. Patients will delay or refuse effective care, opting instead for cleverly marketed products that carry a false sense of legitimacy. By the time these harms are apparent at a population level, these policy changes will be normalized — and potentially irreparable.

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If you’ve been following me in any capacity, you’ll know this take shouldn’t come as a surprise. Often, when I would warn about these things—informed by decades of experience in Lyme disease research and the wellness industry pseudoscience that has targeted it—I was called hyperbolic.

But nothing about this is hyperbole. Institutional shifts across health leadership are making sure of that. But to be clear, my Black Swan was never merely “more misinformation online.” It’s not just another loud anti-vaccine figure, or social media influencers spreading factually incorrect claims for profit.

It is the full-throated legitimization of wellness industry pseudoscience—socially, culturally, and politically.

Not fringe content.
Not alternative lifestyle chatter.
But authority that is making policy and amplified by the media.

That is the shift. And tragically, we are fully inside it now.

Wellness Pseudoscience Harms Everyone—Even If You Don’t Realize It.

For decades, wellness misinformation lived in a space that was evidence-adjacent and problematic, but containable: the “outspoken minority” spreading lies about vaccine harms, influencer feeds, supplement marketing, detox culture, lifestyle blogs that could mostly be ignored. That era is over.

Wellness ideology is now:

• Driving health narratives in mainstream media

• Informing political platforms and public policy proposals

• Framing regulatory oversight as oppression

• Rebranding ideology as “medical freedom”

This isn’t accidental. It’s strategic. And it’s been going on for decades. And it involves things you probably don’t even realize are connected. USDA’s Organic Certification? Yep. The anti-vaccine movement? You bet. The revocation of FDA oversight over dietary supplements? Yes. Anti-GMO rhetoric and lobbying? Absolutely. The “non-toxic” and “all-natural” consumer product markets? 100%.

The wellness industry is not based on scientific evidence, safety, or environmental concern. It is anti-regulation, anti-institution, and hostile to evidence that threatens its ability to make as much money with as little oversight as possible.

What’s changed today is that those values are now being positioned as “legitimate critiques” of regulated scientific innovation, safety oversight, and evidence-based public health measures because our government officials have allowed that to happen.

RFK Jr. Is a Symptom, Not the Cause

RFK Jr. gets a lot of attention, and all of that is for good reason. He has made a multi-million dollar empire over the last forty years spreading objective lies about everything from vaccines, food, basic chemistry and physics, and more. And now as head of HHS, he wields a lot of authority and a lot of power that is actively dangerous.

His messaging has directly contributed to declining vaccine rates across the US and globally, leading to preventable resurgences of measles, whooping cough, pediatric influenza.

But RFK Jr. is a delivery mechanism, chosen for his notoriety (he’s a Kennedy, technically) and his organization, Children’s Health Defense, that has already proven itself an effective tool at propagating pseudoscience and health lies.

RFK Jr. didn’t invent vaccine refusal. He didn’t conjure “toxin” panic. He didn’t invent the myth that “natural immunity” is superior to vaccination. He didn’t fabricate the claim that cell phones cause cancer or that public water fluoridation is neurotoxic. What he promotes—vaccine fear, toxin panic, immunity myths, distrust of public health—are long-standing wellness industry talking points. He has brought them out of yoga studios, Erewhon aisles, and Instagram slideshows into political discourse.

He successfully packaged pseudoscience into a political identity that crossed ideological lines and delivered it to an audience primed by wellness culture, institutional distrust, and grievance-based politics, all fueled by a clickbait media ecosystem.

If it weren’t RFK Jr, it would be someone else. Conveniently, his buddy, good ol’ Andrew Wakefield, Andrew Huberman, Peter Attia, and a myriad of other grifters all happen to live in Austin, TX. The groundwork has been laid for years. That’s what makes this moment particularly dangerous.

The Same Lies, Repeated Ad Nauseum

Once you start paying attention, you can’t ignore the repetition. The “alternative health” industry repeat the same tired talking points:

• Chronic disease is “exploding” because of modern life

• Vaccines prevent the body from developing “real” immunity

• Environmental exposures explain nearly all negative health outcomes

• Regulatory agencies are captured, incompetent, or malicious

• Anyone pushing back is anti-science, anti-freedom, or anti-curiosity

These claims are rarely supported by data, but they don’t need to be. The goal of the wellness industry is to stoke fear, alarm, and disgust—so that people will no longer listen to logic or use critical thinking. If you’re bombarded with messages about how [chemicals] are poisoning your kids, and some company or personality swoops in and promises to help you—that is very appealing.

Since these individuals don’t have complex biology or even factual reality on their side, they leverage emotions and stories (even if the stories aren’t true) to persuade their customer base. Yes, that’s all you are to them—a customer.

They do not want to improve health. They do not want to increase knowledge. They want to profit—at your expense. That’s it.

Stoke fear. Make parents believe they are harming their kids. Convince people that scientific advances are dangerous and we should instead, go back to the old days when our life expectancy was in the forties, we died prematurely from acute illnesses and injury, and we had limited medical diagnostic tools and interventions. All the while claiming they have the solutions that scientists and physicians are ‘hiding’ to keep you unwell.

The wellness industry makes trillions of dollars every year off this marketing strategy.

The Chronic Disease Panic (Still)

One of the loudest talking points on repeat is the false claim that chronic illness is “skyrocketing,” especially in children, and that this must be because of vaccines, environmental toxins, “synthetic chemicals,” and fluoridated water.

This argument ignores well-documented historical, epidemiological, and complex scientific realities, like:

• Drastic improvements in survival of premature and medically complex infants. Infants born at 22 weeks have a 10-20% chance of survival today, compared to a 0% survival chance in 1990.

• Changes in diagnostic criteria, diagnostic tools, and access to care. Breast cancer didn’t “skyrocket” with the development of mammograms—we were able to finally detect early cancers. Apply that logic to every technological advancement.

• Better recognition of conditions that were previously misclassified or fatal. Are autism rates increasing because more people are actually developing autism or because we have refined the sensitivity of criteria? Decades ago, only schizophrenic children would be diagnosed with autism based on the criteria at the time.

• Demographic shifts and aging populations. 80% of cancers occur in people over the age of 60. If we—as a population—live longer than ever, then more people in our population will get cancer. That’s just statistics.

The wellness industry presents a simplified before-and-after story that has zero facts to support it, but it sounds compelling when they pair it with fear-based imagery and manufactured anecdotes. That is their entire business model.

The worst part? They are doing all of this while dismantling critical science and health infrastructure—none of which will be repaired within our generation.

Selective Trust In Science Drives Pseudoscience

The same people who trust biomedical science for cancer treatment, rely on modern diagnostics, imaging, and pharmaceuticals, or expect evidence-based care when a family member has a medical emergency will dismiss immunology, epidemiology, or toxicology when they don’t like the conclusions.

• Refuse COVID-19 vaccines, yet demand every pharmaceutical intervention when they become severely ill.

• Support modern immunotherapies for cancer and autoimmune disorders, yet claim GMO food crops are dangerous, while they are developed using the EXACT SAME scientific principles and technologies.

• Demonize medicines developed and tested through randomized controlled trials, yet enthusiastically promote (and in many cases, sell) unregulated, unproven, and unsafe “health interventions.”

Science is now being treated as opinion, not as a standardized framework, and “vibes” are being treated as ground truth.

Once misinformation is part of an identity, fact-checking isn’t enough.

Health misinformation has always existed. But now we are watching:

• Wellness ideology merge with anti-regulatory politics

• Public health framed as authoritarian overreach

• Expertise recast as coercion

• Institutions dismantled under the guise of “freedom”

This is my Black Swan. When the discussion is no longer about evidence, but about power, legitimacy, and profit over public health. Not a sudden collapse. A slow, grinding halt of the systems that used to keep people alive.

In the words of T.S. Eliot:

We all must join in the fight for science.

We can’t afford to sit on the sidelines any longer. I’ll be here, explaining how biology works, providing historical context to health misinformation and wellness industry lies, call out bad actors across all political ideologies (yep, the OG anti-vaccine activists were left-leaning), and help equip you all with tools to combat it.

But everyone has a job to do. Call your elected officials. Demand accountability. Don’t give your money to organizations that are part of the wellness industry ecosystem. Challenge yourself when you notice your own selective trust in science.

Society is only as strong as the weakest link, and right now, we are all at risk of going down with the ship. Science does not defend itself. Institutions do not protect themselves. People do.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

In the meantime, if you missed it, I wrote one of the 15 Black Swan predictions for 2026 for POLITICO here.

I bring this up because it was published last week, but also, because this piece, from my January column for Skeptical Inquirer magazine, talks about the 35-year wellness industry con that is the USDA Organic label. Just like dietary supplements, unproven health interventions, and unregulated wellness tests, the Organic industry is a multi-billion dollar cash cow (get it—I love a good pun) that is based on zero science and all vibes. And in nearly every metric, it’s objectively inferior than conventional alternatives—including for the reasons you’re buying it (environment, health, etc).

So let’s get into it.

And if you want to help support a scientist who is trying to help fact-check falsehoods that are harming you and the planet, consider subscribing to ImmunoLogic:

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Note: this piece was written originally for my column, Inside Immunity, for the January/February 2026 issue of Skeptical Inquirer.

The organic farming and food industry is based on clean-food ideology, chemophobia, and the fantasy that “natural” is a scientific argument. It is born from the same wellness industry that sells detoxes, “clean” eating, supplements, and anti-chemical fearmongering, wrapped in conspiracy-lined distrust of scientific institutions and regulation. Organic is not a science-based food system; it’s a belief system. Just like the wellness industry, it undermines science, harms public health, deepens inequality, and drives policy that prioritizes vibes over evidence.

People believe organic is the opposite of anti-vaccine ideology. It isn’t; it’s cut from the same cloth. Anti-vaccine ideology praises “natural immunity”; organic advocates praise “natural farming.” Anti-vaccine ideology fearmongers about “toxins” in vaccines; organic activists do the same for “toxic pesticides.”

Anti-vaccine ideology demonizes “Big Pharma” while organic crusaders vilify “Big Ag.”

Same tactics, different targets.

Organic farming is not safer, not more nutritious, not better for the environment, and not pesticide-free. It is just marketed to make you feel that way.

The National Organic Program (NOP) was not created for safety, health, or sustainability; it was created in 1990 as a marketing standard. It is the agricultural counterpart to the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA). DSHEA removed FDA safety oversight of dietary supplements; the NOP did the same for “natural” farming methods. Neither require proof of safety or benefit, but both fuel profitable industries; organic farming is 22–35 percent more lucrative than conventional.

NOP is ideology, not science. There are no standards for pesticide toxicity, nutritional impact, environmental footprint, or worker safety to get that organic label. It simply bans “synthetic” farming tools while rubber-stamping “natural” ones, even when those natural options are more dangerous. In contrast, conventional farming tools adhere to rigorous scientific safety standards and regulatory rules. Just like the supplement industry, organic farming is less regulated than its conventional counterpart yet pretends to be superior.

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Natural Does Not Equal Safer—Even for Chemicals Designed to Kill

The organic industry has convinced people for more than thirty-five years that organic means no pesticides. This is objectively false. Organic farming uses a lot of pesticides. A non-exhaustive list includes copper sulfate, sulfur, pyrethrins, 20% acetic acid, spinosad, copper hydroxide, copper oxide, peracetic acid, eugenol, hydrogen peroxide, boric acid, potassium silicate, and Beauveria bassiana.

The difference? They’re “naturally derived,” which in science means absolutely nothing about their effectiveness or safety. Many organic-approved pesticides are more toxic and less selective because they are prohibited from chemical alteration to improve safety or specificity.

Copper sulfate, one of the most widely used fungicides in organic farming, is toxic at 300 milligrams per kilogram body weight (LD₅₀ = 300 mg/kg). It accumulates in the soil and groundwater and can be toxic to fish, aquatic life, and even humans at high enough doses. On the flip side, mancozeb, a synthetic fungicide used in conventional farming, is twenty-six times less toxic with an LD₅₀ of 8,000 mg/kg, and it rapidly degrades in the environment. Yet mancozeb is demonized solely because it’s synthetic, even though it is objectively safer and more effective.

Organic pesticides are typically less potent and less targeted, which means farmers must apply more per acre and more frequently than conventional pesticides to protect crops.

Eugenol (4-allyl-2-methoxyphenol), a clove-oil herbicide used in organic farming, is more than twice as toxic as glyphosate and requires ten times the amount per acre to control weeds. Farmers apply it up to six times per season, compared to one or two glyphosate treatments. The result is opposite to what organic marketing promises: more chemical load, more ecological disruption, more risk to farmworkers. And, ironically, because glyphosate has been targeted for nearly fifty years by anti-science activists, it is one of the most studied and safest herbicides to exist.

A chemical isn’t safer because it “came from a plant.” Toxicity has nothing to do with where a substance originated. It is based on chemical identity, route of exposure, dose, and mechanism of action. That’s true for every substance, pesticides included.

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Organic Pesticides Are Unregulated

The National Organic Program (NOP) exempts “natural” products from the safety and regulatory requirements conventional pesticides must meet. It’s the same wellness loophole we see in medicine: vaccines undergo extensive clinical testing, dose–response analysis, toxicology, and post-market surveillance, while supplements make health claims without proving safety or efficacy. If you wouldn’t swap a vaccine with a “natural immune booster,” why replace evidence-based crop protection with “natural” pesticides that don’t have equal scientific standards?

Every conventional pesticide must pass toxicology and risk assessment before it is approved for use. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets enforceable residue tolerances (maximum residue levels, MRL) after all these are assessed: acute and chronic toxicity, carcinogenicity, developmental and reproductive toxicology, endocrine disruption potential, dietary and applicator exposure, environmental fate, and ecological impact. USDA’s Pesticide Data Program (PDP) then monitors residues on finished food products annually to confirm real-world levels remain below EPA’s safety thresholds, set 100–1,000 times lower than doses shown to cause harm.

On the converse, most pesticides approved for use in organic farming skirt all this evidence-based oversight. If a substance is “natural” or “nonsynthetic,” the NOP permits it even without EPA tolerance-setting, residue limits, dietary risk assessment, or residue monitoring. This is policy based on the appeal-to-nature fallacy.

The difference between conventional and organic farming isn’t “pesticides” versus “no pesticides.” It’s risk-based and regulated chemistry versus vibes-based and unregulated chemistry. It’s the same false dichotomy that separates FDA-approved medicine from supplements and “wellness” cures. Nature happens to make botulinum toxin, asbestos, cyanide, arsenic, ricin, and snake venom, all of which are highly poisonous.

Organic policy hides risk; it doesn’t reduce it. Less tested, less regulated, and often more toxic compounds get a pass because they’re “natural,” while safer, more targeted, more studied compounds are banned based on ideology. That isn’t protecting health or the environment. It’s legitimizing pseudoscience for profit.

Organic Foods Don’t Have ‘Fewer’ Pesticide Residues; We Just Don’t Test for Most of Them

Even well-intentioned people repeat the falsehood that organic produce has “fewer residues,” so much so that even the American Academy of Pediatrics has adopted this as an official position.

The problem? Most people don’t realize that organic pesticide residues aren’t monitored! People cite the USDA Pesticide Data Program (PDP), but the PDP monitors synthetic pesticides to ensure compliance with EPA tolerance limits. Because organic-approved pesticides are exempted from tolerance limits, the PDP does not test for them. When people claim organic food has “fewer residues,” they have identified a data gap. You can’t detect things you aren’t testing for!

“Not tested” is not the same as “not present,” yet the organic industry has been profiting off misleading people for decades. In reality, the PDP should reassure you that conventionally grown foods are very safe: over 99 percent of detected residues are well below safety limits.

'Not as Bad as Anti-Vax' is a Cop-Out: Organic Is Harmful

When I point out that organic ideology and anti-vaccine ideology share the same playbook, I’m often told, “But buying organic doesn’t hurt anyone.” Except it does. Organic ideology damages the environment, undermines food security, increases food costs, and harms public health.

Organic yields are 10–30 percent lower than conventional farming. Lower yields require more land to grow the same food—meaning more deforestation, more habitat loss, and more greenhouse gas emissions. Modeling shows that large-scale organic farming adoption would increase greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 20 percent from land use change alone. The European Union’s 2020 Farm to Fork plan—which aims to cut (conventional) pesticide use in half and double organic acreage by 2030—is estimated to cause 20–30 percent yield losses, food price increases up to 30 percent, and greater land pressure.

We’ve seen these consequences already. In 2021, The Sri Lankan government banned all synthetic fertilizers and pesticides to force a nationwide switch to “100% organic.”

The result? Agricultural collapse, economic instability, and a food crisis. Rice yields fell by 30 percent, tea by 18 percent, food prices skyrocketed, and the economy spiraled. The outcome was so catastrophic that the government reversed course within seven months, which was already too late (International Monetary Fund 2022).

The Sri Lankan government later admitted the policy had a “worse-than-anticipated impact on agricultural production.” Translation: every scientific and economic expert warned them, and they ignored data anyway. When governments make policy based on beliefs instead of evidence, the outcome is inevitably harmful.

Organic ideology erodes public health by fixating on imaginary risks while worsening real ones. The Environmental Working Group’s “Dirty Dozen” list manipulates the PDP report to scare people about more affordable, nutritious produce that don’t actually have harmful pesticide residues on them while conveniently ignoring that organic pesticide residues aren’t monitored.

Trace pesticides aren’t hurting people; scaring them from eating produce is. Ninety percent of Americans don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, and unfounded fear of pesticides exacerbates that, especially for low-income households. Telling people they are poisoning their families if they eat conventionally grown produce objectively worsens health. This tactic from the organic industry is the nutritional equivalent of anti-vaccine propaganda: create fear of a fake threat to drive people toward a real risk.

Organic ideology harms farm workers too. Rejecting conventional herbicides means increased tillage and hand-weeding, which leads to more injuries, more exploitation, more soil erosion, and more greenhouse gas emissions from farm machinery. Rejecting conventional insecticides and fungicides means less effective, more ecologically damaging, or more toxic alternatives must be handled and used. The anti-science principles of organic farming don’t improve health or sustainability; they just give wealthy consumers moral superiority.

Organic ideology is directly tied to medical conspiracism along with the anti-vaccine movement and wellness pseudoscience. They originate from the same anti-science narrative: fear of “toxins,” distrust of regulators, hostility toward biotechnology, and outsized faith in the “natural” label. People who believe falsehoods about pesticides, GMOs, “chemicals,” or “toxins” also reject vaccinations, seek unproven cancer treatments, and refuse evidence-based health behaviors.

This is not a coincidence, this is by design.

You can’t be pro-science and pro-organic the same way you can’t be pro-science and anti-vaccine.

Both come from anti-science, chemophobic, anti-expertise, “nature knows best” ideology. Both replace risk assessment with moral panic. Both harm society. Organic is not the “healthy” choice; it’s the agricultural arm of the wellness-industrial-complex that undermines trust in science and profits from fear.

If you care about public health, sustainability, food security, or scientific integrity, the responsible position is to reject organic ideology outright. Not to excuse it. Not to “agree to disagree.” Reject it.

Wellness-based agriculture is no more acceptable than wellness-based oncology or wellness-based immunology. Science isn’t something you get to apply in healthcare and abandon in the grocery store.

If you support evidence-based medicine, then support evidence-based agriculture. Anything less is anti-science hypocrisy.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

It’s been an alarming year for science and public health. While I have written about much of this since RFK Jr., Marty Makary, Mehmet Oz, and other science denialists have taken over our Federal Health and Science agencies, tonight, I want to address a frequent request as many of you make your way to see your families:

“I’m going to see [insert family member] for Christmas and they believe [pseudoscience topic]. How do I talk to them about it?”

So here is a toolkit to help navigate these conversations, should they come up.

Now, I am not saying you have to bring this up with your family members. Depending on the topic and the person, these discussions can be very emotional—and they may not be receptive to having their strongly held-beliefs challenged. I would never want you to jeopardize a close relationship, especially with holidays being tense as is.

This framework is for those of you who think you loved one is ready, but also understand that you may not convince them immediately. Bringing about change in these type of entrenched beliefs, especially those that are a significant part of their identity, takes time. So be patient with yourself and with them.

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Navigating conversations about pseudoscience should always focus on critical thinking.

If you’ve read some of my pieces (such as the one below), you’ll know that anyone can fall prey to science and health misinformation, even if they are a skeptical person or have strong adherence to evidence when it comes to an unrelated science topic. Usually, when someone falls prey to pseudoscience, it’s because they accept those claims without using logic and critical thinking.

Wellness disinformation succeeds on that front because claims often evoke strong negative emotions, like fear and anxiety. Once emotions come into the picture, it can be difficult for even the most logical person to approach that information with skepticism.

The goal? Facilitate a focus on critical thinking without creating excessive conflict. This isn’t just because this is a person you care about, but also, if that person feels attacked, they will not want to listen to what you have to say.

Step 1: Build Trust and Show Empathy

Studies consistently show that factual information doesn’t matter if the person you’re sharing it with doesn’t trust the messenger. Even if the information they believe is outlandish and illogical, you must get that emotional buy-in before the person will be willing to hear you out.

• What to Do:

  • Listen without interrupting. This will allow them to see that you truly want to hear their perspective and will cultivate willingness to share.

  • Avoid condescension or labeling their beliefs as “stupid” or “irrational.” While these beliefs may very well be irrational, that’s exactly why pseudoscience persists: irrationality supersedes logic.

  • Acknowledge their concerns and motivations for believing the misinformation. Use empathetic language, such as:

“I completely understand why you’re concerned - we all want to do what’s best for our health.”

Example: If a family member believes vaccines are harmful, say, “I know you’re trying to make the best decision for yourself and your family. Let’s discuss this more, if you’re willing.”

Step 2: Avoid Direct Confrontation

Before you can dig into debunking the beliefs themselves, you need to get more information. Remember, different identities and communities shape these beliefs, so even if there are 2 people who think GMOs are harmful, or vaccines contain toxins, the reasons why they believe that might be different.

Here you want to gather more details. Ask open-ended questions instead of directly challenging them, as that can cause defensiveness and shut down further discourse.

• What to Do:

  • Ask questions to gather additional information about their beliefs.

  • Use open-ended inquiries to explore their reasoning for why they hold those beliefs.

Example: If a loved one claims that GMOs are unsafe, ask, “What concerns you the most about GMOs? Would you be open to walking me through why you believe this?”

Step 3: Use Science-Based Analogies

This is one of the most effective tools in your toolkit. Often, pseudoscience becomes entrenched because of gaps in literacy: basic literacy, media literacy, science literacy. Often, the misinformation preys on logical fallacies and chemophobia. Reframing the beliefs using relatable examples can often shift that mindset and allow someone to realize that they were holding onto unfounded fears about something.

• What to Do:

  • Use analogies to simplify complex science and health topics.

  • After providing an analogy or comparison, provide science-based data to help refute the belief.

Examples:

If your family member fearful of “toxic synthetic chemicals” [the hallmark of chemophobia and the appeal to nature fallacy], provide some analogies:

“Did you know that apple seeds contain cyanide? Did you know that almonds contain arsenic? Did you know that pears contain formaldehyde? All of these chemicals happen to be natural, and they can also be toxic in large amounts. But the source of a chemical isn’t what matters, it’s the dose and the chemical itself.”

“Did you know that the most toxic chemical is actually a natural one? Botulinum toxic is produced by a bacterium, Clostridium botulinum. It is toxic at 2 nanograms (that’s 0.000000001 grams) per kg of body weight. But even that is safe in controlled situations - like medical procedures.”

Step 4: Provide an Explanation for Why the Belief is False.

Many times, pseudoscience persists because it gives the person a reason to hold onto it. Often this is a gap in their worldview. Wellness disinformation often exploits mistrust of healthcare or corporations, pseudoscience medical diagnoses like leaky gut, chronic Lyme, toxic mold syndrome, and adrenal fatigue prey on a desire to take control of one’s health - and give an explanation for why they’re feeling the way they do, even if that explanation has no basis in reality.

To displace the false belief, refuting the false claim plus presenting the factual information has been shown to be more effective than just providing the facts on the topic. This is the refutation approach - and the goal is to replace that gap that misinformation filled with the correct information.

• What to Do:

  • Acknowledge their valid concerns that may promote skepticism: distrust of health insurance companies, our capitalist society, ineffective public health messaging.

  • Clarify the difference between accountability for a system or institution or and rejecting science-based evidence. Often, people conflate the for-profit health insurance infrastructure with science or healthcare providers - which can derail productive conversation.

  • Address their beliefs and concerns with tangible solutions and explanations.

  • Suggest science-based alternatives that align with their values.

Examples:

If they take supplements to “boost immunity,” ask them to explain how those supplements boost their immune system, and follow up with evidence-based habits like regular exercise, a diverse diet, reducing stress, adequate sleep, and vaccination to support your immune system.

If they are distrustful of food ingredients or additives because of “Big Food,” say something like: “I understand why you’re cautious about big industries. Let’s chat about how we can separate a company itself from the scientists doing research, and apply that to verified evidence while also being skeptical of corporate motives.”

Step 5: Share Stories, Not Just Data

I am a scientist - it is not in my nature to fall back on anecdotes. But you can correct misinformation more effectively by sharing a personal story along with facts. It helps cement the correct information with a relatable memory. That doesn’t mean do what wellness influencers do an rely on only anecdotes - it means include an anecdote that aligns with the body of evidence on the given topic.

• What to Do:

  • Share anecdotes that align with scientific facts.

  • Highlight relatable experiences that have immediate relevance to the person.

Examples:

If they distrust regulatory agencies (obviously excepting the recent co-opting of US regulatory agencies by ideologues), explain what happened before the FDA had oversight of medicines: “Decades ago, people sold “magic miracle elixirs” filled with pretty much anything and everything. Massengil’s Elixir Sulfanilamide, a liquid antibiotic sold in 1937, contained diethylene glycol (DEG), an untested solvent found in antifreeze, which caused 107 deaths. Today, the FDA exists to ensure our medicines are safe before approving them.”

If they distrust vaccines but trust supplements, share an example of harm from unregulated products, like the FDA recall of tainted homeopathic teething rings that killed babies with toxic doses of belladonna.

If they distrust “Big Ag,” tell them about how organic farming certification was created in the 1990s solely as a marketing ploy, that organic farming practices aren’t healthier, safer, or better for the environment—and that “Big Organic Ag” is actually 25-32% more profitable than conventional “Big Ag.”

Step 6. Introduce Cognitive Dissonance

We are at the contradiction phase! Steer the conversation to highlight inconsistencies and contradictions in their logic. This can allow them to question and re-evaluate their beliefs without becoming defensive.

• What to Do:

  • Point out inconsistencies in a non-judgmental way.

  • Encourage them to question sources of information and their motivations.

Examples:

If they reject vaccines but take supplements, say, “I noticed you trust supplements that have less testing and safety oversight than vaccines or other medicines. What makes one feel safer than the other? If these products work so well, why aren’t they tested and approved like medications?”

If they believe that the government is “hiding natural cures for cancer,” ask, “Do you know that we have many cancer treatments that are natural chemicals? Why would companies hide other natural cures?”

If they believe MAHA will improve our health, ask them to explain how less food inspectors will address that, or how scaring people about conventionally-grown produce will improve our diets. Ask them why MAHA solutions center on selling unregulated wellness products from a $5.6 trillion dollar industry.

Step 7: Explain why Misinformation Exists.

Many people fall for pseudoscience because it exploits medical conspiracism - the belief that powerful groups deliberately conceal truths about medical treatments, diseases, or public health for financial or political gain. Helping them realize that health misinformation has financial and political motives can allow them to realize they’ve been misled.

• What do do:

  • Build awareness of motivations behind misinformation.

  • Highlight financial incentives of influencers and companies spreading pseudoscience.

  • Underscore that all industries have profit motives, but key differences are based on the lack of data and evidence behind these claims.

  • Use clear examples of how misinformation spreads, such as viral posts from individuals who sell unregulated supplements or alternative treatments.

Examples:

If they believe vaccines cause autism, explain to them that Andrew Wakefield made that claim up and fabricated data in order to make money. Explain that even after he lost his medical license and the claim has been debunked, other bad actors like RFK Jr. continue to make millions of dollars off these falsehoods.

If they believe that conventionally-grown produce is covered in toxic pesticides, explain to them organizations like the Environmental Working Group bring in millions of dollars in donations by convincing people that organic products are better. The Dirty Dozen list misleads people that these produce items are risky, when in reality, the data they manipulate show that they are incredibly safe (and nutritious!)

Step 8: Be Patient, Share Information Gradually, and Know When to Walk Away.

This stuff is tough! Changing someone’s mind, especially when it relates to strongly held beliefs takes time and repetition. Humans do not like admitting they are wrong, especially when it relates to things that have influenced their day-to-day lives for years.

• What to Do:

  • Set realistic expectations; you may not convince them in one conversation.

  • Set boundaries and end discussions politely if they become heated.

  • Provide small pieces of evidence and resources they can explore on their own so you don’t overwhelm them.

Examples:

If someone is concerned about harmful levels of aluminum in vaccines, but does not appear receptive at the moment, ask them if they’d be willing to look at some information with you later. Share a personal story: “a study I read compares the amount of aluminum in vaccines to other everyday exposures. It helped me understand the science better.”

If someone is getting hostile, “I really value our relationship and want us to have open conversations. Let’s revisit this another time.”

9. Focus on Shared Values

• Why it Works: Finding common ground fosters collaboration and reduces resistance.

• What to Do:

  • Link science to their existing values or beliefs.

  • Frame the discussion around goals you both care about.

Examples:

If they want to reduce pesticide exposure, tell them that you also care about that. That’s why you support farming methods like using GE crops, which have been extensively studied and are safe, and have allowed farmers to reduce pesticide applications by over 8% in the last 20 years.

If they value natural living, explain that science often harnesses nature and improves on it. Use an example like aspirin: a chemical (acetylsalicylic acid) that is derived from a naturel chemical, salicin, found in willow bark. But scientists were able to improve upon it using their knowledge of nature and their chemistry technologies to create a safer, more effective pain reliever with fewer side effects.

Step 10. Encourage Critical Thinking and Healthy Skepticism.

Empowering family members to question pseudoscientific claims can be more effective than directly debunking them. More than that, it will equip them with the tools to assess the credibility of other claims they encounter in the future. It’s the giving a man a fish versus teaching him how to fish approach.

• What to Do:

  • Teach useful skepticism. Encourage them to ask questions about information, but hold the sources making claims to the same standards.

    • Ask them why they believe someone like Calley Means, who owns a supplement company and has a direct profit motive, and not a scientist who isn’t selling something to their audience.

    • Use hypothetical scenarios: “If detox teas really worked, why wouldn’t hospitals use them?”

  • Ask open-ended questions to encourage critical thinking, like “What makes this convincing to you?” or “Have you considered where the information came from?”

  • Give them tools to check credibility of sources and explore on their own: Media Bias/Fact Check, Quackwatch, FactCheck.org.

  • Teach them to verify and cross-check claims with multiple reputable sources like European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), FDA, CDC, European Medicines Agency, etc.

  • Promote logical reasoning when reviewing papers on Pubmed. Explain that a single study is not all of the evidence on a topic, and scientific consensus is built on reproducible results, not anecdotes.

Addressing pseudoscience isn’t about “winning,” it’s about improving your loved one’s health and our society.

Health disinformation is a public health threat. We can all play a role in combating it, but it takes courage to do that with a loved one. Give yourself grace and remember that your goal isn’t to “win” or convince them after a single conversation. You want to build trust and lay the foundation for future conversations, and become a trusted resource they will turn to when they encounter misinformation.

Discussion about pseudoscience are never easy, especially when they are with someone you care about. But every step forward matters. Misinformation thrives in echo chambers. If you can show your loved one you’re a calm and trusted voice, you can help counteract that, and contribute to the larger fight against pseudoscience.

Your efforts, no matter how small they may seem, have the potential to create a ripple effect—not just for your loved ones but for their connections and communities. That’s something you should be proud of.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

As our institutions are being weakened by political theater and conspiracy-driven interference, microbes aren’t taking a gap year. They are very much still out there doing what microbes do best: exploiting human vulnerability to survive. Which brings us to a timely—and very real—threat making the rounds right now: norovirus.

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Norovirus is once again sweeping the country—and, unsurprisingly, cruise ships.

So far this year, there have been 16 norovirus outbreaks on CDC-regulated cruise ships (plus 5 other GI outbreaks of unknown or alternative origin). And yesterday, yet another cruise ship reported an outbreak.

About 5% of on board passengers have become ill. That may not sounds great, but given how contagious norovirus is and how ideal a breeding ground a cruise ship is…things could be far worse.

But with the holidays approaching and cases rising sharply across the country, we should all understand how to protect ourselves from a violent, wildly unpleasant, and potentially dangerous pathogen (one we still don’t have a vaccine for).

Noroviruses are the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis in adults.

Acute gastroenteritis simply means inflammation of the stomach and intestines, most commonly caused by viral infections—primarily norovirus and rotavirus. In children, rotavirus beats norovirus as the most common cause, but we do have a very effective vaccine for rotavirus which has dramatically reduced hospitalizations and deaths.

Bacterial infections (usually toxins produced by bacteria) come in behind viral infections. Other pathogens, such as parasites like Giardia lamblia and Cryptosporidium spp. are less frequent causes.

Symptoms of gastroenteritis include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain. Other symptoms like fever, lethargy, dehydration, and complications associated with those can occur.

Illness caused by norovirus is fast and furious

In the case of norovirus, if you get infected, you’re going to know it—and quickly.

Symptoms from norovirus develop between 12 and 48 hours after exposure and are typically violent in onset and nature (yes, I am speaking from both personal and professional experience).

These include:

• Nausea

• Acute-onset vomiting

• Watery, non-bloody diarrhea

• Abdominal cramps

• Fatigue, muscle aches, headache, and fever can also be present.

If you’ve been there, you know what I’m talking about. Now, there is some good news.

For most people, illness is “mild” in the medical sense—meaning symptoms resolve quickly (within 1–3 days) and without major medical intervention, not that it feels remotely mild while it’s happening. However, norovirus can be particularly serious for young children and older adults. Children under 5 years old and adults aged 85 years and older are more likely to have an outpatient or emergency department visit than people of other ages.

Norovirus is the number one cause of foodborne illness, the fourth leading cause of foodborne illness-related death, and is responsible for 58% of foodborne illness. Norovirus causes nearly 1 million pediatric medical visits every year in the US, and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality.

By 5 years of age in the US:

• 1 in 110,000 will die from norovirus

• 1 in 160 will be hospitalized

• 1 in 40 will go to the emergency department

• 1 in 7 will go to an outpatient clinic

These aren’t stats from an outlier season—this is what we see year over year. Norovirus is one of the most burdensome and costly GI pathogens we face. Globally, norovirus causes around 685 million cases of illness every year. In the US, it is estimated to cause up to 21 million cases of gastroenteritis annually. And unfortunately, we don’t yet have a vaccine for norovirus, in part because there are over 40 different strains of the virus.

Norovirus outbreaks are most common during winter: which means, right now.

Across the US, norovirus test positivity rates are around 14%, which is double the test positivity seen just a few months prior. Last year’s season was particularly bad, with test positivity rates of 25%. Wastewaster tracking, which monitors for presence of viral genetic material in sewage, indicates a similar upward trend of norovirus.

While people often call norovirus the “stomach flu,” it has nothing to do with influenza. Noroviruses belong to the calicivirus family and are non-enveloped viruses—a classification that explains much of their sturdiness.

Viruses are classified according to their structure and composition, which include their viral genome and the protein capsid. Viruses that only contain those pieces are considered non-enveloped, whereas viruses that have a lipid membrane that surround that protein capsid are enveloped (the lipid layer is the envelope).

Read more virology basics in the below:

Non-enveloped, or naked viruses like noroviruses tend to be more virulent than enveloped viruses. This is because that lipid membrane in enveloped viruses is critical to their function, but it is more fragile than a standalone protein capsid. As a result, non-enveloped viruses are more resistant to the elements and can withstand heat, humidity changes, and many disinfectants. Beyond noroviruses, other non-enveloped human viral pathogens include the enteroviruses, adenoviruses, and rhinoviruses.

Note: this newsletter is free, but it’s able to sustain itself from support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. If you value science-based information, consider upgrading to a paid subscription:

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Norovirus is extremely contagious.

Norovirus is pretty fascinating, from a microbiology and immunology perspective. Norovirus has the lowest minimum infectious dose of any known human pathogen. Fewer than 18 viral particles can infect you. That’s why norovirus spreads so efficiently. Norovirus is transmitted through multiple routes, both because of how contagious and sturdy it is. No big deal or anything, but norovirus can remain intact and infectious on surfaces for up to 4 weeks.

Norovirus spreads through:

• Person-to-person contact

• Fecal-oral routes (norovirus is shed in the stool)

• Contaminated surfaces and objects

• Food- and water-borne routes

And because so few particles are needed, even microscopic aerosolized droplets from vomiting can infect someone nearby. This is why outbreaks explode in enclosed environments. This also means if someone has norovirus and has diarrhea and they don’t thoroughly clean themselves, their hands, surfaces they touch…well, you get the idea.

As you can guess, outbreaks are most common in high-density areas where people are in close quarters. Enter cruise ships. And daycares. And retirement communities or skilled nursing facilities.

Foodborne norovirus is transmitted a few different ways: through shellfish or seafood harvested from waters that are contaminated with human waste, or through poor personal and food hygiene practices, where an individual directly contaminates food. For example, an outbreak last December was traced to a sushi restaurant in North Carolina, where over 240 people reported falling ill after dining there.

Another fun fact: even after you no longer have symptoms, you can shed infectious virus in your stool for several weeks. That means if proper hygiene measures aren’t continued after you are feeling better, infections can continue to spread within your household and communities.

Hand sanitizers do NOT work against norovirus.

This is true not just for the noroviruses, but for all non-enveloped viruses. The mechanism that alcohol-based hand sanitizers work does nothing for these pathogens.

Alcohols disrupt and dissolve lipid membranes. Ethanol (60-95%) and isopropanol, the alcohols found in hand sanitizers, disrupt lipid (fat) membranes of enveloped viruses. The alcohol molecules intercalate (insert in between) within the lipid membrane, which causes it to break apart. This envelope is required for these viruses to attach to and infect host cells: without it, they are non-infectious. Norovirus has no lipid envelope. There is nothing for alcohol to dissolve.

Alcohols also denature proteins. Denaturation is the process of unfolding a protein (called the tertiary structure). Viral proteins, including those required for attachment and entry into host cells are susceptible to denaturation. When these proteins lose their three-dimensional structure, they lose their function, effectively neutralizing the virus. Unfortunately, for many viruses, like noroviruses, the unfolding step isn’t enough to inactivate it.

You might be thinking, that viral capsid is made of protein, right? Why doesn’t sanitizer work on norovirus then?

Well, evolution equipped noroviruses to tolerate harsh environments far more extreme than your Purell bottle. Non-enveloped viruses like norovirus, adenovirus, rhinovirus, poliovirus, and HPV have really sturdy protein capsids, because that is the outermost structure of the virus. These proteins are incredibly resistant to things that would normally interfere with protein function, like stomach acid, ultraviolent radiation, desiccation (drying out), and yes, disinfectants.

Commercial hand sanitizers contain 60–80% alcohol. Norovirus requires at least 95% ethanol for meaningful inactivation.

The solution? Wash your hands with soap and water.

Soap and water is the effective and preferred method for proper hygiene among the general public, especially if you’ve been in contact with fecal matter.

Detergents found in soaps form micelles (think of these like little fat cages) around pathogens which help remove them from your skin, trap them, and allow them to be washed away when rinsing with water.

What about cleaning surfaces?

There are many effective disinfectants for cleaning potentially contaminated surfaces. But that means you need to not listen to wellness influencers who tell you to use vinegar or other “homemade products” to clean your counters.

Spoiler: vinegar ain’t doing a damn thing to norovirus.

There’s a reason chemists and toxicologist and microbiologists are legitimate experts in these fields—they develop tools that improve hygiene and sanitation and protect our health. So let’s not fall prey to the appeal to nature fallacy, or rhetoric coming from the Washington Post about how you need to avoid “harsh chemicals” — I guarantee they don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

To actually disinfect surfaces, you can use:

Bleach (Sodium Hypochlorite) is the most effective disinfectant against norovirus. Sodium hypochlorite works by denaturing proteins and disrupting viral RNA, much more effectively than alcohol. A solution containing 5-25 tablespoons of household bleach per gallon of water is recommended. The exact concentration may vary based on the surface and situation.

While sodium hypochlorite bleach is the number one choice, you can also use:

Hydrogen Peroxide at a concentration of at least 3% can be effective against norovirus. It acts as an oxidizing agent, damaging essential components of the virus.

Quaternary Ammonium Compounds, also known as “quats,” these compounds can be found in household cleaning products and some types of disinfectant wipes. They can be effective against norovirus but often need to be used at higher concentrations. (Note: this includes benzalkonium chloride, which is not as effective as bleach and requires longer contact time and higher concentration).

Accelerated Hydrogen Peroxide (AHP), a more potent form of hydrogen peroxide which is effective against a broad range of pathogens, including norovirus.

Certain Phenolic Disinfectants which are made of phenols, a unique class of alcohols. These are typically used in healthcare settings.

Alcohols above 95% concentration. While commercial alcohol-based hand sanitizers are not effective against norovirus, higher concentrations of alcohol in certain disinfectants (95%) can have some efficacy. However, their use is limited compared to other options like bleach.

Ultraviolet light, particularly UV-C, can be effective for surface disinfection against norovirus, although it’s more commonly used in healthcare settings than in households.

If you aren’t sure if what you have available is effective against norovirus, check the EPA list of antimicrobials for norovirus (this is the archived version pre-Trump administration). Whatever disinfectant you choose, surface must remain wet for the full recommended contact time. Simply spraying and wiping isn’t cutting it when it comes to noro.

So…what happens if someone at home has norovirus?

First, don’t panic. Second, you are going to have to be vigilant. Unfortunately, there is no vaccine for norovirus and treatment involves supportive care. But if someone at home has norovirus, it doesn’t guarantee everyone will get it, if you take steps to reduce the risk.

Hand hygiene, especially in any common areas and particularly in the bathroom and kitchen spaces. Soap and water is king here. This is especially important after using the toilet, after changing diapers (if applicable), and before eating, preparing, or handling food. If you think you’re washing too frequently, you’re probably washing the right amount.

Food hygiene is essential. It goes without saying the sick individual should not be touching common food or prepping food for others in the house, and, if possible, should not be in the vicinity when food is being prepared. You should also not prepare foods for up to 3 days after your symptoms subside. However, additional measures can also be taken. Thoroughly wash fruits and vegetables before preparing and eating them, especially if eaten raw. Ensure seafood is washed and cooked thoroughly: norovirus can survive “searing” and quick “steaming” and temperatures up to 140F. Any foods that are potentially contaminated from the sick individual should be discarded. You can also consider wearing clean gloves while handling food or interacting with a sick individual.

Disinfect surfaces immediately. Any surfaces which have been in contact with vomit or fecal matter should be disinfected as soon as possible. Use a chlorine bleach solution with a concentration of 1000–5000 ppm (5–25 tablespoons of household bleach [5.25%] per gallon of water).

Thorough and prompt laundry. Anything: clothing, linens, etc., that may be contaminated should be washed. Minimize disturbance of potentially contaminated fabrics (remember: 20 viral particles can infect someone), wear gloves while handling and wash hands thoroughly after touching. Wash items in the washing machine with the highest cycle length and machine dry (for additional heat sterilization) afterward.

Caring for the sick individual. If the individual is actively vomiting, having diarrhea, and may not have the best hygiene for whatever reason, consider wearing a high quality mask whenever you are in contact with them. This will reduce the likelihood of particles floating around that may contain virus. You can consider wearing gloves if providing care for them, and always make sure to wash your hands extra thoroughly after interacting with them. You might also change your clothes before and after being in contact with them, so you’re not tracking viral particles elsewhere (Note: these measures are what I employed when Bill was in the nursing home earlier this year when he got norovirus during an outbreak there).

If you do inevitably get sick, I wish you all the best, truly. Even if you’re otherwise healthy and not at high risk for serious illness and complications, it can be one of the most unpleasant illnesses you might experience. Just remember: while you are balled up in pain, cursing whoever infected you, know that the chaos will be over with in a couple of days.

And remember: viruses don’t care about conspiracies, politics, or wellness pseudoscience.

They care about biology. When public health is undermined, microbes fill the void. And they won’t wait for us to remember that science is what keeps them at bay.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

Subscribe now

I hope everyone is staying as sane as possible these days. It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve written a longer piece here, but that’s because life has been lifeing. If you aren’t aware, I work full-time in life sciences biotech, which has been understandably volatile this year (thanks, war on science). So work has been pretty demanding.

3 of my cats have also had convergent medical issues:

• Maxwell continues chemo for large cell GI lymphoma (75% through cycle 3)

• Zara had radioiodine therapy on November 18 to treat her hyperthyroidism

• And…Oliver’s “quick check” of a skin growth turned out to be a mast cell tumor, which he had surgery to remove.

I’m happy to say we are through the bulk of that, though!

Zara is released from radiation isolation (we are both glowing a delightful hue of yellow now) and will get thyroid levels checked in a couple months.

Ollie’s surgery showed clean margins and pathology was very positive. The tumor was “as close to benign” as possible (words from Maxwell’s oncologist) and he won’t need additional treatment unless another tumor appears.

More on all of these topics to come, since many of you have requested science-forward content on veterinary immunology/oncology (and yes, the pseudoscience is strong in the pet health world too).

But now that I’ve got a bit of breathing room, let’s get into it!

Yesterday, RFK Jr.’s cadre of anti-science propagandists kicked off Day 1 of the latest CDC' ACIP (Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices) meeting.

This summer, RFK Jr. replaced the previous ACIP members with his anti-science allies that have no credible expertise or knowledge in immunology, vaccine science, clinical development, or public health (data sciences like epidemiology). As a result, they don’t know how to review and interpret vaccine-related data, which has caused varying degrees of head scratching, contradiction, and chaos during ACIP meetings.

Read more below:

This meeting, one of their targets is whether to revoke the current and long-standing evidence-based recommendation for universal hepatitis B vaccination for newborns in the US.

The current ACIP couldn’t get their stories straight after a day of conspiracy theories and lies and ended up delaying their vote on the newborn hepatitis B vaccine until today. I can’t predict the future, but the only outcome that would surprise me would be if they upheld the recommendation that all newborns receive a hepatitis B vaccine dose.

The recommendation that all newborns be vaccinated for hepatitis B is supported by over thirty years of data.

RFK Jr. and his anti-vaccine allies don’t operate on evidence, they operate on vibes. But there are very good reasons why this recommendation exists and why it saves lives, even if those making our Federal vaccine policy choose to deny reality.

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Universal newborn hepatitis B vaccination prevents infection, chronic hepatitis, cancer, and death.

Before we get into the science, it’s worth emphasizing: everything in this article is the scientific foundation for why the birth dose has been universally recommended for more than three decades. These are not abstract biological trivia. This is the evidence the ACIP is supposed to weigh when determining whether newborns should remain protected. This is the evidence the current ACIP is now ignoring. This meeting wasn’t called because of new data—it was called because RFK Jr. has his ideologues installed and he wants to unravel health policy. And that’s why all of us need to understand the data, the context, and the history, and why the current ACIP is not only wholly unqualified, but are actively endangering our lives.

The hepatitis B vaccine prevents infection with the hepatitis B virus (HBV).

HBV is an incredibly contagious virus and is transmitted through contact with bodily fluids: blood, mucosal fluids, semen, and vaginal secretion. The virus spreads when there is a break in the skin or through mucous membranes (eyes, respiratory tract, vagina, etc). It’s also incredibly hardy: HBV can survive on inanimate objects and surfaces for 7 days.

HBV infection initially causes acute hepatitis (a catchall term for inflammation of the liver). But HBV is a DNA virus in the Hepadnaviridae family (hepa- for liver, dna- for DNA = hepadna-), which makes its replication cycle more complex. Part of it enables HBV to shuttle its DNA into our cell nuclei (liver cells, specifically) where the virus can persist indefinitely if not eliminated by our immune system.

There are other hepatitis viruses: Hepatitis A, C, D, and E, but these viruses aren’t related to each other. They are called hepatitis viruses because they all lead to hepatitis: infection and inflammation of liver cells, called hepatocytes.

HBV can cause persistent infection even after acute illness.

Persistent HBV infection can cause chronic hepatitis which can progress to liver damage, cirrhosis (liver scarring), liver cancer, and death.

Many people living with chronic HBV are completely asymptomatic for years — even decades — unknowingly at risk for severe liver damage, cancer, and premature death.

And since HBV is so contagious, many people are carriers and have no idea. That means they can unintentionally infect others while also being at risk for severe outcomes themselves.

Children are at highest risk for severe hepatitis B outcomes — and HBV isn’t “only sexually transmitted.”

Contrary to anti-vaccine activists who claim that infants don’t need a “vaccine for a sexually-transmitted infection,” HBV is not just sexually transmitted.

HBV spreads through numerous bodily fluids, which means someone can become infected with HBV through sexual activity, perinatally (mother to child), unsafe medical practices, unsanitary needle practices (including piercing/tattooing), and other person-to-person fluid exchange.

While saliva does not contain infectious HBV, it can be transmitted through sharing of toothbrushes, drinkware, if an infected person has even a small cut or small sore in the mouth.

Children are infected with HBV through two main routes:

• Perinatally (during birth), when during delivery the newborn is infected by the mother. This is also called vertical transmission.

• Direct contact with an infected individual (family member, medical professional, classmate at daycare, etc)

HBV infection during the first year of life poses the highest risk of both acute and chronic hepatitis.

90% of infants under 1 year old will develop chronic hepatitis if they are infected with HBV.

There’s more.

58% of all liver cancers are linked to chronic hepatitis B.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could prevent infant hepatitis B infections and all the complications associated with chronic hepatitis, including liver failure and nearly 60% of all liver cancers?

Spoiler: we can.

It’s called the newborn hepatitis B vaccine dose.

This heightened susceptibility in infancy is why the birth dose is so critical. When a virus has a near-perfect success rate at establishing lifelong, cancer-causing infection in babies, delaying vaccination is puts newborns at incredible risk during their most vulnerable period of life.

The first hepatitis B vaccine was developed and approved in 1981, but vaccination recommendations were limited in scope because of manufacturing limitations of the serum-based vaccine. In 1986, the US deployed technology to manufacture recombinant HBV antigen (proteins that trigger the immune response) in yeast cells, which enabled more doses to be manufactured.

To widen the scope, CDC’s ACIP recommended hepatitis B vaccination for infants born to mothers who tested positive for that HBV protein, HBsAg, starting in 1988. During this time, HBV testing during pregnancy (for those who had access to prenatal care) became semi-standard to try to identify highest-risk infants.

But this recommendation didn’t lead to substantial reduction in HBV infections.

In the 1980s, there were 26,000 reported HBV infections in the US every year, with a estimate of 200,000 true new infections every year.

At this point, the data were clear that the vast majority of chronic hepatitis B cases were a result of infection early in life, so preventing infection in infancy was critical to combat hepatitis B, including infection, chronic hepatitis, liver failure, and cancer.

Enter:

Universal newborn HBV vaccination recommendations.

In 1991, CDC’s ACIP (Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices) implemented universal newborn vaccination recommendations. This shift just 5 years after widespread availability of the recombinant HBV vaccine had incredible impact.

Hepatitis B prevalence plummeted.

• By 2002, chronic hepatitis B prevalence in US children under the age of 5 dropped to less than 0.1%. Previously, 4.7% of children under 5 had hepatitis B infection.

• There was an 89% reduction in HBV infection rates, solely due to this change in newborn vaccine recommendations.

• Perinatal HBV transmission declined by over 90%.

• By 2010, acute HBV had declined by 82% among all age groups in US.

• Among adolescents, HBV incidence dropped by 98%. (this is the demographic that was the first group to receive newborn vaccination)

What’s more? Newborn hepatitis B vaccine prevents liver cancers.

37 years of follow up in randomized controlled trials in Taiwan following their universal vaccine adoption show that newborn hepatitis B vaccination prevents liver cancers by up to 72%. That’s huge.

This is what happens when you vaccinate at birth. This recommendation was one of the most successful infectious disease interventions in U.S. history. If today’s ACIP weakens or revokes this recommendation, it isn’t because evidence changed—it’s because the committee is staffed with people who no longer care about evidence.

It’s weird, right? RFK Jr. and his MAHA allies claim they “care” about chronic illness and prevention, yet they are undermining an incredibly safe preventive medicine that prevents…chronic illnesses? If it hasn’t become clear to you yet, it should. RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement don’t actually care about anyone’s health. Certainly not children.

Here’s the reality that ACIP is choosing to ignore: maternal testing alone has never been sufficient to prevent early-life HBV infections. The data from the 1980s proved it, and the biology still proves it. Any proposal that relies on maternal HBsAg screening as a benchmark for birth-dose vaccination ignores decades of evidence. The science has been clear and ignoring it will cause immeasurable harm.

A negative HBV test is not an excuse to opt your child out of newborn hepatitis B vaccination.

A common refrain from anti-vaccine activists centers around this rhetoric: that if a pregnant woman tests negative for HBV, then there’s no risk to the infant and therefore, they don’t need vaccination.

This is wrong. And we have data to show that.

You can be infected with HBV, be contagious, and not test positive on the HBsAg test.

When someone is newly infected with HBV, there is a time called the window period. The window period is the interval between when someone is infected with HBV and when there is enough virus in their blood to detect that viral protein, the HBsAg, on the diagnostic tests.

The window period can be up to 10 weeks, which means you can be infected with HBV, but test negative, for two and a half months.

I’m sure you can see where I’m going here, but if someone is tested in the early second trimester for HBV, tests negative, assumes they’re uninfected, that may not actually be the case. Even if someone tested negative late in pregnancy, that does not guarantee they are uninfected, if they are in the window period.

This idea that a negative test means your infant isn’t at risk creates a false sense of security. Universal vaccination at birth ensure we protect all newborns, even if early infection isn’t caught by testing during the window period. Or if someone doesn’t have access to appropriate prenatal medical care. Or if an infant is infected through other close contacts outside of birth, since routine HBV testing of the entire population isn’t standard. You know, all of the scientific and evidence-based reasons for why universal vaccination at birth has been recommended for 34 years.

We even have epidemiological data to support the biology. In the 1980s, when only high-risk infants (those born to explicitly HBsAg-positive mothers) were vaccinated, there was no decline in HBV infections.

For more details on HBV replication, biology, and vaccine development, read this piece from the summer:

The US isn’t ‘over-vaccinating’ children—we are protecting people from deadly illness.

A common refrain is that the US is “over vaccinating” children compared to other countries. Well, that’s not true. In fact, many other countries implemented universal HBV newborn vaccination recommendations similar to the US.

Nearly 190 countries globally have universal newborn hepatitis B recommendations.

These include Taiwan, Thailand, China, Australia, Japan. In fact, Taiwan adopted newborn vaccination in 1984, 7 years before the US did. Just like the US, in countries who adopted universal infant vaccination, prevalence of HBV has dropped from ~5% in the 1980s to <1% by 2020. Vaccination programs have reduced new infections among kids by over 95% in areas with high vaccine uptake.

What’s more? Rates of liver cancers have also declined. Prevent hepatitis infection? Prevent all the long-term complications of it, too.

Public health recommendations are [supposed to be] designed for the population they serve. The US has higher HBV prevalence, inconsistent prenatal care access, and higher variability in healthcare utilization than countries like the UK, Norway, Sweden that have robust national healthcare programs. Universal newborn vaccination is a health policy rooted in the reality of American healthcare infrastructure.

Universal Newborn Hepatitis B Vaccination Recommendations is Based on Science, Not Vibes.

RFK Jr and his MAHA allies repeat the claim that they are returning US health policy to ‘gold standard science,’ yet they don’t understand science and are doing the opposite.

This discourse on newborn hepatitis B vaccination exemplifies that. Because newborn HBV vaccination:

• Provides immediate, reliable protection to all newborns — not just those whose mothers test positive.

• Closes gaps caused by missed, delayed or imperfect maternal testing.

• Prevents lifelong chronic disease, liver cancer, and premature death.

• Has a decades-long safety record with billions of doses administered globally.

• Is more effective at preventing infection and disease than ‘catch-up’ vaccination later in childhood or in adulthood, especially in a country like the US where we don’t have equitable healthcare access.

Hepatitis B causes around 1.1 million deaths globally ever year due to cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancers. In the US, at least 5,000 deaths every year are a result of liver cancer and failure due to chronic hepatitis due to infections that occurred decades before, in infancy. That’s with our current newborn vaccine recommendations.

If today’s ACIP vote revokes that? We will see a rapid and predictable resurgence of preventable HBV infections. From there, we will see an increase in chronic diseases, including liver cancers, plus all of the associated increased economic and healthcare burden from more sick people.

Even slight delays in the first HBV vaccine dose can contribute to hundreds of additional cancer cases and deaths. Imagine if the official word from our government becomes “nah, it’s not important?” Well, we might not have to imagine, if RFK Jr gets his way.

This is why the ACIP vote matters. Birth-dose vaccination is what holds HBV prevention together. Remove it or weaken it and the snowball effect will be catastrophic: infections will rise, chronic carriers will increase, liver cancers will emerge decades later, and the burden on the healthcare system and families grows.

Public health decisions cause generational impact. Undoing the birth dose today doesn’t just change the present—it will cause damage for decades.

And this is the absurdity of the MAHA talking points. They claim to care about “root causes” and “chronic disease,” while dismantling the very interventions that prevent chronic disease. They fearmonger about cancer while undermining two vaccines—HBV and HPV—that literally prevent cancer. Hypocrisy, am I right?

When do I get to tell Calley Means that he and his idol are directly to blame for “cancer rates skyrocketing” because they’ve systematically undermined vaccines like HBV and HPV that…literally prevent cancers?

Letting anti-vaccine rhetoric dictate our health policy will cause preventable illness and death, now and in the future. That’s not hyperbole, that’s reality.

The ACIP ‘debate’ about newborn hepatitis B vaccination isn’t benign: it will determine whether conspiracy theorists will allow preventable chronic illness to take hold in the next generation.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

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RFK Jr is a liar. Full stop.

He has been for decades — it’s what has led to his profitable litigation career and his swerve into wellness disinformation. His tactic is always the same: recycle old lies for new audiences. His latest? The egregiously false claim that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines are causing peanut allergies, autism, and a myriad of other health issues.

He’s lying. Like he always does.

In fact, this peanut allergy lie popped up almost this same time last year when he was on Mikhaila Fuller’s podcast (that’s Jordan Peterson’s daughter, FYI), and I similarly debunked it then.

But given that he has now literally been put in charge of US health policy by the US Senate, we need to call out his lies — loudly, repeatedly, and without apology.

Aluminum salts used as vaccine adjuvants are not causing any harmful health issues: allergies, autism, or otherwise.

RFK Jr., on the other hand, is a threat to global health.

Let’s dig in.

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We are not “pumped” with aluminum through vaccines. RFK Jr is lying. As usual.

Aluminum is everywhere on the planet.

The first part of RFK Jr’s claim is that people are “pumped” with aluminum through vaccination. This is false.

Aluminum metal is the most common metal on Earth. It makes up about 8% of the mass of the Earth’s crust. Aluminum compounds, primarily salts and oxides, are found everywhere in soil and water:

• Aluminum Oxide (Al₂O₃) in bauxite ore

• Aluminum Silicates in rocks, clay, and soil (e.g., feldspar, kaolinite).

• Aluminum Hydroxide (Al(OH)₃ in minerals like gibbsite.

• Alum (Potassium Aluminum Sulfate (KAl(SO₄)₂·12H₂O)): in natural deposits, historically used for food preservation and or dyeing and food preservation.

As a result, these aluminum compounds are naturally in food and water. Adults consume between 7 and 9 milligrams of aluminum per day through these routes.

Adults naturally have between 30 to 50 milligrams of aluminum in their body at any given time, simply by living on this planet.

Here’s the context: select vaccines might contain between 0.125 & 0.625 milligrams aluminum in a dose.

So no, you aren’t being “pumped full” of aluminum. Aluminum adjuvants have been used for nearly 100 years and have an incredible safety profile. In fact, one of the common ones, Aluminum Hydroxide (Al(OH)₃, is a naturally-occurring substance (just to play to the appeal to nature fallacy folks).

Here’s the part RFK Jr never mentions: your kidneys and excretory system removes 99% of the aluminum you are exposed to, because not many biological processes require aluminum. Your kidneys and your tightly regulated physiological processes are always doing their jobs.

It’s also worth reminding everyone (and I will, every time we discuss chemicals): aluminum metal is different than chemical compounds that contain aluminum as part of their structure.

Remember: Chemicals are not the sum of their parts. These bonds dramatically change everything about a chemical compound. That’s why table salt, sodium chloride (NaCl), doesn’t explode when you put it in water. Sodium explodes when you put it in water, though!

That’s true when discussing thimerosal—still not mercury—and it’s true when discussing aluminum salts in vaccines, anti-perspirants, and antacids.

Aluminum salts improve vaccine safety and effectiveness.

You might be asking, why do we even use aluminum salts in vaccines in the first place? The short version: They allow us to use a smaller dose of the active ingredient in a vaccine (the antigen of the pathogen in question, more here) to elicit a similarly robust memory immune response.

Aluminum salts, primarily aluminum hydroxide (Al(OH)₃) and aluminum phosphate (AlPO₄), are used in certain vaccines in miniscule quantities to augment the localized immune response at the injection site. This is what the term adjuvant means.

Aluminum salts are also found in certain medications like antacids and anti-ulceratives, as well as cosmetic products and certain kitchen products.

Fun fact — for the “natural healing” crowd: alum is mentioned in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicinal texts: ashtang hridaya; sphaṭika kṣāra, phitkari, saurashtri, and mingfan. It has been widely used for thousands of years to treat a variety of ailments, including wound antiseptics, deodorants, and more. So technically, aluminum has been studied for thousands of years and has an incredible safety profile.

We are exposed to orders of magnitude more aluminum merely living on this planet than anything in a vaccine.

Injected aluminum salts aren’t processed differently than aluminum we eat.

Another trope RFK Jr and his allies claim? That intramuscular injection (no vaccines are injected “directly into the bloodstream”, people) somehow makes that miniscule aluminum exposure far worse than the 400-times higher levels circulating in your bloodstream….already. Or the 72-times higher levels you eat…every day. This is also false.

Our bodies process intramuscular and ingested aluminum salts the exact same way: through filtration of our blood and excretion by the kidneys in urine.

Aluminum salts in a vaccine remain at the site of injection (in the muscle tissue) for a period of time where it forms a local depot. This is how these salts do their adjuvanting job. We will get to the adjuvant process shortly, but after that, it is slowly transferred into the bloodstream where it is bound up by proteins like transferrin and albumin to be filtered by the kidneys and excreted in urine.

Yes, your natural detoxification and excretion process. It’s how your body gets rid of all the things you don’t need any longer.

Within days, over 95% of that minuscule quantity that might have been in a given vaccine (0.125 to 0.625 milligrams) is removed in urine, your universal waste product.

Ingested aluminum — the 7–9 mg you eat every day — is processed the same exact way! Roughly 95% of the aluminum you consume is absorbed into the bloodstream, bound by the same proteins, filtered by the kidneys and excreted in urine. Only a small percentage is processed through bile and excreted in feces.

Literally processed the exact same way — whether a tiny fraction of exposure from a vaccine or you ate a big salad.

Aluminum salts are not allergenic.

Aluminum salts have been used as adjuvants in vaccines for decades because of their effectiveness and safety. But guess what? They are also used for allergy immunotherapy because they are not allergenic. That’s right, aluminum salts don’t cause allergies—to peanuts, or anything else.

If aluminum were allergenic, humans would be in anaphylaxis 24/7 because of how ubiquitous aluminum is. Remember: it’s the most abundant metal on Earth. Common sense tells you that this claim is incorrect.

Aluminum salts in vaccines augment the localized immune response at the injection site. They allow us to use a smaller dose of the actual vaccine component (the antigen, read more here) to elicit a similar magnitude of memory immunity.

Aluminum adjuvants create a little storage depot at the injection site where they bind some of the antigen up, to slow the release of the antigens to the immune system. This process is called adsorption.

What this does is instead of dispersing the antigen all at once where only a finite number of innate immune cells can respond, activate, migrate to the lymph nodes, and recruit memory immune cells in the lymph nodes, the salts delay the dispersal which improves the magnitude of the overall memory responses, include T cell memory and levels of antibodies produced by B cells. Pretty cool, right?

Aluminum adjuvants activate antigen-presenting cells (APCs) such as dendritic cells and macrophages more efficiently by adsorbing the antigen molecules. This improves the uptake of those antigens by the innate immune cells and their presentation to memory immune cells, T cell and B cells.

By improving the adsorption, this improves the overall uptake by those innate immune cells and the presentation of antigen to T cells. For a really simplified explanation, refer to my tattoo:

This particular process is particularly advantageous for the humoral immune response, the adaptive immune response that leads to B cell activation, plasma cell formation, and antibody production.

So for pathogens that are best protected against through strong neutralizing antibody responses like tetanus (where the disease is caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium), this adjuvant mechanism is particularly important.

Vaccines containing aluminum salt adjuvants include: Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis combinations (DTap, Tdap, Td), Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), HPV (human papillomavirus), Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b), Pneumococcal conjugate, Hepatitis A, Rabies, and Anthrax.

All of these vaccines and the aluminum salts themselves, have been extensively studied and tested for decades. They are safe and effective.

Peanut oil is not used in any vaccines. RFK Jr is lying. As usual.

Okay, another bit of RFK Jr’s big lie. RFK Jr claims that aluminum salts used in [certain] vaccines cause peanut allergies because those compounds interact with peanut oil used as an excipient in the same vaccine. This is objectively false.

Why does he believe this? Well, because someone went trolling the online archives and found a patent that was filed in 1961 that mentions using peanut oil as a vaccine excipient. What he doesn’t understand — even though he has been corrected by me and many of my colleagues many times over — is that a patent filing doesn’t actually mean a product exists.

That’s the case here. There. Is. No. Peanut. Oil. In. Any. Vaccine.

An excipient is any inert substance (non-reactive) contained in a medicine product that serves a purpose other than the therapeutic or immunologic purpose. Excipients are specifically geared to improve stability, shelf life, solubility, formulation, delivery, or usability.

They might include:

• Buffers which stabilize the pH of vaccines or liquid medications.

• Lipids which facilitate delivery of the therapeutic to the region of the body where it needs to act.

• Enteric coatings of capsules to prevent stomach acid degradation.

• Solvents like salt water to help dissolve a medication.

One of RFK Jr.’s long-standing tactics is to find obsolete and irrelevant information and then circulate it wildly on podcasts, media appearances, his own profitable disinformation organization Children’s Health Defense, to the point where so many people have seen it, they take it to be true without even thinking about whether it makes sense. This is a great example of that.

Repeat after me: There. Is. No. Peanut. Oil. In. Any. Vaccine. Formulation.

And finally, a final clarification to address RFK Jr’s disinformation.

Food allergies have absolutely nothing to do with vaccines.

They involve entirely different biological systems, different cells, different tissues, and different immunological programming.

The process by which adjuvants work: forming a depot, adsorption of antigen, and delayed release to antigen-presenting cells is completely different—in all immunological ways—to a food allergy.

Food allergies have everything to do with things that enter your body through your digestive tract. They result when your gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) does not establish oral tolerance after you eat certain food molecules. Food allergies are the result of a complex process with two immunological phases, sensitization and elicitation.

The allergic response to food allergens is mediated by different components of the immune system than those that react to vaccines and generate memory immunity. Food allergies are dominated by an IgE-antibody based response, where mast cells carrying bound IgE antibodies specific for certain food molecules get activated.

When a mast cell interacts with one, for example, peanut proteins like Ara h1, Ara h2, Ara h3, this leads to activation of mast cells and degranulation, where they dump packages of inflammatory chemicals like histamine they are carrying around.

Even without a more in depth explanation, you can see how profoundly different this is.

Not only are there different immune system components involved in vaccine responses (with or without adjuvant), these responses are not even happening in the same location of the body.

All “immune responses” are not created equal. And that couldn’t be better illustrated by the wild disparities between oral allergies and vaccination.

These claims from RFK Jr. and his acolytes are not just wrong, they cause serious harm. And now that he sits at the helm of HHS, these lies aren’t just noise — they are becoming national policy.

Health and science disinformation undermines objective truth, erodes critical thinking, scares people away from critical health interventions that save lives, and it legitimizes the proliferation of unchecked lies.

It is not something to be proud of to brag about rejecting expertise or factual information. Yet this era of celebrity over expertise, podcast content over critically analyzed data, anti-intellectualism over education is truly dangerous. We all have an obligation to stand up for reality, because this impacts all of us.

Truth isn’t optional in public health. And right now, a liar is running it.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing:

Subscribe now

This week RFK Jr. released a video addressed to the Minamata Convention on Mercury where he lied about vaccines. Again. And again. The same lies he has been spreading for over twenty years. Twenty years. This man has been lying—and causing preventable deaths—for decades, while making millions and millions of dollars from it.

As someone who has been so painfully aware of how much of a global health threat RFK Jr is, it pains me that so many media outlets, members of the public, and politicians just glossed over his career of lying about life-saving health issues.

Anyway, I digress.

He told the COP6 delegates that now that he has ensured no American have access to vaccines containing thimerosal, he was taking his plan global. This isn’t shaping policy, it’s propagating a deadly lie.

If you recall, he announced a policy earlier this year to ban all thimerosal-containing vaccines here in the US, even though thimerosal is an incredibly safe and effective antimicrobial that prevents contamination in multi-dose vaccines.

He said that “no amount of mercury should ever be injected into a child” and urged the treaty to push for a global ban on thimerosal-containing vaccines.

Thankfully, the Minamata Convention is not staffed with unqualified anti-science profiteers like RFK Jr, but this one statement alone sums up everything wrong with RFK Jr’s war on science.

Samoa was the real-world case study: when RFK Jr’s lies spread faster than the truth, children die. We know the damage this will cause. We’ve seen what happens when RFK Jr’s anti-vaccine lies target people, like in Samoa, where his lies killed more children in a month than thimerosal ever has.

His thimerosal lies will kill children, especially the most vulnerable.

And though scientific experts globally (real ones, not cosplaying grifters like RFK Jr and his ACIP appointees) understand basic chemistry, the difference between thimerosal and mercury, and vaccine safety data, RFK Jr posted this on social media, which means his lies have the potential to influence public opinion and behaviors.

Let’s get into it.

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RFK Jr’s central lie: pretending all “mercury” is the same to scare people

For decades RFK Jr has refused to learn basic chemistry. In fact, he hasn’t changed his language even when legitimate experts have, in good faith, tried to educate him.

A note: you will continue to see me say “lies” when referring to his claims: he says falsehoods deliberately, knowing they are false. That is the definition of a lie. I don’t care about media outlets sanitizing him, sane-washing him, trying to talk out of both sides of their mouth. It is long past the time of politeness. He is killing people—and making millions of dollars at the same time.

Like with all chemophobia, his argument relies on people believing that any and all chemical compounds that include an atom or ion of mercury are 1) the same and 2) dangerous in all instances.

This is chemically, biologically, and toxicologically wrong.

He’s financially and ideologically invested in being wrong — he even published a book amplifying these lies (with his anti-science grifting buddy Mark Hyman right there beside him).

But here’s the reality:

Thimerosal is not mercury. It prevents dangerous bacterial and fungal contamination in vaccines.

Thimerosal keeps vaccines safe—it does not make vaccines dangerous.

Thimerosal is a chemical compound with formula C₉H₉HgNaO₂S. The IUPAC name for thimerosal is Ethyl(2-mercaptobenzoato-(2-)-O,S) mercurate(1-) sodium.

That sure doesn’t sound like “mercury” does it?

Thimerosal was developed in the 1920s and is a very effective antimicrobial, meaning it prevents contamination with harmful bacteria and fungi.

Thimerosal is so effective only a miniscule amount is needed. It can inhibit microbial growth at concentrations of 0.001% to 0.01% w/v (weight/volume). In a vaccine vial, this would equate to 50 micrograms (µg) of thimerosal (containing 25 µg mercury ion) per 0.5 mL vaccine dose. This is why it is used to prevent bacterial contamination in multi-dose vaccines.

I’m sure you can see that C₉H₉HgNaO₂S is not the same as mercury. Chemicals are not the sum of their parts. These bonds dramatically change everything about a chemical compound. That’s why table salt, sodium chloride (NaCl), doesn’t explode when you put it in water. Sodium explodes when you put it in water, though!

• Claiming thimerosal is mercury is like saying water (formula H₂O) is hydrogen gas (H₂).

• Or that glucose (C₆H₁₂O₆) is the same as diamonds (a lattice structure of C atoms) because it has carbon in it.

• Or that air, a mixture of gases, is nitrogen gas.

If anti-vaccine activists actually applied their own “logic,” they’d be warning people that table salt explodes in water. Funny how chemistry errors only show up when there’s profit involved.

Mercury is a pure chemical element, a metal with formula Hg⁰

Yep, that’s it. A pure metal. Elemental mercury is the silver liquid metal (yes, the only metal that is liquid at room temperature and pressure) that used to fill thermometers.

Mercury poisoning can occur through exposure to mercury metal. Today, this risk is primarily if you inhale mercury gas (liquid mercury that has been vaporized). This potential exposure is mostly a concern for people who work in industries that use mercury metal—for example, mercury is used to catalyze chemical reactions to extract gold from ore.

Elemental mercury poisoning can be quite serious, because metal mercury can accumulate in your body and can cross the blood-brain barrier at high enough exposures. It can lead to neurological damage, kidney damage, and even death.

Elemental mercury? Never used in a vaccine, ever.

Methylmercury CH₃Hg⁺ is a mercury-containing compound with legitimate health concerns

Methylmercury is also not thimerosal. Methylmercury can also cause mercury poisoning. It is an organic mercury compound created by bacteria through methylation of environmental mercury from volcanic eruptions, burning of fossil fuels and coal, and other industrial processes. Methylmercury is found in the environment ubiquitously; almost everyone has a small amount in their bodies.

It can bioaccumulate, crosses the placenta and blood-brain barrier, and in high doses can cause neurological damage.

Methylmercury? Also never used in a vaccine, ever.

For more on mercury chemistry, read the below article:

Ethylmercury (C₂H₅Hg⁺) is an entirely different mercury-containing compound that’s a metabolite of thimerosal

Thimerosal happens to be a salt, which, in chemistry terms, means it is an ionic compound that dissociates in water into its respective positive (cation) and negative (anion) ions.

The positive ion is ethylmercury, with formula C₂H₅Hg⁺. Ethylmercury is not methylmercury. The names might sound a little similar, but the differences are vast.

Ethylmercury is a larger structure, and unlike methylmercury, is rapidly metabolized and eliminated from the body. It does not bioaccumulate. It is not associated with any neurological issues, including autism, seizures, neurodevelopmental delays, cognitive disorders, and more. It is also not linked to other symptoms associated with mercury poisoning that occurs with high exposure to elemental and methylmercury.

Ethylmercury (rather, thimerosal) is associated with making vaccines accessible and safe for billions of people globally.

RFK Jr pretends that thimerosal and its ethylmercury byproduct are identical to methylmercury. This is chemically illiterate and dangerously ignorant, and even though he has been corrected on this for over two decades, he is now trying to make his grift the official position of US health leadership.

The most ridiculous part? RFK Jr is directing his demand for a global thimerosal ban at an organization that couldn’t care less about ethylmercury, underscoring how ignorant he really is.

The Minamata Convention does not care about ethylmercury or thimerosal.

The Minamata Convention was adopted in 2013 to address environmental persistence of mercury. Specifically, this relates to elemental mercury and methylmercury (you know, the one that is constantly forming in the environment and bioaccumulates).

Methylmercury is why the Minamata Convention is so named.

It’s named for the Minamata Bay tragedy and Minamata disease, a condition resulting from severe methylmercury poisoning.

For those not familiar, Minamata disease was a result of widespread methylmercury poisoning through environmental exposure.

Between 1932 and 1968, industrial wastewater containing inorganic mercury (that was used to catalyze chemical reactions) was discharged into Minamata Bay, where microorganisms converted it into methylmercury — the form that bioaccumulates and causes neurological devastation.

This methylmercury accumulated in fish and shellfish in the local waters at much greater levels than what occurs naturally (from those processes noted above).

People and animals who consumed fish and shellfish from these waters experienced severe mercury poisoning. Children born to people who had mercury poisoning had congenital effects including microcephaly, brain damage, and symptoms similar to neurological disorders like cerebral palsy.

Minamata disease was first characterized in 1956 in a 5-year old girl who had difficulty walking, speaking, and presented with seizures. From there, additional cases were quickly identified in a geographic cluster. Unfortunately (and unknown to them at the time), people in these coastal villages had been exposed to high levels of methylmercury for years. In 1959, the cause was identified to be long-term exposure to high levels of methylmercury.

The efforts of the Minamata Convention are aimed at phasing out use of elemental mercury in batteries, lamps, and as a chemical catalyst.

It has zero to do with a thiosalicylate salt that is a safe and effective vaccine preservative, critically important for multi-dose vaccines where contamination is a risk. If you ban thimerosal, you don’t eliminate mercury, you eliminate vaccines.

The bigger issue?

RFK Jr’s lies about thimerosal, now directed at the Minamata Convention, undermine global vaccine efforts.

In fact, the Minamata Convention explicitly exempts thimerosal-containing vaccines from their scope, because real experts understand vaccines are life-saving. There is no health concerns related to thimerosal-containing vaccines.

This will cost children their lives, even if countries ignore RFK Jr. because his lies are out there and we live in a world where fear matters more than facts.

Countless countries globally use multi-dose vaccines that contain thimerosal. Why? Because multi-dose vaccines offer substantial benefits, particularly among underserved and low income countries.

Multi-dose vaccines are more cost-effective to manufacture, about 2.5 times less costly per dose than single-dose vaccines.

Multi-dose vaccines require less cold storage volume per dose (about 50% less) which is significant in regions with inconsistent access to refrigeration.

Multi-dose vaccines reduce the cost of transport per vaccine dose—so in developing nations with infrastructure limitations, this also reduces barrier to access vaccines.

UNICEF can procure inactivated polio vaccine at $1.25 per dose for multi-dose vaccine compared to $2.80 per dose for single-dose vaccines. When you are talking about low income countries, that 124% difference in cost per dose is substantial.

I know MAHA and RFK Jr. don’t care about these people, but you should.

You should also care about what happens when infectious diseases aren’t controlled by vaccines in one country—because contrary to discourse on social media, pathogens don’t adhere to country borders. Disease anywhere becomes risk everywhere. That’s how outbreaks go global. It’s exactly why we are losing our measles-free status here in the US, only twenty-five years after we eliminated it through vaccination efforts.

Many vaccines contain thimerosal, especially formulations used in low- and middle-income countries.

These include:

• Inactivated influenza vaccines

• DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis) vaccines, used in many Gavi-supported countries as it is much lower cost than the DTaP vaccine

• Tetanus toxoid (TT), DT, and Td vaccines

• Multi-dose hepatitis B vaccines

• Meningococcal vaccines, especially those used in Africa’s meningitis belt

Vaccination saves between 3-5 million lives every year. RFK Jr is deliberately undermining this.

RFK Jr is trying to accelerate fear of vaccines. What do you think will happen? You already know, because it happened here in the 1990s. People will be afraid of vaccines that contain this safe and effective preservative.

If they are afraid of those vaccines, they will refuse to receive them for themselves and their children. If vaccine rates decline, that means more preventable illness and death. It also means increased spread of those preventable infectious illnesses that are transmitted person-to-person. Increased spread means more outbreaks, harder to control infections, increased demand on healthcare infrastructure, which will strain healthcare systems so badly that people with unrelated medical needs suffer too.

It also means increased chance of microbial mutation and evolution, potentially opening the door to new strains of pathogens.

Thimerosal has been studied extensively. It is not linked to any neurological issues.

If you live in a country that offers thimerosal-containing vaccines, do not be concerned: your vaccines are safe and effective. The benefits of vaccination far outweigh even a hypothetical risk of miniscule exposure to thimerosal.

If RFK Jr gets his way and countries move to “ban” thimerosal-containing vaccines, nearly 150 million children every year will lose access to life-saving medicines.

For decades, RFK Jr. and his MAHA allies have worked to unravel that progress. His latest move will accelerate the damage. We cannot allow blatant falsehoods to shape science, medicine, and public policy.

RFK Jr. is a threat to global health.

His personal crusade, now cemented in federal policy and amplified as the “official voice of US health agencies”, is reckless, self-serving, and deadly. Science is not the threat. His ignorance is.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing:

Subscribe now

From tampons to tap water, from cereal boxes to vaccines, nearly every modern health scare rests on the same myth: chemicals are killing us. This fear—chemophobia—has become one of the most powerful engines of misinformation worldwide.

The World Health Organization (WHO) lists vaccine hesitancy as a top global health threat, but I’d argue that chemophobia is even more pervasive. It’s the common thread that links all forms of science rejection; it fuels fear around vaccines, food, medicine, agriculture, and cosmetics.

Chemophobia, the irrational fear or aversion to chemicals, is everywhere—whispered in parenting Facebook groups, shouted by influencers, amplified by media outlets that should know better, and weaponized by politicians.

Chemophobia is the hidden language of health misinformation.

You’ve seen it:

• Headlines about “heavy metals in tampons”

• Myths about vaccines containing “toxic” ingredients

• Legislative bans on synthetic food dyes

• Public outcry against fluoride in drinking water

• The Environmental Working Group’s annual Dirty Dozen list, warning about “toxic pesticides” in produce

• “Paraben-free” or “preservative-free” marketing slapped on cosmetics, sunscreens, and even foods

If you didn’t know better, you might think you and your family are in constant danger. You’re not. Instead of protecting people, chemophobia increases costs, reduces safety, harms public health, and stalls lifesaving science.

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What Is Chemophobia?

Chemophobia claims that synthetic chemicals are inherently harmful, while “natural” chemicals are safe—a textbook example of the appeal to nature fallacy.

Chemophobia gained traction in the mid-twentieth century, following real industrial disasters such as Love Canal, Three Mile Island, and the Bhopal gas leak. Those events, which led to justifiable concern, were used to demonize all “synthetic” chemicals.

Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) fueled the flame:

Carson was a gifted writer and a marine biologist. Her work contributed to the EPA’s creation and the restriction of DDT use, which previously helped eliminate endemic malaria in the United States during World War II.

While DDT saved lives from mosquito-borne disease, it caused ecological damage in birds, where exposure thinned bald eagle eggshells, leading to fragile eggs and high chick mortality. Once malaria was controlled and the off-target effects were understood, the ecological risks outweighed the benefits, though the danger was not to humans.

Carson contributed to important scientific efforts in her field, but she wasn’t a chemist or toxicologist.

Yet, when she framed all “synthetic creations” as a “battery of poisons,” Carson unintentionally left a legacy of exaggerated distrust toward synthetic chemicals.

That distrust metastasized into today’s chemophobia, where people are terrified of anything artificial, even while scientific principles tell us that the source of a chemical has no bearing on its potential harm or safety.

Many of the most toxic chemicals are all-natural, including Botulinum toxin, abrin, ricin, arsenic, and cyanide.

On the flip side, countless synthetic chemicals are lifesaving.

Chemistry enables scientists to harness our knowledge, nature, and chemical synthesis to expand our health-improving resources.

Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) exists because chemists improved upon the natural compound salicin found in willow bark to make a safer and more effective pain reliever. Many lifesaving chemotherapies are synthetic derivatives of natural chemicals altered to improve effectiveness and safety (read more on that, below)

Chemophobia paints synthetic chemicals as universal villains. You’ve heard the commonly repeated claims:

• “I only want natural ingredients.”

• “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it.”

• “Vaccines are filled with harmful chemicals.”

• “GMOs aren’t natural, so they must be bad.”

Fear in a soundbite beats nuance, especially when leveraged as a marketing ploy by the wellness industry.

Their tactic: if synthetic is “bad,” then the “natural” alternatives they promote must be safer, healthier, more beneficial, and even more eco-friendly—because they are trying to convince you that modern science and tools developed by it are evil.

But your body doesn’t care if a molecule was isolated from a plant or synthesized in a lab.

Vitamin C is vitamin C (scientifically, it’s actually (5R)-5-[(1S)-1,2-Dihydroxyethyl]-3,4-dihydroxy-5H-furan-2-one), whether it’s extracted from a lime or fully synthesized in a laboratory.

Formaldehyde is formaldehyde (and yes, your body makes much higher levels of formaldehyde every day than you would ever encounter in a vaccine).

What matters is dose, not origin. All-natural botulinum toxin is a million times more toxic than synthetic sarin—yet people willingly inject that into their faces while fearing preservatives in bread.

This context is almost always omitted from public discourse, where media outlets, influencers, and even policymakers repeat false claims about chemicals without scientific evidence.

Even among individuals who vocally proclaim to support science, you see anti-science actions rooted in chemophobia. That’s why Democratic governors ban artificial food colorings without considering that they’ll be replaced with naturally derived coloring chemicals that are less studied, less safe, and more ecologically damaging (yes, I am talking to you, Gavin Newsom).

That’s why Democratic legislators move to restrict the use of glyphosate, one of the safest herbicides, while conveniently ignoring that this would force farmers to use weed control measures that are more toxic, less effective, and have broader ecological impacts. That’s also why European governments restrict genetic technologies in farming, even while they embrace the same science for cancer therapies.

Chemophobia Thrives on Low Chemistry Literacy

Only 28 percent of Americans are civically scientifically literate, meaning they can find, understand, and apply science to policy decisions.

So, when voters are told fluoride is “toxic,” they predictably vote to remove it. When they’ve heard for decades that glyphosate causes cancer, despite data showing otherwise, they support bans.

And when new parents are bombarded with disinformation from Moms across America or the Environmental Working Group (EWG), they make choices that don’t actually protect their families but do drive profits for those very people spreading the fear. While many believe these organizations have their best interests in mind, they are major contributors to disinformation.

Moms Across America is an activist organization founded in 2013 that spreads pseudoscience and chemophobia about GMOs, pesticides, vaccines, and food additives.

EWG is a nonprofit and lobbying organization best known for its annual “Dirty Dozen” list and alarmist rankings of consumer products and foods. Most people don’t know that they also spread objective lies about vaccines—something they have attempted to scrub from their history. EWG is one of the biggest propagators of chemophobia, routinely exaggerating risks of chemicals for their financial benefit.

This isn’t just an American problem, either.

In Europe, 40 percent of adults say they’d prefer to “live in a world without chemicals,” and nearly a third openly fear them. Ninety-one percent don’t grasp that toxicity depends on dose, and 82 percent don’t realize that table salt is always sodium chloride (NaCl), whether isolated from nature or synthesized in a laboratory.

Too many people forget that chemistry shapes their existence—food, medicine, clean water, even their smartphones and homes—until it is used to stoke fear. Combine that with a “do your own research” culture where Google and TikTok pass for toxicology training, and chemophobia spreads unchecked.

Chemophobia Shapes Policy—and Not in a Good Way

Chemophobia doesn’t just distort individual choices; it influences lawmaking across political ideologies and harms public health as a result.

Chemophobia hinders the development of crops using genetic engineering that can withstand more extreme climates, grow in places that were previously inhospitable, and produce higher yields with fewer pesticides. Chemophobia drives anti-vaccine opposition, slows development of novel therapeutics, fuels unfounded fears about medicine ingredients, and erodes trust in evidence-based science and medicine.

Chemophobia leads to banning safe food ingredients and demonization of healthy fruits and vegetables, causing people to avoid nutritious food, which, unlike the pesticide residues they fear, actually does pose a health risk. Chemophobia forces consumer product companies to kowtow to public outcry and remove safe and effective ingredients (such as preservatives like parabens), increasing costs, reducing safety, damaging the environment, and legitimizing misinformation.

The most dangerous expression of chemophobia right now is RFK Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

Now that he has co-opted the Department of Health and Human Services, he is wreaking havoc on public health, trust in science, and our safety guardrails. MAHA gains appeal because it’s marketed as a bipartisan “health” platform: rhetoric around healthy foods, chronic health issues, and environmental contaminants.

But peel back the façade?

MAHA is a full-blown chemophobia manifesto, the magnum opus of RFK Jr.’s forty-year anti-science career. None of it will make Americans healthier.

MAHA appeals to anti-GMO and anti-pesticide sentiment among left-leaning people who, ironically, have been misled by decades of anti-science rhetoric by RFK Jr. and his allies. Organic purity narratives blend with “ban preservatives” rhetoric, while building on distrust of corporations and “Big Food.” This same tactic fueled the original anti-vaccine activists, many of them left-leaning individuals concerned about toxic vaccine ingredients.

MAHA appeals to the right by branding chemophobia as government overreach: the FDA and EPA are “poisoning” citizens with vaccines, fluoridated water, and processed foods. It feeds broader anti-regulation, anti-institution ideology that led to the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which removed FDA oversight of dietary supplements and drove exponential growth of the wellness industry.

Chemophobia is uniquely dangerous because it transcends political lines. RFK Jr. doesn’t need to persuade people on policy specifics; he only needs to stoke distrust in “chemicals” or legitimate qualified experts who try to educate people, and fear does the rest.

MAHA positions have already seeped into legislation.

• The Department of Health and Human Services adopted a federal policy legitimizing falsehoods about thimerosal, used globally to prevent contamination in multi-dose vaccines.

• They have halted $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research, claiming it is a “risky” technology.

• Multiple states around the country are pursuing bans on “genetic medicines” based on the same reasoning.

• This year Utah and Florida banned fluoridation of public water, even while nearly eighty years demonstrate its benefit for dental and overall health.

• Legal challenges that block cultivation of golden rice, a lifesaving farming technology, have drawn support from environmental activists and conservative conspiracy platforms alike.

• California food dye bans were cheered by left- and right-leaning wellness influencers similarly touting it as the path to healthy food. It isn’t; it instead legitimizes false claims that these colorings are harmful while global experts have asserted their safety.

Chemophobia is the common theme.

Chemophobia thrives on the risk perception gap between real and perceived risks. People fixate on Red Dye 40 in snacks while ignoring real systemic factors that impact health, such as healthcare inequities, income inequality, and food deserts.. They avoid nutritious foods because of unfounded pesticide fears but freely consume unregulated supplements full of untested compounds. This double standard distorts personal decisions and public policy and harms society.

Chemophobia has staying power because it is applicable to every single topic in science and health. Today it’s food dyes, tomorrow it’s pesticides, next week it’s vaccines. The narrative doesn’t require data—only fear of the chemical boogeyman.

We All Must Recognize Chemophobia as a Global Health Threat

If we want better health and smarter policy, we must confront chemophobia. That starts with science literacy—basic chemistry, toxicology, biology, and, yes, media literacy. Education matters, but so does accountability.

Stop confusing notoriety with expertise. A podcaster saying “trust me” is not a credential. Journalists need to quit amplifying clickbait and start quoting real experts, not wellness influencers. And elected officials must write laws based on evidence, not vibes, polls, or lobbyists’ checks. Scientists can contribute by meeting the public where they are, using plain language, acknowledging fears, and fact-checking loudly and often. If we don’t, misinformation gets a free pass.

Chemistry underpins everything—medicine, food, clean water, sustainability, climate science. Yet public fear of “chemicals” stalls progress, raises costs, and undermines safety. Chemophobia thrives because fear is profitable, politically useful, and amplified by powerful networks. Scientists fighting it do so on our own time, without the money or infrastructure backing the fear machine. Until society treats chemophobia as the public health crisis it is, we’ll keep losing ground.

Chemophobia isn’t a nuisance; it’s a global health threat. If you consider yourself a skeptic, this is your call to action: challenge chemical fearmongering wherever you see it—even in yourself. Our health, our safety, and our future depend on it.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing:

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Consumer Reports is at it again, this time, fear-mongering about lead in protein powders. Their latest headline and “report” concludes that various protein powders are filled with harmful levels of lead, and they use scary-looking graphics with percentages above 1000, to evoke that health anxiety they are so good at.

The big takeaways:

No, you don’t need to panic about lead in protein powder — certainly based on their information

and

Yes, we need regulatory oversight of dietary supplements — which means we need to get rid of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act to enforce safety (and benefit) of dietary supplements.

Two things can exist at once.

I have zero skin in the game when it comes to protein powders — I don’t take them and there isn’t compelling data they benefit most adults. I do have a lot of concerns about the wildly lucrative, wildly unregulated, and exponentially growing dietary supplement industry, which protein powders are part of.

But the issue with this “report”:

1. The lead levels Consumer Reports published are not above safety guidance for food items, dietary supplements, and daily intake levels and

2. Consumer Reports has a long history of spreading chemophobia, disinformation, and fearmongering for their personal benefit.

They love to self-define levels of a given “exposure” they think are bad as a way to disregard scientifically-grounded guidelines they choose to ignore. I wrote about this tactic when they told people safe and nutritious fruits and vegetables had “serious pesticide risks”—they don’t. Consumer Reports just made up random numbers to scare people away from healthy foods:

Consumer Reports is an activist group. They are not a scientific organization. They lobby extensively to push policies that serve their donors interests. Recently? They sponsored the “food dye ban” in California and the “ultra-processed food ban” (also in California), neither of which are based on credible science.

They LOVE to push bad toxicology with scary health claims.

Another example: , one of the only science communicators that I trust without fail to provide accurate analysis of topics she covers, wrote a piece on their “toxic hair extension study” earlier this year.

Anyway, let’s dig in.

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Proposition 65 Maximum Allowable Dose Levels (MADL) for Lead Are Not Based on Science.

Consumer Reports states that lead found in protein powders tested exceed “CR’s Level of Concern for Lead” — which is why they are sounding the alarm. So, what that level is based on, right?

Well, it’s based on Proposition 65. Consumer Reports claims they use Prop 65 levels because those standards are “the most protective of health” — which is false. They use those because they are the most strict, even if they aren’t based on actual data.

Proposition 65 is political legislation pretending to be science.

California Proposition 65 (Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986) requires warning labels about chemicals in consumer products that have some sort of association to cancer, birth defects, or reproductive issues. Sounds good in theory, right? The problem? Prop 65 is based on the precautionary principle.

The precautionary principle asks: “is there ANY situation in ANY hypothetical scenario that this substance could cause potential harm?”

and not “is there ANY realistic risk to humans based on the exposure range of this substance over a single exposure or throughout the course of one’s life?”

If this sounds familiar, it should. It’s a similar approach as the WHO’s IARC “carcinogenicity” hazard assessments.

Prop 65 states that if there is a hypothetical world in which exposure to a chemical might contribute to 1 additional case of cancer per 100,000 people occurs over a 70-year lifetime, the chemical would be added to the list. Cancers are complex multifactorial diseases, so this criterion is excessively stringent when 1 additional case of cancer over 70 years could happen due to pure randomness.

This law was passed not after consultation with scientific expert agencies, but by a popular vote in the State of California. Most credible scientific experts agree it is not aligned with scientific consensus data.

Lead absolutely poses a health risk—but not at the levels Prop 65 says.

Repeat after me: the dose makes the poison. That’s true for lead, too.

The MADL for lead outlined by Proposition 65 is 0.5 µg of lead per day. This value was set, arbitrarily in 1989, even though scientific evidence continues to show that it’s wildly unrealistic and not remotely near an exposure that would be a health concern. It remains unchanged because Prop 65 is a political tool, not a scientific one.

Consumer Reports decides to ignore FDA interim reference levels for lead in their assessment. These levels are 8.8 µg per day for reproductive age females and 12.5 µg for general adults, 17.6-times and 25-times higher daily exposure levels compared to the Prop 65 levels, respectively, and are already extremely conservative (more on how those are calculated in a moment).

Consumer Reports claims products they tested exceed their “level of concern” (that’s the 0.5 µg/day exposure based on zero science) by thousands of percentage points! Sound the alarm, right? Wrong.

Now, putting aside the flawed methodology, and the absence of raw data including reference and control values, let’s assume the lead levels they published are real for argument’s sake.

The protein powder with the highest reported lead level had a measured value of 7.7 µg for a single serving (Naked Vegan Mass Gainer).

I’m not a protein powder expert, but by the looks of the serving size and the normalized parts per billion (that’s mass of the measured substance relative to total mass of the sample), it appears this powder is not meant for daily/routine consumption.

Regardless, Consumer Reports tells its readers to not consume any of it, because the lead levels are 1,572 PERCENT HIGHER than “CR’s Level of Concern.”

But is it actually a level of concern when it comes to legitimate science and health? No. Using the FDA’s Interim Reference Levels, that protein powder, 6 whopping scoops (that seems excessive for a serving, doesn’t it?), is 61.6% of the reference value for males and 87.5% of the reference value for females. Sounds less scary when you use real scientific guidance, right?

The European approach to lead exposure uses a value called a benchmark dose lower confidence limit (BMDL01). This is a daily exposure level that above which can increase risk of adverse events by 1%. Levels are defined by health outcome and normalized to weight.

For example, cardiovascular effects of lead are defined by a BMDL01 of 1.5 µg/kg body weight/day, and kidney effects are defined by a BMDL01 of 0.63 µg/kg/day. So for the same 70 kg adult Consumer Reports assumes in their report, that would be 105 µg/day, for cardiac concerns—210X higher than the Prop 65 level, and 44 µg/day for kidney concerns—88X higher than the Prop 65 level.

The EU actually regulates dietary supplements. Their regulatory threshold for lead in supplements is 3,000 parts per billion—123X higher than measured levels in these protein supplements.

The highest measured level reported by Consumer Reports are well below European and US safety guidance for lead exposure through food products. That should give you some peace of mind.

Then you have their flawed methodology. They tested 2 or 3 samples each of 23 commercial products bought at select grocery stores in New York and online from November 2024 through January 2025. They took these and sent them for analytical chemistry assessment at a third-party lab.

That is not a robust methodology by any stretch of the imagination. Given they have not provided individual values of each of the “2 or 3 samples” per brand or the control values, I’m not going to dwell on this. The main point: these levels of lead are not those that cause harm.

But there’s no safe level of lead! Except—you have lead in your body at all times.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “there’s no safe level of lead” as a reason for why people should be more fearful of these miniscule levels of lead, right? Yes, it technically true, but that doesn’t also mean that every single exposure to lead is automatically dangerous.

Lead is everywhere on our planet — it is literally an element of the Earth. It is found naturally in soil, dust, air, and even food. Every single person has measurable lead in their bodies (in blood). In the US, adults typically have lead blood levels around 0.5-1.5 µg/dL, a 90% reduction compared to blood levels of lead in the 1970s, thanks to unleaded paint and gasoline! Why aren’t we talking about that more?

That baseline blood lead level (BLL) doesn’t mean all of us are being poisoned—it should help you understand that zero exposure is literally impossible. So let’s use context and data to make our decisions, right?

Adverse health effects attributed to lead exposure in adults are not seen until blood lead levels reach 10–20 µg/dL.

When safety thresholds are set for foods, environment, water by legitimate scientific experts—they do this very math: what exposure of lead will lead to elevated blood levels of lead that pose this health risk?

Consumer Reports does not. Proposition 65 does not.

The interim reference levels (IRL) of 8.8 µg/day (women of childbearing age) and 12.5 µg/day (general adults) are based on how lead exposure alters blood lead levels (BLL).

The IRL, set in 2018, represented a decrease from the previous daily exposure level of 75 µg/day. More than that, the IRL for women of childbearing age (WOCBA) was updated in 2022 from the general adult level of 12.5— not for the adult, but for a potential fetus.

A daily exposure level of lead of 12.5 µg equals a blood lead level of 0.5 µg/dL.

For WOCBA, a daily exposure of 8.8 µg corresponds to 0.35 µg/dL, which aligns with pediatric IRL of 2.2 µg/day (0.35 µg/dL BLL).

You can see how conservative even the IRL is, given most adults walk around with roughly 1.0 µg/dL BLL and this moves the needle 0.5 µg/dL, but health effects aren’t observed until BLL exceed 10 times that. The IRL includes a 10-fold safety factor relative to the lowest effect levels (LOELs) recorded for human health intentionally.

When discussing lead exposure and what’s “safe” in foods, water, etc., the reality of the world must also be considered.

Food products, tampons, water inevitably have trace levels of lead in them (because crops grow in the environment) — the IRLs are set very conservatively to prioritize safe products and ensure blood lead levels aren’t going to lead to health issues.

We cannot avoid lead—it is everywhere. So we use science-based safety guidance to minimize our real risk, not propagate fear based on chemophobia and disinformation, which is exactly what Proposition 65 and Consumer Reports is doing.

Ironically, it was also the same rhetoric that appears in the “toxic lead in tampons” study last summer, which I also wrote about:

No, your protein powder isn’t poisoning you—but the supplement industry SHOULD be regulated.

Consumer Reports propagates chemophobia and disinformation and shouldn’t be used as a reference for anything remotely related to health. Chemophobia isn’t just bad science—it distracts from the real problem: protein powders are part of a supplement market that’s untested, unregulated, and perfectly legal to sell you whatever’s in the tub.

Why aren’t supplements regulated? That’s thanks to the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act—more political legislation wrapped up as “health freedom.”

That means there is:

• No pre-market safety testing. Supplement companies can sell a new product tomorrow with zero FDA review.

• No efficacy data required. They can make vague “supports wellness” claims without ever proving they do anything.

• No consistent contaminant standards. Unless a product is proven to cause harm, the FDA has no power to pull it from shelves.

There are no enforced standards for quality control, raw material sourcing (ingredients), manufacturing, or contamination (microbial and other).

This isn’t a small market. The dietary supplement industry is a $159 billion dollar economy in the US — and it is the modern Wild West.

Over 80,000 supplement products on the shelves are unvetted before you buy them: a serious regulatory gap given nearly 75% of adults report taking supplements.

There are well-documented harms due to unregulated supplements. Over 23,000 emergency department visits every year are linked to supplement harms, likely an underestimate. Increasing rates of acute liver toxicity driven by “greens” supplements and herbal mixtures. Medicine interactions or exacerbation of medical conditions (supplement is not a synonym for safe), and real contamination concerns.

Unlike prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines that are FDA-approved or even fortified foods, supplement manufacturers aren’t required to submit ingredient specs, contaminant data, or post-market safety reports. Supplements have been routinely found to not disclose what’s actually in them.

This—the unregulated supplement and wellness industry—is the legitimate concern we should be discussing, not lead levels that aren’t actually above safety thresholds.

I’ve written a lot about this topic, start here:

The Consumer Reports data with wildly different lead levels between brands (assuming, generously, their data are accurate) likely reflects quality differences in sourcing, manufacturing, and quality control. It’s entirely plausible that some companies are cutting corners — sourcing lower-quality ingredients, skipping contaminant remediation, or manufacturing in facilities without proper oversight.

Others may be implementing good quality control and manufacturing practices. We don’t know because there is no oversight. That’s what happens when an industry is driven by greed and pseudoscience, facilitated by political legislation.

Consumer Reports is not providing oversight with shoddy methodology of buying a few boxes here and there and testing a couple of replicates—that is not how quality is assessed. Trust me, I know—we do it every day at my real job.

If you were alarmed by these headlines, be alarmed for the right reasons.

The takeaway shouldn’t be “panic about trace metals.” It’s should be: “the supplement industry is long overdue for regulation.” And that’s even more true with wellness influencers taking over our health agencies.

We should be demanding repeal or reform of the 1994 DSHEA to require:

• Pre-market safety testing and ingredient registration

• Mandatory third-party contaminant testing

• Real post-market surveillance and recall authority

That’s how we protect the public. Not through chemophobic headlines, clickbait, or arbitrary Prop 65 fearmongering, but through robust science, real transparency, and actual public health oversight.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing:

Subscribe now

Those of us privileged to live in a developed nation have the best sanitation and hygiene in human history.

We have potable (drinkable) water, flush toilets, running water and soap, sewage treatment, disinfectants, antibiotics, air filtration, food safety, and aisles of personal hygiene products lining store shelves that are frankly, overkill.

People in places I’ve traveled, from remote mountains in Uganda, poverty-stricken villages in northeast India, Amazonian native tribes in South America, would kill to have access to these life-saving scientific developments.

In 2023, I toured the Bwindi Community Hospital in Buhoma, at the southwest border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. 155 open air beds serves a population of roughly 100,000 across remote villages in the foothills of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest (now a national park for mountain Gorilla conservation).

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The US is about to lose our measles-free status.

Yes, in 2025, 25 years after the US was declared free from endemic measles in what we was an historic win combating a deadly and debilitating viral illness. Now, we have backtracked decades of progress, because of science denial and anti-vaccine activism.

Twenty-five years later, we have had the first deaths from measles in a decade. We are seeing record numbers of cases spreading across nearly every state in the country. There have been 44 different outbreaks of measles in the US this year, up from last year’s record of 16 outbreaks.

There are confirmed 1,563 cases across the US, with countless more probable cases, far surpassing last year’s record year.

Why? It’s not because sanitation is failing. It’s not because plumbing stopped working. It’s not because people aren’t washing their hands, clothes, dishes.

It’s because people are no longer getting vaccinated.

Of those confirmed measles cases this year? 92% were in unvaccinated people: both children too young to be vaccinated and people who have decided not to vaccinate themselves and their children.

Anti-vaccine activists routinely claim that it is sanitation, not vaccines, that has reduced the prevalence and spread of many human illnesses. RFK Jr recently reinforced this falsehood as an official representative of the US Government. They do this to justify their choices that have global health impacts: recurrence and spread of preventable illnesses like measles, influenza, COVID-19, whooping cough.

They act as though sanitation and vaccination are mutually exclusive. They’re wrong. They have always been wrong. And this is costing people their lives.

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Sanitation measures have revolutionized human health. But they aren’t a replacement for vaccination.

Sanitation refers to systems that provide clean drinking water and disposal of human waste (feces and urine). Adequate sewage and water treatment systems are critical for human health, and since their scientific development and implementation, have saved millions of lives.

In developing nations, millions still do not have these privileges, and diseases that spread from contaminated water and feces still present substantial health concerns.

Modern sanitation involves indoor plumbing, sewer systems, and sewage treatment plants, to contain waste, remove and transport it away from your home, and consolidate and disinfect it so that it does not pose health threats. In the US, the first sewer system was built in 1855 in Chicago, starting the advent of modern sanitation.

In the US, clean drinking water is provided through a multi-step process that involves removing large particulate matter and pathogenic microorganisms, so that you can trust when you open your faucet, that water is safe from both disease and substances that can make you ill. In the US, water disinfection practices began locally in the early 1900s: in 1908, Jersey City was the first town to chlorinate water to kill pathogens.

Hygiene practices are multifactorial behaviors that keep you and your environment clean.

Personal hygiene: bathing, washing hands, washing clothing, grooming (nails, hair, etc), brushing and flossing teeth, covering coughs and sneezes, toileting hygiene, sexual hygiene, and menstrual hygiene.

Food hygiene: food preparation (washing hands and surfaces, preventing cross-contamination, washing food items), cleaning food utensils and dishes, refrigeration, freezing, and food storage, and washing hands before eating.

Sanitation and hygiene measures are significant scientific developments that address human health concerns.

No one who supports vaccines discounts the impact of sanitation and hygiene.

This nuance is ignored by anti-vaccine activists. Sanitation, hygiene, and vaccination:

1. Are not one and the same.

2. Address wildly different health needs

3. Are not mutually exclusive

Sanitation and hygiene measures have controlled many diseases.

Waterborne and fecal-oral diseases that spread with poor sanitation:

• Vibrio cholerae causes cholera

• Salmonella typhi causes Typhoid fever

• Shigella spp. and Entamoeba histolytica cause dysentery

• Giardia lamblia causes giardiasis (which I got several times as a child by drinking puddle water)

• Hepatitis A virus causes Hepatitis A

• Escherichia coli causes “traveler’s diarrhea” in developing nations that lack sanitation infrastructure

The US used to have rampant cholera and typhoid before sanitation measures were development. Most of you probably have never been vaccinated for typhoid, unless you’ve traveled to places in the world that don’t have sanitation.

Contact and fomite-borne diseases that spread through poor hygiene practices:

• Norovirus causes acute gastroenteritis and is incredibly contagious, spread through contaminated hands, clothing/bedding, surfaces, and food

• Hand-foot-and-mouth disease is caused by Coxsackievirus and spreads through fecal contact, nasal mucus, and saliva (why this spreads in daycares and elementary schools)

• Pinworm is caused by the parasite Enterobius vermicularis, and spreads when eggs transmitted through contaminated clothing, bedding, and hands.

Diseases that spread through food product contamination, inadequate cleaning of food preparation surfaces and utensils, inadequate hand washing, and absence of pasteurization, many of which are making a comeback, thanks to the “raw milk movement” and funding cuts to our food safety infrastructure.

• Listeria monocytogenes causes Listeriosis

• Escherichia coli (including Shiga-toxin O157:H7)

• Campylobacter jejuni, which also happens to be the number one cause of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) (it’s not vaccines, y’all)

• Salmonella spp

• Brucella abortus

Sanitation and hygiene practices are why your tap water doesn’t given you diarrhea, why you can [generally] trust your grocery items have been processed, transported, and stored safely, and why Americans aren’t actually riddled with parasites contrary to what anti-vaccine wellness influencers claim.

Many diseases don’t care about your hygiene routine.

A common talking point among anti-vaccine circles: “We don’t need vaccines anymore because sanitation and nutrition are better now.”

This is wrong.

Most of the above examples aren’t diseases we routinely vaccinate for. Some of them, like Typhoid, do have vaccines, but aren’t part of recommended vaccines in the US, as their health burden has been controlled through sanitation and hygiene systems.

Sanitation and hygiene measures reduce the prevalence of pathogens in communities so that the likelihood someone will be exposed and get sick is minimized. They don’t prevent illness if someone does get infected.

Beyond the fact that sanitation addresses different classes of pathogens, that approach is also different than that of vaccines.

Vaccines reduce the circulation of pathogens by stopping the chain of transmission through herd immunity and prevent illness and death if someone does get infected.

Vaccines we use in the US target pathogens spread through respiratory and person-to-person routes that sanitation and hygiene can’t touch.

These include:

Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Diphtheria, Pertussis, Influenza, COVID-19, Meningococcal meningitis and pneumonia, Pneumococcal pneumonia, RSV, Poliomyelitis, Hepatitis B, and HPV.

Tetanus is not person-to-person, but the bacteria that produces Tetanus toxin is everywhere on the planet—sanitation can’t eliminate the danger.

Rotavirus spread has been partially reduced through sanitation, but disease burden, especially among young children, wasn’t impacted until vaccines became available.

You can disinfect all the surfaces you want, have the cleanest drinking water, have the fanciest toilet, and that won’t do anything to combat these diseases.

Vaccines are the tool that stop these diseases.

Measles virus is one of the most contagious human pathogens. It spreads through the air and can hang out in a room for hours after an infected person has left. It infects 90% of susceptible people exposed.

So when vaccination rates decline, that leaves the door open: more people can carry these pathogens, more people are susceptible to infection, and more people ultimately get sick—and die.

That’s why, in 2025, we breaking records left and right. But not in a good way.

Measles has officially made a comeback.

• Before 1963, measles infected 3–4 million Americans every year, caused hundreds of thousands of confirmed measles cases, and killed 400–500 annually.

Did sanitation suddenly improve in 1963? No. America had modern plumbing, refrigeration, and water treatment decades before that. What changed was immunity—achieved through vaccination. 1963 was the year the first measles vaccine became available.

• By the early 1970s, after widespread vaccination, measles cases dropped by over 99%.

By 2000, measles was declared eliminated from the US—meaning there was no endemic spread (within the country) for more than 12 months

And now, we are seeing all of this progress unravel.

The UK is no longer measles-free. The US, along with Mexico and Canada, will soon also be no longer measles-free.

We thought 2024 was a record year for measles here. 2025 has far exceeded that performance. As of October, we have recorded:

• 3 deaths, the first deaths since 2015 in the US from measles.

• 12% of measles cases have been hospitalized.

• 1,563 confirmed cases, nearly two-thirds of those in children.

In all of 2024, 284 cases were confirmed. This upward trajectory of measles has been swift, and shows no sign of slowing down—unless people take this seriously and begin vaccinating again.

It’s not just measles, either.

2025 has seen double the number of whooping cough cases compared to 2024.

Last year, 280 children died from the flu — the highest number of pediatric influenza deaths since the 2009 pandemic. The worst part? The majority of these could have been prevented through vaccination.

Vaccines eliminate disease and save lives.

What would your reaction be if someone said that we were going to do away with water treatment and plumbing in the US? That you’d be rolling a dice with the water that came out of your faucet. That you’d have to poop in a chamber pot and dump it in the street, your yard, a ditch somewhere?

You’d probably have a pretty quick, visceral reaction, right? Thinking about the risk you’d be exposed to when those scientific tools were revoked—tools that make sure your environment is safe and your health is protected, right?

Our communities don’t have rampant spread of Giardia, Shigella, Vibrio. The prevalence of these diseases are low because we have sanitation systems. But remove measures that keep those pathogens at bay, they will return. And quickly.

This is the logic used by anti-vaccine activists, who argue that vaccines aren’t necessary now because the prevalence of these vaccine-preventable diseases are low.

The prevalence is low because people are getting vaccinated. Not as many as should be—which is recurrence of previously-controlled diseases are accelerating—but still a majority.

• Poliomyelitis: eliminated in the US because of vaccines. There are only 2 countries left in the world with endemic polio.

• Smallpox: eradicated from the face of the earth because of vaccines.

• Chronic hepatitis B: plummeted to less than 0.1% in the US because of vaccines.

• Measles: was eliminated in 2000 because of vaccines.

  ---

If we stop vaccination as a public health measure, these diseases will return.

People immediately understand that consequence if they’re presented with the idea they won’t have access to water and sewage treatment. It’s why you pack your travel health kit when you go to developing nations—who don’t have those systems.

We don’t question the need for clean water, functional plumbing, or food safety regulations—because we know what happens without them. We remember that history and see them today in parts of the world still without those basic systems.

So why do people question vaccines—when we KNOW what happens without them too?

Vaccines are the same kind of infrastructure: invisible when they’re working, devastating when they’re gone.

When people say, “we don’t need vaccines anymore because rates of tetanus, polio, and chronic hepatitis are low,” they’re making the same argument as someone insisting, “we don’t need water treatment anymore because no one’s gotten cholera lately.”

Sanitation stops pathogens from spreading through our environment.
Vaccines stop pathogens from spreading among people.

Together, they form the foundation of modern public health. Pretending one can do the other’s job isn’t just ignorant—it’s dangerous.

The irony? The same people who preach “clean living” and “natural immunity” while hawking unproven wellness products are the ones undermining the single tool that protects communities: population-level immunity through vaccination.

We have the cleanest hands and air in human history—yet we’re letting one of the most preventable diseases return.
Hygiene didn’t fail. Science didn’t fail.
We failed public health—by letting ideology overrule evidence.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing:

Subscribe now

Every week, the headlines blare a new health apocalypse: “Diet soda causes depression!” “Tylenol in pregnancy linked to autism!” “Pesticides are as bad as smoking!”

Except…NO—they don’t. What they have in common is one of the most abused terms in science: “association.”

An association (or correlation) means two things show up together in the same dataset. It does not mean one causes the other. Sometimes there’s a real link, but most of the time, especially in weak observational studies, it’s coincidence, confounding, or statistical noise.

Ice cream sales and shark attacks follow the same trendline. Both rise in the summer. Are people getting attacked by sharks because they ate Häagen-Dazs? Of course not. Both are driven by weather and summer activities. Correlation does not equal causation. Correlation can hint at a pattern worth studying, but it’s not proof.

And yet, when it comes to health, that logic gets tossed out the window. You don’t see headlines every summer screaming “Ice Cream Kills!”

But that’s what’s happening with poor-quality epidemiology papers churning out these kinds of claims, which get laundered by university PR, picked up by media outlets, and weaponized by wellness influencers. If we know ice cream doesn’t cause shark attacks, why do we fall for “diet soda causes depression”?

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Some Recent Offenders: Observation Spun as Causation

Tylenol during pregnancy isn’t causing autism

The Tylenol–autism claim has no causal data. The most robust studies show no relationship. The weaker ones that do?

They’re examples of confounding by indication.

Pregnant people take acetaminophen for fevers, infections, or pain—all conditions which are themselves linked to adverse pregnancy outcomes, including autism. In fact, maternal fever and infection consistently show an association with autism, though it’s much weaker than the overwhelmingly strong genetic contribution to ASD.

That’s why every major scientific and medical body continues to recommend acetaminophen as the safest pain reliever and fever reducer during pregnancy. Untreated fever and pain are far greater risks.

But by the logic of Baccarelli, RFK Jr., and the Trump Administration, we could also conclude that organic food causes autism. The data are clear: the more organic food people buy, the more autism diagnoses there are!

Sarcasm, yes—but it illustrates the absurdity of spinning correlation into causation.

This tactic is particularly prevalent when it comes to false claims about causes of autism, including vaccines. (for one example, read the article below):

As an aside: I wrote about the seedier underbelly of this topic here: how junk science published by academic researchers fuels a cycle of exaggerated claims to lend unearned credibility to dangerous misinformation.

In today’s era of clickbait and chemophobia, this tactic is everywhere. Why? Because crude “population-level” analyses are quick, cheap, and can be done by people with no real expertise in the biology of the condition they’re “studying.”

Remember: epidemiology is data science, not biomedical science. Training emphasizes math and statistics, not cancer biology, biochemistry, toxicology. So you end up with papers reporting on patterns about complex health conditions authored by people who don’t understand the science driving them. That’s why epidemiologists should be working with the scientific experts on these topics, not cosplaying as biomedical scientists.

Pesticides are NOT the new Marlboros

Remember headlines last year? “Pesticide use is on par with smoking for cancer risk.” The claim came from a Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society paper so bad it should never have made it past peer-review.

The authors lumped together county-level data on 69 USDA-monitored pesticides (ignoring dozens used in organic farming since they aren’t monitored by the USDA) and treated them as a single chemical “exposure.”

This is anti-science nonsense.

You cannot ignore basic principles of chemistry, toxicology, and biology. Herbicides act on plants, fungicides on fungi, insecticides on insects. Different targets, different toxicology, different biology. What impacts a plant doesn’t automatically impact a human—plant cells are dramatically different than mammalian cells. Same for insect cells and fungal cells.

Adding them up and declaring a “cumulative cancer risk” is like adding apples, oranges, and pineapples and calling them all bananas. This alone should have gotten this paper rejected, but it gets better.

When they looked by cancer type to try to find a link between reported cancer cases and pesticide use, there was no consistent pattern (because there isn’t one).

So to create the conclusion they wanted, what did they do? They pooled all cancer cases, skipped normalizing for population size, and created a map of “excess cancers” they think are because of pesticide use. Not surprisingly, the map lit up in the Midwest and Florida—places with large agriculture regions. Their conclusion? More farms, more pesticides, more cancer. Correlation equals causation. Done.

Except they didn’t control for the obvious:

• Cancer type: cancers are hundreds of diseases with many different risk factors and causes. HPV causes nearly all throat, cervical, anal, penile, vaginal, and vulvar cancers. Hepatitis B virus drives 60% of liver cancers. Inherited gene mutations, like BRCA and Lynch syndromes account for others. These weren’t included either, obviously. You can’t add them all up and call it a day.

• Age: the biggest driver of cancer risk. 88% of cancers occur over age 50, 59% over the age of 65. Median age of cancer diagnosis is 67. The counties they flagged? Many have more than 30% of the population older than 65. Not a single correction—or mention—of age.

• Population density. More people = more raw cases.

  • If a county of 100,000 has 2,000 excess cancer cases, that’s 2%. If a county of 10 million has 100,000 cancers? That’s 1%—half the rate. But because the authors present raw numbers on their map, the latter looks “worse” on a heatmap.

You can’t present raw numbers when trying to making a population-level claim: that’s wildly misleading and statistically wrong.

• Known modifiable risk factors. The top modifiable risk factors for cancer include, smoking, alcohol consumption, sedentary lifestyle/obesity, low fiber intake, UV radiation exposure, and age. They adjusted for smoking, and that’s it.

• Socioeconomic and healthcare factors: healthcare access, screening rates, income, and urban vs rural populations. All ignored.

This is textbook ecological fallacy: taking population-level associations and pretending they apply to individuals.

Yet, because everyone loves a synthetic chemical villain, headlines went wild with this paper for weeks — and fueled anti-farming rhetoric and policies that will reduce farmers’ ability to grow food for you.

The reality:

• 75% of liver cancers are caused by hepatitis viruses, smoking, and excess alcohol consumption

• 86% of lung cancers are caused by smoking

• 63% of throat cancers are caused by HPV infection

• 15% of colorectal cancers are due to inadequate fiber intake

Pesticides? Zero proven cancer deaths under real-world exposures.

If pesticides were really “as bad as smoking,” America’s farmers would be the sickest population in the country. They aren’t.

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Ultra-Processed Foods aren’t killing everyone

A BMJ umbrella review last year declared eating “ultra-processed foods” (UPFs) is associated with…basically everything bad: mortality, depression, diabetes, cancer.

Terrifying, right? Good thing it is false.

This is correlation by overgeneralization.

These giant reviews lump observational data together but rarely correct for the real drivers of poor health between people who report eating UPF versus those who don’t:

• Income level and socioeconomic status

• Overall diet quality

• Food desert proximity

• Smoking and alcohol intake

• Sedentary lifestyle and activity level

• Obesity and other comorbidities

If these could be adequately corrected for in these types of data dredges, you’d lose the “association” between UPFs and adverse health effects.

Data vilifying UPFs fail to show any direct connection between a specific food or food ingredient. Rather, it is the overall dietary pattern: where people who report eating UPFs are consuming less fiber, lean protein, and other important nutrients.

But of course, the headlines don’t say that, right? They say “chemical in ultra-processed foods are causing cancer, mental illness, cardiovascular disease, death!” all claims which are wholly unsupported by broad overgeneralized observational analyses.

I actually called out this review and resulting media clickbait last March:

And what even counts as a UPF? There’s no standard definition; under the NOVA system, a Twinkie and a nutritionally dense MRE both qualify as “ultra-processed.”

By this logic, foods critical for soldiers, disaster victims, or people in food deserts also cause cancer, mental illness, heart disease, right?

90% of Americans don’t eat enough fiber, a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disorders, type 2 diabetes, and several cancers.

Nuance doesn’t sell ads. So headlines scream “chemicals in UPFs cause cancer” while ignoring the real issue: people reporting high UPF intake also eat fewer fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and fiber. But it’s easier to scare people about “chemicals” than to encourage eating more whole grains and legumes, right?

Diet soda isn’t causing depression, either

A recent paper in JAMA Psychiatry claimed diet soda causes depression, supposedly due to changes in a single genus of gut bacteria—Eggerthella.

The study can’t make that claim: it was an observational study based on self-reported soda consumption with some weak fecal molecular biology analysis tacked on. Their conclusions are speculative at best, and unsupported by data they present.

Those buzzwords—“gut health” and “microbiome”—are almost always red flags when used outside serious microbiology research. As a microbiologist, I cringe at how often they’re used to attribute causation where none exists, and as we see here, not just in wellness industry marketing ploys.

Yes, the microbiome matters—it’s trillions of bacteria, viruses, and fungi living in and on us are crucial for immune system function, nutrient metabolism, cardiovascular and GI health, and more. But it’s way too complex and self-regulating that a single food would completely disrupt its function. Honestly, these types of claims are actually insulting to human biology.

This is why these studies bum me out. We have learned many things about the microbiome over the past few decades. But instead of investing in rigorous, mechanistic research, the field is drowning in poorly done observational studies churning out claims, trying to link a “change” in microbiome to some health outcome.

The authors don’t even show Eggerthella levels are meaningfully changing, let alone that the change has a health impact. It just shows that people with diagnosed major depressive disorder (MDD) report drinking more soda than those not diagnosed.

That’s correlation, not causation.

That could just as easily be reverse causation: depression alters eating and drinking patterns.

The relative risk difference they report is about 8%, which could be entirely due to small sample size and confounders. In fact, their MDD group had higher BMI values, meaning comorbidities like obesity could be driving the pattern. None of this is corrected for adequately.

Diet soda isn’t destroying your microbiome and making you depressed.

This study shows how observational data gets oversold. It doesn’t prove causation in either direction—or even that soda and depression are related in any meaningful way.

And yet, headlines proclaim otherwise, because blaming diet soda for damaging your “gut bacteria” is profitable clickbait, even if it’s wildly misleading and erodes trust in science.

Seagulls Don’t Break Railings and Tylenol Doesn’t Cause Autism

Weak observational studies have become currency in today’s broken publishing landscape and are fuel for academic PR teams, media outlets chasing clicks, and wellness influencers chasing profit.

But correlation is not causation. It’s a starting point, not a finish line.

And yet every day, another weak “association” gets spun into a definitive “X causes cancer” or “Y wrecks your microbiome.” The result? We waste money on bad science, waste time debunking recycled pseudoscience, and distract from the real, evidence-based drivers of health: infectious diseases, social determinants of health, healthcare inequities, legitimate lifestyle factors, and age.

Those may not be as flashy as demonizing soda, pesticides, or “chemicals,” but they’re the reality. Until we stop treating flimsy correlations like fact, we are going to keep wasting energy on false claims while actual risks keep harming our society.

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

Subscribe now

Yesterday, Donald Trump held a lengthy press release where he spewed a lot of disinformation and gave dangerous medical advice. He told people that you shouldn’t take acetaminophen (paracetamol for you European folks) during pregnancy because it causes autism.

Trump’s solution? Just grit your teeth. Pregnancy might be “uncomfortable” without pain and fever relief, but you can just suck it up, right?

Let’s be clear: that claim is false, unsupported by evidence, and harmful. Acetaminophen is the only recommended pain and fever reducer in pregnancy, and untreated fever and pain pose legitimate risks to pregnancy outcomes.

So where did Trump get this idea? Straight from the pseudoscience litigation playbook that RFK Jr and his buddies have profited from for decades.

The proof that Trump, RFK Jr, and MAHA allies are using to claim Tylenol causes autism is a paper published in BMC Environmental Health in August. The paper does not prove this, and it isn’t new data. It’s actually a very poor review of existing studies that tries to claim a link between Tylenol use in pregnancy and autism that the studies themselves don’t support. And it’s not the first time the senior author, Andrea Baccarelli, has tried this.

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Demonizing Tylenol in Pregnancy isn’t New

In 2023, hundreds of lawsuits were lumped together in a multi-district litigation (MDL): In re: Acetaminophen – ASD/ADHD Products Liability Litigation.

Parents were suing based on the claim that that taking Tylenol during pregnancy caused autism or ADHD in their children. As such, the manufacturer of Tylenol (McNeil/Kenvue/Johnson & Johnson) and Walmart (that sells it) were to blame because they didn’t warn them.

The plaintiffs and their lawyers used “expert witnesses” to try to show a causal relationship. In this case, that question was whether there was a causal relationship between Tylenol use during pregnancy and autism.

Among the paid witnesses was Andrea Baccarelli, an endocrinologist with no toxicology or pharmacology background who proclaims to be an expert in “environmental exposures.”

His testimony claiming Tylenol use in pregnancy was associated with autism was junk.

• He cherry-picked weak observational studies that found associations.

• He brushed past far more rigorous studies that found no association at all.

• He lumped autism and ADHD together as if they were the same disorder.

• He ignored obvious confounders that have known relationships to autism like genetics, maternal illness, or fever (the reason people would use Tylenol in the first place).

Federal Judge Denise Cote rejected his testimony (and that of the other four witnesses) because they did not adhere to the Daubert standard — criteria used in trials when an ‘expert’ is presenting scientific evidence to assess whether the methodology is valid, if it is applicable to the topic at hand, or if they are merely using an appeal to authority to try to legitimize unsupported and unsubstantiated claims.

TL;DR: they were manipulating bad science to push a false narrative.

Since the entire group of lawsuits was based on these expert testimonies and since the testimonies were not based on credible data, the lawsuits got rightly thrown out.

The Tort Litigation Pseudoscience Pipeline is Lucrative

For most people, that would have been the end. But this wasn’t a one-off for Baccarelli — it’s part of a deliberate, profitable industry, one that is exploited by far too many with science or health credentials.

Here’s how it works:

1. Produce weak research as an academic researcher, usually relying on observational studies with soft endpoints or survey-based qualitatitive data, under the umbrella of studying “environmental exposure” or “exposure science.”

2. Serve as a paid expert witness in lawsuits against chemical, pharmaceutical, consumer product companies, citing their weak research as evidence.

3. When testimony gets tossed out for methodological failures, repackage and publish it in a predatory journal as a peer-reviewed paper. Now it can be cited in future cases as “published evidence.”

4. Use the paper in new lawsuits or lobbying efforts as “proof” of these claims that are not supported by robust data.

5. The cycle continues….

This is why you often see the same names repeated, people with MDs or PhDs with no credible expertise in toxicology or pharmacology self-branding as “environmental exposure experts.”

It’s a cottage industry built around lawsuits, not science. And it’s lucrative: expert witnesses get paid hundreds of dollars an hour in consulting fees. They also get press attention in their job at their academic institute, ensuring they can continue to get funding to conduct their unscientific “studies” to keep filling their resume. These individuals work hand-in-hand with tort lawyers to profit off pseudoscience, chemophobia, and clickbait.

This is the exact model RFK Jr. has used for decades: manufacture doubt around vaccines, chemicals, and consumer products; find “experts” willing to testify; and use litigation and settlements as both funding and amplification. He’s targeted vaccines, glyphosate, genetic engineering, fluoride—and now Tylenol.

A Paper that Repackaged Tossed Out Testimony

Fast-forward to August 2025. Baccarelli is a senior author on a systematic review in BMC Environmental Health, the paper being cited as “proof” there is a link between acetaminophen use in pregnancy and autism. But it isn’t proof.

It reviews 46 studies, assigns a rating for bias (based on the authors’ judgment), and concludes there are “consistent associations” between prenatal acetaminophen and ADHD, with more tentative evidence for autism.

To be clear: there still isn’t a link between prenatal acetaminophen and autism.

Here’s what the review really does:

• It still discards or downplays the largest, most rigorous studies that show no association, including a recent cohort study in JAMA that included nearly 2.5 million children and compared between siblings, an incredibly strong normalization method.

• It relies heavily on studies whose data center on self-reported recall of Tylenol use years after pregnancy. If you can’t guess, this is an incredibly weak way to measure exposure, since people’s memories are notoriously fallible.

• It’s functionally the same testimony Judge Denise Cote tossed in 2023, now with the appearance of legitimacy. He separated ASD and ADHD and briefly acknowledges studies that find no association, but then concludes there is a “consistent positive association” — essentially throwing out the largest and most rigorous studies that refute that.

Why publish it? Because now it can be cited in lawsuits and political rhetoric as “peer-reviewed evidence.”

BMC Environmental Health isn’t a blatant predatory journal, but it charges ~$3,000 per article and has a track record of publishing weak, “positive association” papers about chemicals and scary health outcomes without real-world evidence.

BMC Journals have a history of numerous retractions due to poor methodology, compromised peer review processes, and failed fact checks. In 2015, 43 papers were retracted because of fake peer review. In 2016, 58 papers were retracted for fake peer review, manipulated authorship, and plagiarism. In 2024, 10 editors of BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth and BMC Women’s Health resigned en masse because they reported data fabrication and the journal refused to respond.

BMC Environmental Health is an ideal place to launder junk science into something with a “peer-reviewed” stamp, because if you didn’t know the history, it looks legit at face value.

Baccarelli’s courtroom claims that had no scientific credibility were repackaged, polished, and published. This is a deliberate legal strategy to fuel pseudoscience, chemophobia, and lawsuits built on unfounded fears. Media outlets and academic institutes are directly contributing to this, by branding this predatory publication as a “Harvard study” (that’s where Baccarelli works) without giving it any degree of scrutiny.

From Predatory Publication to Federal Health Policy

But it’s worse than that. Because now, Trump, Marty Makary, RFK Jr, and our captured health agencies are using this paper as proof Tylenol causes autism. It doesn’t. But because it’s “peer-reviewed,” it is going to be weaponized, doesn’t matter than the author has serious conflicts of interest and the journal is pay-to-publish.

Trump is already spreading deadly medical advice based on this. The White House published their “Autism Action Plan” which includes adding warning labels on acetaminophen.

And let’s not forget the kicker: the “treatment” they claim works: leucovorin, aka folinic acid (not folic acid). Leucovorin (regulated folinic acid) does have some medical indications, but they aren’t to treat or cure autism.

But that didn’t stop Marty Makary, grifter extraordinaire, from bypassing ALL scientific and regulatory guardrails to initiate a process to grant FDA approval for leucovorin for autism symptoms and cerebral folate deficiency.

It gets even better. You’ve got a wellness industry supplement marketplace that is ready to capitalize on this by selling folinic acid supplements (that means they haven’t even passed basic safety scrutiny)

That includes Mehmet Oz (he runs Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, btw) who has a financial stake in the company iHerb that… you guessed it: sells folinic acid supplements.

This adoption of health disinformation by what should be bastions of scientific rigor is egregious — and it will cause so much harm to countless people, all while the individuals who fabricate and propagate these falsehoods get richer and richer.

Tylenol does not cause autism. Neither do vaccines, trace pesticide residues, or the nebulous “chemical exposures” fearmongers love to blame.

The strongest predictor of autism is genetics. Twin studies show that if one identical twin has ASD, the other has a 90–99% chance as well, compared with 31–67% for fraternal twins. That’s consistent with an average genetic heritability of 83%. Non-twin siblings have about a 20% likelihood of ASD, which is a seven-fold increase over the general population. The likelihood increases further in families with multiple members with ASD. Over 100 genes have been implicated, many involved in early brain development and neural communication.

Environmental exposures in a household isn’t a driving factor. And blaming “chemicals” isn’t science — it’s distraction.

What can increase likelihood of ASD and autism? Factors that impact fetal development, like maternal fever and infection. Ironically, these are some of the very reasons pregnant people take Tylenol in the first place. Funny how Baccarelli left that out.

So let’s be clear: autism is overwhelmingly genetic, sometimes influenced by biological and developmental factors like maternal fever, but not acetaminophen.

I wrote a lot more about causes of autism, diagnostic criteria, and prevalence of autism over time back in April, so read that if you want those data:

Trump, RFK Jr., and their MAHA allies are recycling a dangerous grift.

Tylenol doesn’t cause autism. Weaponizing bad science to score lawsuits, push supplements, and undermine our science and health infrastructure will cause harm.

The science hasn’t changed. Weak observational associations aren’t causation, and the most rigorous studies don’t support a link. What does predict autism? Genetics, family history, and known developmental factors like maternal fever or infection.

And who pays the price? Pregnant patients who are scared, confused, and at risk. Children who will be subjected to treatments with no evidence to support them. Parents who are being told it’s their fault their child is neurodivergent. Our society is made worse every time health disinformation is legitimized.

When pseudoscience wins, public health loses, and people suffer. That’s the goal of this administration.

Last night, I also joined Dr. Kaveh Hoda (hepatologist) and Dr. Ryan Marino (toxicologist) to discuss all of this and more on The House of Pod, so make sure to listen to our discussion as well! (links are below):

Listen on Spotify:

Listen on Apple Podcasts:

We all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

Stay skeptical,

Andrea

“ImmunoLogic” is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

Subscribe now

A lot has been happening lately — and if you’re feeling overwhelmed and living with a sense of existential dread, that’s expected. And you’re not alone.

While I may not have been writing many newsletters or hanging out on social media recently, I’ve been busy doing what I have always done: science.

I’ve been busy with high priority work projects, including the creation of a method to validate processes for biologics medicine quality control—ironic given our FDA Commissioner has zero expertise on this.

I’ve also been doing lots of science communication in the real world.

Last week I presented at the International Conference for Lyme Borreliosis and and Other Tick-Borne Diseases (ICLB)

Yesterday I spoke at the CIHR Pan-Canadian Network for HIV and STBBI Clinical Trials Research (CTN+)

Tonight I’m joining a panel discussion at Hood College following a screening of “Shot in the Arm,”

Friday morning I’ll be joining WGN Morning News for another health disinformation fact-check segment

and then I’m flying to Chicago

To speak at the North American Congress of Clinical Toxicology on Saturday.

Hopefully, when I get a minute to breathe, I will try to write up some takeaways from my talks at these conferences, because I think there are some important messages that all of us in science and healthcare can use in our day-to-day lives.

But given that today starts the next Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting, a reminder: in June, RFK Jr. kicked out all 17 existing ACIP members. People with legitimate qualifications and decades of expertise in fields relevant to vaccine science, infectious disease, safety, and health administration.

Read more detail about this here:

Since that article I wrote, RFK Jr staffed ACIP with a cadre of his allies: conspiracy theorists, science deniers, and people with long histories of undermining evidence in favor of personal opinions. In June, he replaced the former panel of 17 with 8 of his allies, including:

Robert Malone: originally claims to have “invented mRNA vaccines,” which is false. He had a small contribution to early research in the lipid-based delivery methods decades ago. When he didn’t get accolades for this, he changed his tactic to spreading conspiracy theories and lies about vaccines, including:

• COVID-19 vaccines cause ‘vaccine-induced AIDS’

• People were hypnotized by mass formation psychosis

• Heavy menstrual bleeding was a silent miscarriage caused by COVID vaccines

• 1 in 2000 kids will get brain damage from COVID vaccines

• For every 3 lives saved, 2 people will be killed by vaccines

• Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine treat COVID

• And that 17 million people were killed by COVID vaccines.

Vicky Pebsworth: A board member of National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), an anti-vaccine activist group originally founded under the name “Dissatisfied Parents Together".” NVIC and it’s employees have fueled much of the anti-vaccine rhetoric that has existed since the 1990s, including the lie that vaccines cause autism, that vaccines overwhelm kids’ immune systems, that they’re filled with ‘toxic ingredients,’ and promoting alternatives to vaccines for deadly and debilitating diseases. NVIC was found to be one of the biggest propagators of anti-vaccine disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with RFK Jr and his organization Children’s Health Defense. Of course RFK Jr would pick her!

Martin Kulldorf: He has a PhD in Operations Research, a type of applied math that utilizes statistics and mathematical modeling to improve operations and decision-making. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which promoted the idea of letting COVID-19 rip through our population, without consideration of individual or public health impacts. He also discouraged COVID-19 testing, especially for children for school screening, because he didn’t “feel” that there was a risk to kids—or I guess to teachers, school administrators, or other staff. Good guy. He’s also personally involved in lawsuits targeting the HPV vaccine, a la RFK Jr, where he stands to profit by claiming false harms from a vaccine that prevents cervical, penile, throat, anal, vaginal, and vulvar cancers.

Retsef Levi: He has a PhD in Operations Management (not even Operations Research like Kuldorff), which is a field that focuses on planning, organizing, and implementing business practices to improve efficieny and profit. So, yeah. He has zero scientific or health qualifications to speak on vaccines in ANY capacity, yet he’s now part of ACIP. Throughout the pandemic, he has claimed that mRNA vaccines cause serious harm including death, especially among young people.

Watch this clip from my recent appearance on WIRED’s Tech Support for a quick overview of these folks:

I have a lot more to say on why it is a very bad thing to have science deniers leading what should be an impartial outside organization that provides recommendations to vaccines for an entire nation, as well as the abject lies they will circulate about Hepatitis B, MMRV, and COVID-19 vaccines (although I’ve written about them already before, see below for some articles).

Unfortunately, most of that is going to have to wait until my paying job and day-to-day real-life demands quiet down.

But if you want to hear some of my real-time thoughts on the anti-science and anti-vaccine movement

you should join the free (and online) screening of Shot in the Arm and the Panel discussion tonight, starting at 6 pm.

Dr. will also be on the panel (you should know him if you don’t!) as will several other science and health experts.

Some of you had replied that you never received the Zoom link, so I also wanted to provide it here. Access the entire evening event here:

https://zoom.us/j/95147843893?pwd=VNVgpaRdVEXZDOei8lJdQYbFbVIZbp.1

Meeting ID: 951 4784 3893 | Passcode: 717140

In this very moment, we are seeing RFK Jr and his anti-science allies turn our health and science safeguards into ideological tools. He, and those who enable him, are threats to global health.

This isn’t just about vaccines—it’s about combating disinformation before it becomes bad policy that erodes science and harms our health. And we all need to take action to help fight against it.

Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

More science education, less disinformation.

- Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by sharing with your friends and family:

Subscribe now

When I was an undergrad, I took a class that combined several of my passions [okay, obsessions] — infectious diseases, public health, and history. If you trace human history, you quickly see a pattern: disease outbreaks don’t just cause illness, they upend societies. Epidemics disrupt daily life, force cultural shifts, and (ideally) push us toward deeper knowledge and understanding.

Unfortunately, too many of us don’t know, or don’t care, about these seismic events that shaped science, culture, and public health. Because of that, we doom ourselves to repeat history — with catastrophic consequences. Anyone else feel like Sisyphus these days?

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The Black Death (1340s–1350s): The plague, caused by Yersinia pestis and spread by flea-infested rodents, killed up to 50% of Europe’s population. Lower-income “peasants” bore the brunt, since rodents were more common in poorer quarters of cities.

Nearly everyone has probably heard of the Black Death, by most people don’t realize it accelerated distrust in the Church. Clergy insisted that prayer and religious rituals would halt the spread of disease and death and when that failed spectacularly, people started to question religious authority. That skepticism helped pave the way for the Renaissance and Reformation: if the Church was wrong about something so deadly, why follow blindly?

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic: This strain of H1N1 influenza infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide and killed at least 50 million — a mortality rate of 10%. This was more deaths than in World War I (1914-1918) itself, which society was still reeling from, and killed many young adults, a pattern generally atypical of flu.

Without vaccines, rudimentary health systems and governments were overwhelmed trying to control the spread of illness and death, but also panic within communities. This catastrophe illustrated to the world how unprepared people were for global outbreaks. It led to the expansion of the US Public Health Service and the development of disease surveillance efforts, which ultimately laid the groundwork for the creation of the WHO (World Health Organization) in 1948.

It helped influence modern disease epidemiology and normalized public health measures, like mask wearing, as part of civic responsibility. Unfortunately, that history lesson we have clearly forgotten.

When we ignore public health history, we pay for it with our lives.

Every time science delivers an infectious disease breakthrough—from smallpox inoculations in the 1700s, polio vaccines in the 1950s, mRNA COVID-19 shots just five years ago—the same tired disinformation script unfolds.

Fear. Conspiracy. Lies. Profiteering.

Us scientists could practically write the talking points for anti-science activists before they open their mouths, because it’s all been recycled for centuries:

• It’s poison.

• It’s a government plot to control you.

• It’ll corrupt your bloodline.

• It’ll change your DNA.

Different century, same nonsense. But it isn’t just nonsense—it’s dangerous. These false narratives work their way into the public discourse, erode trust, and undermine collective responsibility. It’s why we are so concerned when vaccine rates decline or people refuse to participate in public health interventions. Those metrics tell us people are believing the anti-science disinformation—and that means, we as a population, are vulnerable to preventable to disease outbreaks.

History is filled with these examples, far more than just the two I listed above. Communities that refused smallpox inoculation were ravaged while their neighbors were spared. Parents who bought into anti-vaccine campaigns in the 1990s and 2000s helped measles resurge in places where it had been nearly eliminated (if you didn’t read my last newsletter, it discusses exactly this):

But this isn’t in the past. We are seeing this happen in real time. Faster, and more aggressively, because anti-science profiteers like RFK Jr, Marty Makary, Jay Bhattacharya, Mehmet Oz and their allies (Mark Hyman, EWG, Zen Honeycutt, Calley and Casey Means) have control and authority within our federal government and health systems.

Disinformation causes preventable deaths. Always has. Always will. But now, these lies aren’t just circulating on your uncle’s Facebook page—they’re being turned into policy. Into laws. Conspiracy theories are now being legitimized by people in power—the same people who are supposed to be protecting our communities.

Not only are they ignoring history, they are throwing it into the dumpster and consciously committing to make things a hell of a lot worse for all of us. It is unconscionable.

That’s why I’m happy to support my fellow colleagues efforts on the same. Mark Chee, a professor at Hood College, created the Microbiology & Public Health History (MPH) Film Festival years ago to try to galvanize enthusiasm for this very thing. His project uses film to illustrate how infectious diseases have shaped society, culture, and science.

This season is focused on how pseudoscience is harming public health. The goal? Raising the alarm that history isn’t trivia, it’s a warning. And it should be a lesson we have already learned.

Now, with our elected officials failing us (the Senate is the one who confirmed these people, fyi) and media outlets contributing to the misinformation landscape, we have to work together. Scientists, healthcare providers, and the public: we all must speak up loudly and often, so we can try to repair some of the damage already done, and try to prevent an even worse epidemic in the future.

Mark will be screening Shot in the Arm next week at Hood College as part of that mission. Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy and executive produced by Neil deGrasse Tyson, it explores the throughline from smallpox to COVID, exposing how the disinformation machine undermines forward progress in public health.

Even if you’re not a student at Hood, you can join the free screening.

After the film, I’ll be joining other experts for a panel discussion about vaccines, policy, and how we can push back on the misinformation machine.

If you’re free next Thursday evening and want to watch the film and ask scientists and public health experts your burning questions, come join us. Register to join virtually by Zoom here: https://tinyurl.com/mph-film-fest

This isn’t just about vaccines—it’s about combating disinformation before it becomes bad policy that erodes science and harms our health.

That’s true whether we are talking vaccines, food ingredients, agriculture science, or more.

Hope you’ll join us next week, and in the fight for science and health.

Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

More science education, less disinformation.

- Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

Subscribe now

Vaccines are one of the most effective and life-saving scientific technologies in modern medicine. They save lives, prevent suffering, and spare health systems from collapse. But they only work to control communicable illness when enough people in a population get them. That proportion can be as high as 95% for highly contagious disease-causing microbes (pathogens).

Governments in the US have been co-opted by anti-science profiteers trying to roll back decades of progress attributed to these life-saving medicines.

I won’t lie: it’s been very hard seeing my life’s passion (and career) be erased by people without any credible expertise who lie without consequence. This week in particular has been a lot for me and fellow biomedical scientists.

Yesterday, RFK Jr spent another day lying to Congress, the very people who installed him as head of HHS and yet still don’t want to hold him accountable. I’ve written about his history of lies here, here, here, here, and here (there are more, just head to the section of ImmunoLogic tagged “RFK JR”).

Also this week, Joseph Ladapo and Ron DeSantis announced that Florida will remove vaccine requirements for schools. Ladapo went so far as to liken vaccine mandates to slavery — a grotesque, and false — comparison. As you’d expect, there was a predictable deluge of “health freedom” activists cheering this escape from “tyranny.”

Removing vaccine requirements doesn’t give us “freedom” — it removes freedom by making us vulnerable to preventable illness and worse health.

Yesterday, HHS (under the control of RFK Jr) endorsed religious and personal belief exemptions from vaccines—normalizing the false notion that there should be some sort of ideological objection to these life-saving medicines.

These moves will be devastating. Not just for kids in Florida impacted by the loss of vaccine mandates—for entire communities across the country (and potentially the world). We know what happens without vaccine mandates—it’s why they exist today.

Anti-vaccine rhetoric is a top ten global health threat. We will all face the deadly consequences of these decisions.

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Vaccine mandates eliminated polio and smallpox

Before vaccines, polio devastated tens of thousands of people every year, causing paralysis, limb deformities, and death. The development and introduction of polio vaccines in the 1950s opened the door to a world where that wasn’t the case.

By 1963, 85% of children younger than 10 had received as least one vaccine dose, driven by widespread and enthusiastic vaccine campaigns. By the 1960s, every state had polio vaccine mandates for school, and polio cases across the country had plummeted to just 161 in a year. By 1979, the US had eliminated polio, and today, almost the entire world is free from it, thanks to vaccine mandates (only two countries have endemic polio today).

Smallpox was fully eradicated from the planet because of largescale vaccine campaigns and global mandates. In the US, smallpox vaccination was required for schools in states as far back as 1850, with city-level mandates starting in 1827. A small outbreak of 12 cases in New York City in 1947 spurred an effort which vaccinated 6.35 million people in 3 weeks and stopped the outbreak.

You might be thinking, 12 cases seems so small for such an effort. But when you’ve actually witnessed the devastation a disease can cause, you understand the importance of vaccination. Today, we are privileged to be shielded from much of that precisely because of how effective vaccines are. The irony, right?

When mandates disappear, preventable illness and death spreads.

Diphtheria is a contagious and deadly respiratory illness caused by the bacterium Corynebacterium diphtheriae with a mortality rate up to 10%. To stop the spread of diphtheria, 85-90% of the population must be vaccinated.

Diphtheria had been controlled in the Soviet Union after mandatory vaccination campaigns began in the 1950s. By the late 1970s, vaccination rates exceeded 90% and USSR saw only a few thousand cases per year among a population of 280 million, underscoring the success of largescale vaccine mandates.

The Soviet Union collapsed in the late 1980s through early 1990s. Public health systems also collapsed, vaccine production and distribution halted, and enforcement of school and workplace vaccine mandates disappeared. Growing distrust of the government exacerbated problems, and vaccine coverage plummeted to 60-70%, especially among adults who missed early vaccine campaigns.

The result? The largest diphtheria epidemic the world had seen since the 1950s. Between 1990 and 1998, the newly independent states reported 157,000 cases and 5,000 deaths. The epidemic only ended after emergency mass vaccination campaigns deployed by the WHO and partner organizations—essentially reinstated mandates—brought coverage back above 90%.

This case shows that even diseases on the brink of elimination come rushing back when vaccine mandates disappear.

Weak vaccine mandates function as no mandates at all.

And it wasn’t just the Soviet Union. Whenever mandates are weak or riddled with loopholes, history repeats itself. In California, school vaccine “requirements” once allowed parents to opt out for any personal belief. In some counties, kindergarten MMR coverage plummeted to 50–60% — well below the 95% needed to keep measles at bay.

Guess what happened? A measles outbreak started at Disneyland in 2014.

The first case was reported in an unvaccinated 11-year old child hospitalized in early January 2015 and rapidly spread across 7 states, Mexico, and Canada. In the US, several hundred cases were reported with a hospitalization rate of 20%. While most US cases were among unvaccinated Californians, a single case from Disneyland imported into Canada led to 150 measles cases among an unvaccinated religious community.

Nearly all cases were in unvaccinated people, 76% of whom cited “personal beliefs” as to why they were unvaccinated. California passed SB 277 in 2016, removing the personal belief loophole from vaccination requirements. By the 2017-2018 schoolyear, kindergarten MMR vaccine rates were up to 97.3%, a level needed to keep measles at bay.

Here, a weak mandate functioned as no mandate at all. Voluntary vaccine compliance is not good enough. In every instance through history where vaccine requirements don’t exist, the predictable happens: an outbreak occurs, illness spreads, and in many cases, people die.

Religious exemptions led to dead children in Philadelphia

If California in 2015 showed us the danger of “personal beliefs,” Philadelphia in 1991 illustrated the the cost of “religious freedom.”

Two fundamentalist churches in the city (Faith Tabernacle Congregation and First Century Gospel Church) not only refused vaccines but rejected all medical care. They didn’t believe in doctors, and promoted the deadly idea of “prayer for healing.” The entirely unvaccinated student bodies at their religious schools fueled a citywide outbreak of measles, starting in late 1990.

Over 1,424 measles cases occurred in Philadelphia, with 486 in the congregations themselves. Nine children died in those communities, a 1.2% case-fatality rate in a city where measles should not have been fatal at all. The reason for that? Because only one of the children that died received any medical care.

A court order was enacted, citing the 1944 US Supreme Court decision Prince v. Massachusetts (parents’ religious beliefs do not extend to denying lifesaving medical care for children). Without legal enforcement of vaccinations, more children would have died.

And yet yesterday, in the year 2025, RFK Jr’s HHS is promoting religious and personal belief exemptions as if we don’t already know where that road leads.

We have literal case law, decades of history, and data clearly showing that religious objections don’t trump a child’s right to health. And yet the nation’s top health agency is platforming exactly that excuse. Buckle up for a repeat of Philly 1991, folks.

Vaccine mandates improve trust in science and participation in public health

In 2018, France proved this. Up till then, there were only requirements for diphtheria, pertussis, and poliomyelitis (DT and IPV), and France had one of the highest rates of vaccine hesitancy in the world. On January 1, 2018, they expanded mandates to include vaccines to protect against 8 additional diseases: Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), Pertussis, Hepatitis B, Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR), Meningococcus C, and Streptococcus pneumoniae.

The result was rapid and positive. Between 2016 and 2018:

• Hepatitis B vaccine rates climbed from ~92% to 98%.

• MenC (1st dose) increased from 39.3% to 75.7%.

• MMR coverage for dose 1 increased from 87.3% to 93.0% and dose 2 increased from 82.2% to 88.9%.

But what was even more important: public doubts about vaccine safety and effectiveness improved. Concerns about vaccine safety declined from 41 to 23.7% and doubts about effectiveness fell from 17.3% to 12.5%. Normalizing vaccines through laws reduced hesitancy and improved confidence in them as health interventions.

This is what our government should be doing — not actively contributing to the legitimization of anti-vaccine lies. Mandates don’t just improve vaccine rates, they reshape public attitudes.

We don’t get herd immunity with vibes, polite reminders, or recommendations. We get there with mandates.

It would be great if merely encouraging people to do the right thing for everyone in a functioning society (are we a functioning society anymore, though?) was enough to get vaccination rates to levels we need to control contagious illnesses.

But humans don’t work that way. Humans are bad at risk perception, especially if a threat feels far away or abstract. If a benefit of an action is collective, people often free-ride and rely on others. If a risk is invisible (like viruses and bacteria are without microscopes), it’s even easier to ignore it. And if the risk is in the future? Now you’ve got the trifecta.

We’ve tried the voluntary vaccine recommendation approach throughout history. It doesn’t work. Vaccine rates don’t get to the levels they must to control outbreaks and the spread of preventable illness.

Mandates are necessary because humans are irrational and cannot appropriately assess risk. Many psychological factors lead to vaccine avoidance without requirements in place:

• Free-rider mentality: People assume “everyone else will get vaccinated, so my kid will be safe.” This works until enough people do the same. Then you’ve got low vaccine coverage where a single case of measles can spread to record-breaking levels. This literally happened in Texas this year, remember?

• Optimism bias: This is the evergreen “oh, it won’t happen to me” mentality. Guess what? It inevitably does.

• Psychological myopia (aka FAFO): This is so common we’ve got an acronym for it (yep, FAFO is “fuck around and find out”). People focus on immediate outcomes while ignoring or underestimating long-term consequences. A vaccination “feels” more risky than an illness you might get in the future if you remain unvaccinated. Plus, with optimism bias, you’re already confident that won’t happen to you.

• People are inherently selfish: Not a judgment, a scientific reality. That’s why fitness in biology measures an organisms’ ability to survive and reproduce: the evolutionary every man for himself. But it requires conscious effort for most people to consider those beyond their immediate sphere. Without mandates, people try to frame vaccines as a “personal choice,” ignoring that your choice impacts others. Vaccines control communicable diseases: illnesses that spread among people. When you don’t vaccinate, your choice puts everyone you interact with at risk: babies, cancer patients, the elderly, your neighbor with a transplant.

Mandates remove this psychological conflict. They turn vaccination from optional to the expectation of living in a society. You live in a society, right? We all do things to participate in a society, right? Taking our trash out, following traffic rules, not dumping raw sewage in the street. Vaccination is part of that collective responsibility too.

Vaccine mandates aren’t tyranny. They’re wellness behaviors that keep society safe.

• They’re why you don’t know anyone who died of smallpox.

• They’re why playgrounds aren’t filled with kids in braces from polio.

• They’re why a puncture wound isn’t a death sentence.

Remove them? History repeats: diseases spread, illness follows, and people die.

And that’s the road RFK Jr., Marty Makary, Ron DeSantis, Joseph Ladapo, the MAHA movement, and their enablers are steering us down as they co-opt the very agencies that once led the world in eradicating smallpox and polio.

RFK Jr. and HHS promoting personal belief and religious exemptions isn’t protecting freedom. It’s protecting viruses. Congratulations: our tax dollars are paying for HHS to run PR for preventable illnesses.

Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

More science education, less disinformation.

- Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

Subscribe now

We used to immunize people by blowing powdered smallpox scabs up their noses. Today, RFK Jr. wants us to pretend that was the ‘gold standard’ of vaccine technology.

RFK Jr., Marty Makary, and other MAHA allies are eroding trust in biomedical science technology development. On August 5, RFK Jr (now running HHS) cut $500 million dollars in Federal funding for mRNA vaccine research.

Half a billion dollars. Gone.

RFK Jr’s HHS cut 22 research projects funded through BARDA (Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) — the organization that develops medical countermeasures for chemical, biological, and radiation-related accidents, biological and chemical weapons attacks, and emerging infectious diseases.

I’ve worked with colleagues running BARDA-funded projects. It’s critical biomedical research—the lifeline for next generation flu vaccines, cancer vaccines, rapid pandemic response platforms (diagnostics and therapeutics). Cutting BARDA mRNA projects erases our ability to respond to the next pandemic (which is an inevitability), to develop more targeting cancer treatments, or to focus on universal flu vaccines.

HHS website says they’re “winding down” mRNA vaccine development, as if the need no longer exists. It’s not just wrong—it’s reckless. This will erase decades of progress and leaving us more vulnerable.

RFK Jr. has been an anti-vaccine activist for nearly 30 years. He’s married the politicization and distrust of mRNA vaccines (much he created) with general anti-vaccine sentiment and his authority within HHS to systematically erase one of the most impactful and life-saving fields of therapeutic development.

RFK Jr’s HHS claims to go back to “safer, broader vaccine platforms” that are older, like whole-virus vaccines. Marty Makary, a surgeon who now leads the FDA, has echoed similar false sentiments by claiming mRNA vaccines and the underlying technology is “risky.” Not a scientist, not an expert in regulation, yet he’s been given the reins of FDA while he spreads misinformation and conspiracy theories.

These are lies.

mRNA vaccines are safe, have been in development for decades, and have far broader applications than older vaccine technologies.

But in the current reality we live in, apparently facts don’t matter.

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mRNA versus “traditional” vaccines is a false dichotomy.

The current narrative coming from HHS is literally (I am quoting here):

“HHS supports safe, effective vaccines for every American who wants them. That’s why we’re moving beyond the limitations of mRNA and investing in better solutions”

RFK Jr’s rhetoric goes like this: “We trusted vaccines before, but these new mRNA ones? They’re untested, they alter your DNA, they’re experimental.” All of that is flat-out wrong. In fact, mRNA vaccines have been in research and development for decades. Decades.

But more to the point: RFK Jr. didn’t “previously trust” vaccines – this is just his latest attempt to move the goalposts toward his ultimate goal of getting all vaccine approvals revoked. More on that later.

Today, let’s address why the notion that “old” vaccines are superior is wrong and why these lies are dangerous to humanity.

Every vaccine technology was once “new,” even variolation

In fact, every medical intervention was once new. Novelty isn’t a reason to reject technologies, unless you never want to improve humanity and health.

If we took this approach, we might still be using variolation.

In the 1700s, smallpox was rampant. Caused by the Variola virus, smallpox had an average mortality rate of 30-50% and killed millions throughout history. Many who survived had extensive scarring and disfiguration, along with other sequelae (long-term symptoms of infection).

Variola virus is incredibly stable and can remain infectious in scabs, clothing, and bedding for up to a month. The virus was easily transmitted person to person, through clothing even through contact with household surfaces and objects.

In the 1700s, variolation was the method used to provide immunity to smallpox — considered the first immunization (the process of generating immunity).

Variolation was the intentional, but controlled exposure of live smallpox virus to a person, which, if they were lucky, led to milder illness and immunity to smallpox if they were exposed in the future.

Variolation was crude. It involved taking smallpox scabs (filled with virus, although folks in the 1700s didn’t know that specifically), drying them over a fire, grinding them into a powder, and blowing them up the nose of the lucky recipient.

Other methods included slicing open a persons’s arm and rubbing smallpox pus in the wound or bandaging the wound with contaminated cloths. The good old days, amiright?

Variolation was Russian roulette with live, deadly, smallpox virus. Some people did only develop mild illness and once recovered, had lifelong immunity. But others developed smallpox and died.

Variolation reduced mortality from 30% to 3%, a huge improvement when there was nothing available to protect people against a deadly disease. For most people, the math was easy. But can you imagine if a vaccine today had a mortality rate of 3 percent?!

This was not the golden age of medicine. It was a desperate attempt with the limited knowledge at the time when there were no better options.

The practice of variolation only spread because influential people took that risk. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who lost a brother to smallpox, introduced it to England in the 1720s. She had her own children variolated and her endorsement helped it spread among Europe’s elite.

Onesimus brought the practice to the US after he was captured and enslaved by Cotton Mather. In 1721, variolation contained an outbreak of smallpox in Boston. Only 6 of 844 deaths occurred among those who were variolated, demonstrating the effectiveness of this immunization method.

The United States of America exists in large part because George Washington made smallpox immunization mandatory for troops during the American Revolution. Washington ordered all incoming Continental Army troops to be variolated in 1777. This move saved the rebellion – and likely is the reason we are a country today. Yes, the irony is not lost on me that an anti-vaccine activist may be the end of our 250-year experiment. Our founding fathers would likely be ashamed.

Variolation saved lives, but still had a cost. Personally, I’m thankful we’ve evolved our scientific tools beyond variolation.

Edward Jenner developed vaccination – a new technology that saved even more lives

In 1796, Edward Jenner, an English physician and scientist, introduced a new (and safer idea) based on observations that people who had contracted cowpox were immune to smallpox. Jenner called the Cowpox virus Variolae vacciniae (smallpox of the cow).

This new immunization technology, the first true “vaccination” (from the Latin, vacca, cow), soon replaced variolation, the “old” method of generating immunity to smallpox.

Why? Well, unlike variolation, vaccination didn’t use live (and deadly) smallpox virus, it didn’t lead to death among those who were immunized, and it didn’t cause secondary outbreaks among immunized people.

Jenner conducted the first published human challenge studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of Cowpox vaccination against smallpox.

In May 1796, Sarah Nelms contracted cowpox while caring for cows on the farm. Jenner took a pustule from her and scratched the material into the skin of an 8-yr old boy named James Phipps. James developed mild symptoms for ~9 days. In July that year, Jenner deliberately exposed James to smallpox, and James did not develop smallpox. He published his findings in 1797/1798, and by 1800, this practice began spreading across Europe. Jenner devised and documented a scientific method, which allowed it to be spread globally: that’s the goal of public health.

This approach led to the evolution of the current smallpox vaccine (which we keep in stockpiles) that uses another related virus, Vaccinia virus.

And because we didn’t stick with the old method and instead, adopted new science, we literally eradicated smallpox from existence on this planet. Yes, smallpox, a viral illness with 30-50% mortality rate, has been ERADICATED from the planet because of vaccines.

This was science’s first great immunological upgrade: replacing the virulent and deadly pathogen for a harmless mimic that still trains the immune system. That’s always been the goal for vaccine development, and it started 200 years ago: safer, more precise, and more effective vaccines.

Imagine if people in the 1700s refused to accept scientific progress like RFK Jr, Marty Makary, and their MAHA allies are doing now?

New vaccines didn’t stop there. The shift from DTP to DTaP? More scientific progress in action.

Let’s fast forward to the 20th century. The DTP (Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis) vaccine was approved in the US in 1948 and was standard for children. It protects against 3 bacterial diseases: diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough.

The symptoms of diphtheria and tetanus are caused by a toxin produced by each respective bacterium (Corynebacterium diphtheriae and Clostridium tetani), whereas pertussis symptoms are caused by direct action of that bacterium (Bordetella pertussis).

The DTP contained intact whole killed Bordetella pertussis cells, as opposed to isolated or select groups of bacterial cell components (antigens) that would stimulate the immune response. The DTP vaccine induced a very robust immune response, providing long-lasting and strong protection against all 3 diseases. However, because the pertussis component contained the entire killed bacterium, it also elicited strong reactogenicity–adverse events related to the immune response to the vaccine.

DTP vaccination could cause fevers, prolonged crying, local swelling, and occasional febrile seizures. Fever could occur in up to 50% of infants, local swelling in up to 40%, and persistent crying lasting more than 3 hours in ~1% of vaccinated children. Febrile seizures were less common but still occurred in 1 in every 1,750 doses.

Science enabled us to develop a new diptheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine. We changed from DTP to DTaP in 1991.

New technology enabled the creation of a safer vaccine that still protects against deadly diseases. Instead of the whole Bordetella pertussis bacteria (which contains thousands of antigens that contribute to that robust immune response but also the reactogenicity), the new vaccine included an ‘acellular’ component containing key bacterial molecules (antigens) that stimulate an immune response: pertussis toxin, Filamentous hemagglutinin (FHA), and pertactin.

DTaP reduced the incidence of fever and local swelling by over 80% and febrile seizures were no longer associated with vaccination. DTaP is still a 5-dose regimen that protects against diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough (pertussis), but is far safer than its predecessor.

Anti-vaccine activists love to point out that immunity to DTaP immunity wanes faster than DTP, while simultaneously screaming that scientists and healthcare providers don’t care about children’s health.

Yeah, DTaP immunity does wane faster than DTP – but that doesn’t mean DTP was “better,” because when the risk/benefit analysis of a medicine is conducted (vaccines are medicines), it factors in the effectiveness of the vaccine AND the safety of it. Safety is paramount.

Yet somehow, we don’t care about safety even though scientists did what we’ve always done: trade some immunogenicity for better safety. Make it make sense, please.

While you may need to get a Tdap booster every 10 years (have you done that?!) for optimal protection against these illnesses, you can also rest assured that vaccines today are far safer than ones in decades past.

In this case – and in many other examples – new is safer. And safer means superior.

Vaccines have been evolving throughout human history.

New vaccine technologies are developed because scientists have tools and the knowledge to make something more elegant or complex that wasn’t possible previously. It’s the same exact reason we have more vaccines today than we did in the 1960s. Scientific progress.

• Live-attenuated vaccines (measles, mumps, rubella, yellow fever) give long-lasting immunity, but have theoretical risks for immunocompromised people.

• Inactivated vaccines (polio, hepatitis A) eliminate the small risks associated with attenuated vaccines, but depending on the pathogen, may require boosters throughout life.

• Subunit and conjugate vaccines (Hib, HPV, pneumococcal) provide exquisite precision against specific pathogens with minimal side effects.

• Recombinant and vector-based vaccines (hepatitis B, Ebola) utilize decades of molecular biology and genetic engineering knowledge to produce large quantities of vaccine that can be adapted quickly.

• mRNA vaccines (COVID-19, others in development for cancer, flu, RSV, etc) are the next rung on the ladder: molecular instruction manuals that never enter the nucleus, never alter DNA, and disappear within hours to days after doing their job. They provide the template to produce an antigen that your immune system develops protection against. mRNA vaccines are further removed from a disease-causing pathogen than any of the “old” vaccines.

Each development in vaccine science aims to improve safety and ease of development while maintaining strong protection (effectiveness). This is a feature of modern science–not a bug.

Progress in science and health is not something to reject

If we held all the past vaccines that RFK Jr and his allies are romanticizing to the standards critics demand today, we’d have no vaccines at all.

If we froze vaccine science in the 18th century, we’d still be variolating kids with live pathogenic smallpox. If we froze it in the 1950s, we’d be shrugging our shoulders at febrile seizures after DTP.

If we freeze it now, what RFK Jr, Marty Makary, and their MAHA allies are trying to do, we abandon future breakthroughs: cancer vaccines, universal flu vaccines, mRNA platforms ready to pivot against the next pandemic in weeks instead of years.

Science isn’t nostalgic—it’s pragmatic. It’s about accruing knowledge, adjusting and correcting with new information, and relentlessly pursuing safer, smarter tools to improve health.

Safety or effectiveness isn’t based on how “old” a medicine is, but by how it performs. mRNA vaccines went through rigorous Phase I, II, and III clinical trials, with tens of thousands of participants. They’ve been administered to billions of people around the world, and have been rigorously monitored in real-world conditions. They have saved millions of lives. Their safety record is not just solid — it’s on par with, and in some cases better than, “historic” vaccine platforms.

RFK Jr.’s “Old Tech” lie will cause preventable illness and death

RFK Jr. spins a seductive story: “traditional” vaccines are safe, mRNA is experimental. It’s the same pseudoscience marketing with a vintage veneer. It’s wrong. And it’s dangerous.

• Traditional once meant blowing smallpox scabs up people’s noses.

• Traditional was whole-cell bacterial vaccines with higher side-effect rates.

• Traditional once meant iron lungs during polio summers.

What we consider old vaccine technology today carried risks now considered unacceptable. Our vaccine technology today is a result of targeted design, safer ingredients, superior manufacturing, and the ability to prevent millions of deaths with fewer side effects than aspirin. That’s progress.

Calling mRNA vaccines experimental while romanticizing old vaccines is like saying horse-drawn carriages are safer than cars because they’re “time-tested.” Vaccines don’t get better because they’re old. They’re better today because science improved them.

If we rejected progress, smallpox would still exist. Life expectancy would be 40. Infectious disease would still top the charts as the leading cause of death, and nearly a third of children wouldn’t live past age five.

Progress saves lives.

Variolation paved the way to smallpox vaccination. Smallpox vaccination eradicated smallpox from the planet. DTP paved the way for DTaP. Every “old” vaccine platform was a stepping stone to an improved, safer therapy.

mRNA is the latest rung on that centuries-long ladder of progress—one that can lead to interventions for cancer, autoimmunity, and other infectious diseases. But only if we don’t let anti-science profiteers drag us backward.

Science doesn’t move in reverse. And neither should we. Our lives depend on it.

Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

More science education, less disinformation.

- Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

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If you missed it, Maxwell Edison (one of my seven cats) was diagnosed with aggressive large-cell lymphoma on my late brother’s birthday 2 weeks ago. I had goals to catch up on a couple newsletters this week, but then…last week (on my birthday), the veterinary oncologist recommended surgical resection of his intestinal focal mass.

That was based on a study where she and her colleagues found overall median survival for LCL with discrete tumors improved with surgery and chemotherapy versus just chemotherapy alone. Since he is young and overall healthy (besides cancer), he was a good candidate.

Anyway, the surgeon was available the next day, so Maxwell had surgery last week! So instead of managing potential symptoms to a first dose of chemo, I’m now managing surgery of major abdominal surgery for a very stubborn and stir-crazy cat.

The good news: he is doing very well post-op! No anastomosis leaking (a major concern since the margins of the intestine sections were likely partly cancerous) and his incision looks good. His appetite has been amazing; he’s even put on some weight, which means he will be stronger when he starts chemo next week. And he tolerates his shirt (plus looks adorable in it):

My stepdad’s memorial is this coming Sunday and he will be traveling with me up to NY so I can keep an eye on him, but he is pretty much weaned off pain meds at this point too. Keep your fingers crossed that he responds well to chemo for us!

With that being said, I didn’t have the time I hoped for along with a prep for the memorial. But my latest column in Skeptical Inquirer (Inside Immunity) is now published in digital and print.

It’s especially timely because RFK Jr and his anti-vaccine allies have continued to wage war on vaccines, recycling and reusing the same tactics that have been used for decades to undermine these life-saving medicines. Currently, the lies that circulate target specific vaccine technologies (mRNA as a molecule, for example) as well as the perceived goal of vaccines.

One of the most common? That if a vaccine doesn’t stop all infections it doesn’t work. That’s a lie, of course. But this idea: that vaccines must generate sterilizing immunity is eroding life-saving medical interventions—and harming all of us as a result.

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Sterilizing immunity is the latest anti-vaccine rallying cry.

Sterilizing immunity is a real thing; the problem is that it’s been co-opted by anti-vaccine activists to undermine vaccines. By the current anti-vax logic, if a vaccine doesn’t induce sterilizing immunity—that is, if it doesn’t block all infections—the vaccine is a “failure.” This rhetoric has gained traction since the COVID-19 pandemic, with influencers repeating it on podcasts, blogs, and even the Senate floor. This notion is not just immunologically wrong; it’s a deliberate tactic designed to erode trust in vaccines and harm public health. And it’s working.

Sterilizing immunity is the exception, not the norm

Sterilizing immunity is the holy grail of immune protection against infection: it means that your immune system defenses are so quick, so precise, and so tailored that a virus, bacteria, or other disease-causing microorganism isn’t even able to invade your cells. In other words, your body stops the infection before it even starts. You don’t get infected, you don’t get sick, and you can’t transmit the pathogen to anyone else.

When you get vaccinated (or infected with a pathogen for the first time), your body mounts an immune response. It starts with the innate immune system and leads to the activation of your adaptive immune system and the production of antibodies: proteins that bind specific molecules on a virus (called the antigen) (Bowie and Unterholzner 2008). Some of these antibodies bind to and block the virus from even being able to enter your cells. If the virus can’t enter your cells, it can’t infect and replicate; therefore, the virus is neutralized.

If levels of neutralizing antibodies in your blood or mucosal tissues are high enough when you’re exposed to the virus in the future, they can prevent the virus from taking hold and causing infection outright. That’s sterilizing immunity.

This type of immunity is incredibly rare, because our immune responses and the pathogens it responds to are much more complex than simply [neutralizing antibodies + virus].

Neutralizing antibody levels decline over time, because it’s energy-intensive for your antibody-producing cells (specialized B cells called plasma cells) to continue to make them long term. That decline is normal. Constantly churning out antibodies takes energy, and your body was never meant to do it indefinitely. But you have a lot of other components of your immunity beyond neutralizing antibodies—and that collective response is what protects you from serious illness, even if it doesn’t fully neutralize all viral particles. That’s the science harnessed by vaccines.

After you’re vaccinated, you don’t just make neutralizing antibodies; you also develop immune memory (Pol lard and Bijker 2021). This includes memory B cells and memory T cells. Memory B cells “remember” how to make neutralizing antibodies. If you’re exposed to the same virus in the future, they rapidly activate, turn into plasma cells, and produce fresh batches of neutralizing antibodies in a short period of time.

While B cells are rebuilding anti-body stockpiles, T cells help control the infection from other angles. CD4 (Helper) T cells coordinate the over-all response by helping to activate B cells, communicate between immune cells, and recruit them to assist exposure. Cytotoxic (CD8) T cells target and kill infected cells, limiting the ability of virus to replicate and spread (Sallusto et al. 2004)

While memory immunity may not completely prevent the virus from getting into your body, this coordinate response clears infection faster, limiting the spread of a virus. This reduces viral load, which means you are often less likely to infect others. It also means less severe illness and shorter duration when you’re sick. That’s why vaccination matters. That’s why vaccinated people have milder illness and are less likely to develop complications, require hospitalization, or die even if they get infected.

Most vaccines don’t generate sterilizing immunity, and no one has pretended they do

The goal of vaccination isn’t to automatically stop a pathogen at the gate; it’s to train your immune system to limit damage from a pathogen by developing that memory immunity. That means individuals and the collective society experience less illness, fewer complications, and improved overall health. Vaccines don’t need to elicit sterilizing immunity to be incredibly effective. In fact, most vaccines do not provide sterilizing immunity. If you live in the United States in 2025, you’ve benefited from non-sterilizing vaccines.

Let’s look at some examples:

The tetanus vaccine is a toxoid vaccine, because the symptoms of tetanus are not due to the bacterium Clostridium tetani itself but rather a toxin it produces. The vaccine doesn’t prevent infection from the bacteria. It neutralizes the toxin, tetanospasmin, that causes muscle paralysis and death. Routine tetanus vaccination (including adult boosters) has nearly eliminated tetanus in the United States. The roughly thirty cases a year now are almost entirely in unvaccinated people. The bacterium is still ubiquitous in the environment. The vaccine prevents potentially fatal illness from that likely exposure.

The Hib vaccine protects against Haemophilus influenzae B, a bacterial infection that is the leading cause of life-threatening illnesses in children under five, including meningitis, pneumonia, and epiglottitis. It induces a very strong memory immune response but not sterilizing immunity (Gilsdorf 2021). Before the vaccine was available, Hib led to 20,000 invasive infections (severe disease progression) and 1,000 deaths in children under five in the United States every year. Today Hib incidence has been reduced by 99 percent solely due to vaccines.

The hepatitis B vaccine protects against the hepatitis B virus (HBV), transmitted through bodily fluids, including perinatally (around the time of birth), unsafe medical practices, sexual activity, and other person-to-person fluid exchange. Hepatitis B infection causes acute and chronic illness because hepatitis B virus is a DNA virus that can persist in liver cells indefinitely. Children infected have a 90 percent risk of developing chronic hepatitis, which leads to liver damage, cirrhosis, and liver cancer. Fifty-eight percent of all liver cancers are due to hepatitis B (Institute of Medicine 2010).

We protect against this now with a three-dose vaccine, starting at birth, to protect a newborn against that potential perinatal transmission when they are at high risk. This vaccine does not induce sterilizing immunity, but it does protect against illness, infection, and cancer. The Hepatitis B vaccine has reduced the global prevalence of chronic hepatitis B in children under five from about 5 percent in the 1980s to less than 1 percent today. Vaccination programs have reduced new infections among kids by over 95 percent in areas with high vaccine uptake.

(more on HBV vaccine below):

Seasonal flu vaccines have to contend with the influenza viruses that mutate incredibly quickly thanks to their segmented genome, which makes sterilizing immunity a pipe dream. Still, flu vaccines have an incredible public health impact. They are 40–60 percent effective at preventing symptomatic illness; they reduce hospitalizations by roughly 50 percent and risk of ICU admission by 80 percent (Rondy et al. 2017; Thompson et al. 2018). In the United States, that means they prevent 7.5 million illnesses, 2–6 million medical visits, 40,000–120,000 hospitalizations, and 3,000–12,000 deaths every year. Flu vaccines reduce risk of death among children by 75 percent, prevent poor pregnancy outcomes such as preterm birth or stillbirth, and are associated with a 15–20 percent reduction in all-cause mortality primarily from cardiac and respiratory complications (Walzer et al. 2020, Olson et al. 2022, Chaves et al. 2023).

(more on flu vaccines below):

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. None of these vaccines are “sterilizing,” but all of them save lives. They’re designed by scientific experts with biological reality in mind. That they don’t prevent 100 percent of infections does not remotely mean they’re “failures,” but that rhetoric has been propagated by disinformation peddlers to erode trust in these life-changing medicines.

Vaccines are not magical forcefields

Vaccines are one of the most impactful developments of modern medicine, but they aren’t magical forcefields. This all-or-nothing attitude doesn’t exist for anything else, so why do we let it control discourse about vaccines?

Chemotherapies and immunotherapies don’t guarantee cancer remission, but they dramatically improve odds and increase survival rates. Would you say “You got cancer again, so chemo didn’t work” to someone whose cancer came back after ten years in remission?

Blood pressure medications don’t prevent every stroke or heart attack, but they reduce the risk and occurrence of them dramatically.

Antibiotics don’t eliminate every bacterial infection, but we acknowledge they’ve saved millions of lives—and we still use them, responsibly.

Seatbelts don’t prevent car crashes; they prevent you from flying through the windshield if a crash occurs, reducing the likelihood of death and the severity of injuries.

Umbrellas don’t prevent you from getting wet in all cases, but they prevent you from being drenched in a thunderstorm, which means they did their job.

Vaccines are no different; just like seatbelts, airbags, and other medications, they are risk mitigation measures that we know are effective. But we also know they’re not always effective. Vaccines must be viewed in the same way.

‘Sterilizing immunity’ is a dog whistle used by anti-vaccine activists

Vaccines are not intended to make people invincible. They’re designed to give you tools to be resilient when faced with an infectious agent. And guess what? By every credible measurement, they do that. The perception that vaccines must be 100 percent effective or they are not effective at all has been deliberately fueled by the rhetoric of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Joseph Mercola, Del Bigtree, Peter McCullough, and many others who are destroying our health agencies from within.

Their sterilizing immunity narrative is part of a decades-long strategy to erode public health and trust in science. They demand perfection through biologically implausible expectations such as “vaccines should stop all infections.” Then, with this ridiculous bar for science, they’ll paint incredible success as failure (yes, the millions upon millions of lives saved with COVID-19 vaccines to them is a failure). And finally, they’ll profit by selling that distrust through book deals, donations to their activist organizations, podcast agreements, and more.

This isn’t holding science to a high standard; it’s undermining public trust by design. Trust in science has eroded because the public has been convinced by these people, people with zero relevant expertise, to misunderstand data. We cannot let influencers co-opt scientific facts. It harms us as individuals and as a society.

Vaccines aren’t broken. Our collective understanding of immunology is. And it’s thanks to the very people who profit by spreading lies about vaccines. Vaccines prevent illness, reduce suffering, and save lives. That’s true even if they don’t prevent every infection. The next time someone says, “But I still got sick,” ask them:

Did you survive? Were you hospitalized? Did your infection end in days instead of weeks?

If so, congratulations! That’s not vaccine failure; that’s success. You lived. Science worked.

Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

More science education, less disinformation.

- Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below:

I ended up bringing one of my rescue cats Maxwell to the vet last week as he had been experiencing a concerning array of symptoms (including weight loss, low appetite, diarrhea) and just wasn’t himself (and if you know Max, you know what I’m talking about). Horrifyingly, the vet felt a hard object in his abdomen just on physical exam. X-rays, bloodwork, ultrasound, needle aspirate, and cytology led to the heartbreaking diagnosis: aggressive large-cell lymphoma, with a focal mass in his jejunum.

The diagnosis came on my late brother’s would-be 40th birthday. And since life is nothing if not ironic, his oncologist appointment will be this Wednesday, my birthday (and the same day in 2020 that Walrus had to be euthanized after congestive heart failure developed from cholangiocarcinoma — a different cancer).

My goal with the oncologist is to see if he is candidate for oncologic interventions that would give HIM meaningful quality and quantity of life. I’m hoping, given his pattern of defeating odds that he may be one of the ~ 38% of cats who exceed 2-year survival following a large cell lymphoma diagnosis.

I’m sure you can all understand I’ve been a bit preoccupied.

That being said, I do plan to finish those articles, but in the meantime, the [somewhat] long-anticipated Part 3 of my WIRED Tech Support pseudoscience smackdown is LIVE.

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This time? I tackle MAHA claims that are being adopted as Federal health and science policy — and then some.

Why should you watch?

Because when science disinformation is adopted as Federal policy, all of us are put in harms’ way.

I cover it all: grocery store fear campaigns to lies about novel biomedical innovation.

We’ve got the “Dirty Dozen” list—EWG’s annual clickbait ranking that ignores toxicology—and detour through wellness influencer obsessions like Red Dye 40 panic, seed oil paranoia, and hormones in milk.

Then we’ve got heavy hitters: MAHA’s infiltration of federal health policy, RFK Jr.’s aversion to evidence, Calley and Casey Means’ profitable grifts with a side of medical conspiracism, and the weaponization of vaccine misinformation from mRNA to hepatitis B.

Along the way, I cover cancer misinformation like high-dose vitamin C for cancer (spoiler: nope), fluoride freakouts, germ theory denialism, and the growing popularity of “drip bars” that promise IV wellness in a bag. I even cover the science on glucose spikes and continuous glucose monitors, eating at night, and whether lion’s mane actually improves cognitive function.

The common thread? Pseudoscience succeeds on emotional appeal, cherry-picked studies, and distrust in institutions.

And right now, those same myths are not just in influencer feeds: they’re being adopted as Federal policy. That’s not just frustrating—it’s dangerous. And it will cause more preventable illness and death.

So let’s discuss what the science actually says because credible science communication, while not profitable, is more critical than ever.

Watch me fact-check health claims—again.

You’ve got questions? I’ve got [more] answers.

Biomedical scientist Dr. Andrea Love returns to WIRED to answer a new slate of the internet's burning questions about pseudoscience, health fads, and false wellness claims.

How can someone avoid falling into the trap of pseudoscience? Why do people swear by lion’s mane mushroom as a supplement? Does acupuncture do anything? Is it really that bad for your body to eat late at night? Do more children have diabetes today than in the past? Answers to these questions and many more await on this brand-new third edition of WIRED Pseudoscience Support.

Tune in for:

• Should you really avoid ingredients you can’t pronounce? No, this is called chemophobia

• The (Dubious) Dirty Dozen

• Calley Means doesn’t know anything about cancer

• Red Dye 40

• MAHA: what it means in RFK Jr’s world versus what it should mean

• High dose vitamin C for cancer?

• Is fluoride in water really harming us all?

• Hormones in milk

• mRNA vaccines are NOT causing health issues

• Diabetes in kids

• RFK Jr’s ignorance is all of our problem now

• How to avoid the traps of pseudoscience?

• Glucose spikes, continuous glucose monitors, and the grifters that profit

• No, humans weren’t healthier ‘back in the day’

• Germ theory denialism

• IV lounges and Drip Bars

• How to convince your family that vaccines are safe

• Acupuncture

• Beef tallow vs. Seed oils

• Chlorine Dioxide (ClO2) aka Bleach aka Miracle Mineral Solution

• The Hepatitis B vaccine

• Lion's mane

• Is it really that bad to eat at night?

• Quick advice to navigate the infodemic and world of wellness disinformation

Watch the full video here:

I have written MUCH more on these topics, so please make sure to check out my full newsletters (examples of each are linked below if you haven’t read them yet):

• RFK Jr. and how he profits off vaccine disinformation

• The Dirty Dozen scares people about safe and healthy foods

• RFK Jr. and how he profits off food misinformation

• RFK Jr’s HHS is eroding health, not making us healthier

• The MAHA movement is the opposite of promoting health

• Whether you can pronounce a chemical name means nothing about its potential harm or safety.

• mRNA vaccines aren’t gene therapy — or harmful

• Hepatitis B vaccines save lives—and prevent cancer

• Viruses ARE real, no matter what Joe Rogan and RFK Jr say.

• Food dyes aren’t banned in other countries or causing health issues

• Vitamin C isn’t a magical cure-all

• Preventing infectious diseases ALSO prevents chronic illnesses.

• Fluoride prevents tooth decay and improves health

• Dietary supplements aren’t regulated, thanks to politicians

• Alternative cancer treatments are unproven and endanger people

• No, Calley Means, you don’t understand cancer at all.

• The appeal to nature fallacy — the false belief that natural substances are safe and superior

• Chemophobia is the unreasonable fear of chemicals

If you missed my previous appearances on Tech Support, find them below!

Pseudoscience Support 1, from last spring:

And accompanying newsletter with more data and references:

Pseudoscience Support 2, from January this year:

And the accompanying newsletter, with more data and references:

Today is a short newsletter since your homework is to watch the WIRED video instead. As we live in a society where objective reality is now being cast aside for outright falsehoods, the more factual information is out there, the better.

Please share it widely, especially for your friends and family who prefer short video clips debunking misinformation. Each topic is less than 3 minutes long.

Now, more than ever, we all must join in the fight for science.

Thank you for supporting evidence-based science communication. With outbreaks of preventable diseases, refusal of evidence-based medical interventions, propagation of pseudoscience by prominent public “personalities”, it’s needed now more than ever.

More science education, less disinformation.

- Andrea

ImmunoLogic is written by Dr. Andrea Love, PhD - immunologist and microbiologist. She works full-time in life sciences biotech and has had a lifelong passion for closing the science literacy gap and combating pseudoscience and health misinformation as far back as her childhood. This newsletter and her science communication on her social media pages are born from that passion. Follow on Instagram, Threads, Twitter, and Facebook, or support the newsletter by subscribing below: