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JUNE, 2026
Featured topic: vaccines
David Gorski (Science-Based Medicine): “Antivaxxers vs. the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services” and “Lysenkoism 2.0 in action: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abuses his power to bully journal editors over a retraction.”
Jonathan Howard (Science-Based Medicine): “MAHA doctors promised Kennedy would be the savior of vaccines. What happened next?”
Edzard Ernst: “Dr. Toby Rogers…and ‘one of the greatest crimes in human history,’” “Measles in the US – RFK Jr., his stupid rhetoric and irresponsible actions erode immunity,” “Do you wonder why Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken to bullying science journals?,” “Pete Hegseth’s flu shot reversal - a gross failure of leadership that has already cost one life,” and “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must be removed from office asap.”
Paul Offit (Beyond the Noise): “President Trump’s childhood vaccine schedule.”
New York Times: “Hospitals see diseases resurge as vaccinations decline.”
Washington Post: “Courts may deliver the anti-vaccine movement’s biggest win.”
Ars Technica: “New Trump vaccine order based on ‘no credible scientific evidence,’ doctors say.”
CNN: “RFK Jr. seeks to peek at Americans’ medical records for clues on autism and vaccines.”
Guardian: “Three studies used by RFK Jr and allies to justify controversial vaccine policy changes facing new scrutiny.”
Guardian: “US insurers' move to back vaccines sends ‘powerful’ message about safety of shots, experts say.”
Wired: “Anti-vax dating apps are going IRL. People are mad as hell about it.”
Washington Post: “Rising measles cases offer a dire warning.”
Washington Post: “Covid vaccine linked to broad protections against heart conditions, study finds.”
Washington Post: “Inside the push to keep RFK Jr.'s vaccine agenda alive.”
Guardian: “RFK Jr under fire for 'bullying' letter to scientific journal.”
Literary Hub: “How to refute an antivaxxer (and why RFK Jr. is a danger to all of us).”
New York Times: “Scores fall ill at Air Force Base after Hegseth makes flu vaccine optional” (see also Edzard Ernst above).
New York Times: “Military leaders sought vaccination program weeks before flu outbreak hit base.”
Washington Post: “CDC’s chief blocked a covid vaccine study. Now it’s in a top medical journal.”
Guardian: “New evidence casts doubt on RFK Jr testimony before Senate.”
Featured topic: other political developments
David Gorski (Science-Based Medicine): “The Lysenko-ization of federal science takes a big step forward,” “Will NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya stand up for scientists censored by the American Diabetic Association?,” and “Lysenkoism 2.0 in action: Dismantling peer review at NIH.”
Henry Miller (Science-Based Medicine): “Sabotaging America’s future: The catastrophic cost of federal research cuts.”
New York Times: “The return of blaming and shaming in public health.”
New York Times: “Kennedy shows minimal engagement with vast health portfolio.”
Ars Technica: “Scientists ejected from diabetes conference for distributing journal reprints.” “Their crime: handing out copies of an editorial, published in the journal Diabetes Care on April 29, sharply criticizing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on scientific research.”
PBS: “Only half of U.S. adults trust the CDC's public health recommendations, poll finds.”
New York Times: “The science that turned lizard venom Into GLP-1s is under attack.”
New York Times: “How an addictive gas station drug found allies in Trump’s cabinet.” [kratom]
Washington Post: “RFK Jr.’s plan to boost peptide access just got more complicated.”
JAMA Network Open: Two articles explored the consequences of the September 2025 news conference on autism by President Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. One dealt with prescriptions of leucovorin (Rothman et al. JAMA Netw Open 2026;9;(5):e2613286). The other concerned internet searches for leucovorin, folate, and acetaminophen (Patel et al. JAMA Netw Open 2026;9;(6):e2617910).
Other topics
On Science-Based Medicine,
Jann Bellamy:
“Acupuncture for heart attacks and more state-sanctioned pseudoscience.” “States default to a private organization run by acupuncturists and TCM [traditional Chinese medicine] practitioners to vet continuing education courses, with predictable results…for decades, a state-sponsored system of outrageous pseudoscience known as Traditional Chinese Medicine has been welcomed into mainstream healthcare in the form of ‘integrative medicine’ and touted in credulous media reports and medical journals.”
Mark Crislip:
“Delusion update. A look at some of the years homeopathy papers on PubMed.”
Steven Novella:
“The baloney protection act.” “Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tommy Tuberville (R- AL) have recently introduced a bill that would limit the FDA’s ability to regulate the blatant pseudoscience of homeopathy.”
“Stem cell therapy for autism.” “The best summary of the current situation is that: Stem cells for autism do not have a clear or established mechanism of action. The treatment is expensive and invasive with demonstrable risks, and therefore caution is appropriate. Existing clinical evidence is a combination of low-quality studies and one high-quality study that is completely negative – most consistent with the conclusion that stem cell infusions are ineffective as a treatment for autism. Parents should remain extremely cautious before pursuing such treatments, especially since there are many predatory stem cell clinics out there waiting to take their money. I personally would not recommend the treatment – those health care dollars are better spent on established interventions.” See also June 12 item below.
Edzard Ernst:
“Quackademia in France.” “Across France, more than 200 university diplomas are said to exist in areas such as reflexology, aromatherapy, auriculotherapy, hypnosis, acupuncture, homeopathy, meditation, and related practices. Critics argue that this amounts to a form of institutional ‘entryism,’ because the university label can make such practices look medically endorsed even when they are not…Teaching dangerous nonsense to naive students is not just not academic, it is deeply unethical. If done well, this exercise should lead to a major cleanup of universities regarding SCAM [so-called alternative medicine], or at the very least to much tighter rules about what can carry an academic label.”
“Antidotes in homeopathy: Classical doctrine, clinical relevance and scientific reinterpretation.” “Homeopaths administer an antidote when they fear a remedy produces too strong a reaction, to moderate the response. According to homeopathic belief, accidental antidoting commonly occurs…I often say that this is the reason why homeopaths are never wrong: if it does not work, the patient must have inadvertedly ‘antidoted’ the otherwise effective therapy – thus homeopathy cannot possibly lose!”
“Ebola is back – and so are the quacks offering help.” “Ebola infection requires immediate, professional medical treatment. Treatments include monoclonal antibody therapeutics along with intensive supportive care. Relying on internet remedies significantly delays proper clinical treatment and increases the risk of mortality.”
“Systemic problems affecting the US natural health industry.” “On May 27, 2026, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced they are investigating a 3rd multistate outbreak of Salmonella infections linked to moringa powder supplements in 2026. Moringa oleifera supplements (including green powders and capsules) are heavily marketed as a ‘superfood’ and a natural multivitamin powerhouse…Three moringa-related outbreaks in a single year underscore systemic issues affecting botanical ingredients in the global natural health industry, particularly regarding imported moringa leaf powder contamination.”
“Research integrity and transparency in SCAM [so-called alternative medicine] journals.” A paper by Neilson and Smith (Res Integr Peer Rev (2026)) was discussed. The authors concluded “Despite growth in publication volume and a shift toward empirical study designs, CAM [complementary and alternative medicine] journals continue to exhibit a pronounced predominance of positive outcome reporting. These findings suggest that longstanding concerns regarding publication bias in CAM publishing have not diminished over time and appear to have intensified, with selective publication and related reporting and dissemination practices plausibly contributing to the observed patterns. This has important implications for research integrity and evidence-based decision-making in medical practice.” Ernst commend, “As I have often noted, the end-effect is bad for all concerned: SCAM and SCAM journals are slowly becoming the laughing stock of science. Consequently, nobody takes them seriously. If one day an effective therapy should emerge, we all might fail to notice. In a nutshell: publication bias harms us all!”
“Acupuncture for illicit drug use disorders? No, I don’t think so.” “The review treats acupuncture as ‘effective’ for illicit drug disorders by highlighting short-term improvements in craving or anxiety, while the outcomes that matter for addiction – abstinence, relapse, use frequency, and retention – show no reliable benefit. This, I think, is a classic case of presenting a negative result as a positive finding! The review explicitly found no consistent difference between acupuncture and comparators for substance use endpoints, and the apparent positive outcomes were limited by low-quality evidence and publication bias. By foregrounding surrogate outcomes and obscuring the lack of clinically decisive effects, the paper misleads readers into perceiving acupuncture as a viable monotherapy for drug use disorders. Yet the evidence does clearly not support that conclusion.”
“The lucrative lie: SCAM [so-called alternative medicine] and disease prevention.” “SCAM speaks almost constantly about prevention, but the evidence for actual preventive benefit is close to non-existent. What we know about prevention, what truly reduces disease incidence and improves population health, comes from conventional medicine, epidemiology, public health, and biological science. SCAM will no doubt continue to borrow the language of medicine and prevention, but – as far as I can see – it has failed to supply the proof.”
“So-called alternative medicine (SCAM) thrives on chemophobia.” “The chemophobia of SCAM proponents strips away all nuance and treats the mere presence of a complicated chemical name as an absolute hazard. By fostering a deep-seated distrust of science, it steers ill-informed individuals away from life-saving conventional treatments towards unproven quackery. True health literacy requires moving past misleading branding and recognising that everything in our universe, from a crisp apple to a synthetic antibiotic, is made of chemicals.”
“The effects of reiki on breast cancer patients.” “This is a weird review, if there ever was one!...It included non-randomised trials. None of the included studies were of sufficiently good quality. But the weirdest aspect must be the conclusion of the abstract: it acknowledges the fact that the primary studies were rubbish and nevertheless praises the multiple alleged benefits of Reiki. If the evidence is unconvincing due to many flaws of the primary data, the only adequate conclusion should read something like this: Because of serious flaws of the included studies, the evidence that Reiki affects the symptoms of breast cancer patients fails to be positive.”
“Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following psilocybin-containing mushroom administration.” “The authors propose a plausible but speculative hypothesis: psilocybin’s disruption of the default mode network (DMN) and promotion of global functional integration may temporarily restore cross-network connectivity, allowing residual but inaccessible function to become expressed…However, the paper provides no neuroimaging, no electrophysiological data, and no direct evidence of network changes. The mechanism thus remains a hypothesis. Still, the report does raise a question worthy of proper investigation: can psychedelic neuromodulation unmask residual function in late-stage neurodegeneration?”
On McGill Office for Science and Society:
Jonathan Jarry:
“Blue light vs. red light.” “Some researchers and influencers are claiming that LED lights, by emitting a lot of blue light and not enough red light, are causing a slew of health problems. They will also claim that red light (meaning red, near-infrared, and infrared light) shone on a small part of the body in tiny amounts has significant health benefits and can counteract the dangers of blue light. These claims are greatly exaggerated and require much better scientific evidence to prove. One researcher has said that a bit of red light therapy appeared to reverse the debilitating symptoms of a genetic disease that typically kills people by the age of 25, which is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence.”
Joe Schwarcz:
“Let’s rap about rapamycin.” “Using rapamycin to mimic calorie restriction has been promoted as a longevity enhancing intervention. So far though, the only real evidence comes from yeast, fruit flies, worms and mice. For now, inhibiting mTOR to downregulate cellular growth and upregulate autophagy through consuming fewer calories and lifting weights is a better bet than wrangling a prescription for rapamycin from a physician.”
“Injection of 'MOTS-c' can make you live longer. If you are a mouse.” “The banning of the peptide by the World-Anti-Doping Agency claiming that it is an ‘exercise mimetic’ and that it increases endurance and fat burning further boosted the demand for MOTS-c. Health Canada and FDA remain unconvinced of benefits and have not approved the peptide for commercial human use.”
June – Center for Inquiry: “Ask your senator to reject federal pro-homeopathy legislation.” “S. 4692 was introduced in the Senate on June 4, 2026, by Senators Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Mike Lee (R-UT). The bill seeks to ensure ‘continued consumer access to homeopathic products by amending the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA).”
June 1 – Bischops et al. (JAMA Netw Open 2026;9;(6):e2615013): “Internet searches for vitamin A and related media statements during the 2025 US measles outbreak.” “Between January and March 2025, America’s Poison Centers reported a 38.7% increase in vitamin A exposures. This trend may have been influenced by public figures who have increasingly promoted vitamin A to treat measles.”
June 3 – Lauren Roulston and Stephanie Tsicos (CTV): “Naturopathic doctors now a regulated profession in Nova Scotia.”
June 7 – Arthur Allen (KFF Health News) “The latest autism debate: Is assisted spelling effective or a hoax?” “But leading professional groups for autism science, as well as those representing psychologists and speech pathologists, point to research showing that these methods — premised on the idea that people with autism have the normal range of cognitive powers but are imprisoned in malfunctioning bodies — are flawed or fraudulent. Other, validated methods enable nonspeakers to communicate through digital and analog pictures and letter boards. But assisted spelling isn’t autonomous communication, critics say: Consciously or not, the board holder may be influencing or responsible for the typed or pointed-at words — as with a Ouija board.” See also May 1 and May 8 items.
June 11 – Cassandra Willyard (Nature): “Is the peptide craze backed by science? The promise behind the hype.” “Peptide injections are the hottest trend in wellness. Researchers say enthusiasm for these unregulated drugs has got ahead of the science.”
June 12 – Ed Pilkington (Guardian): “Autistic children being injected with unapproved stem cell treatments supported by RFK Jr.” “Kennedy has said that he does not want to see a ‘wild west’ of alternative therapies developing in the US. Yet in the same breath, he conceded that opening up the country to such providers will lead to ‘charlatans and people who have bad results, but ultimately you can’t prevent that’.”
June 14 – William London (Consumer Health Digest): “India’s Ministry of Ayush attempts to silence critic of non-science-based healing.” India’s Ministry of Ayush has issued an official memorandum against Dr. Cyriac Abby Philips for alleged ‘derogatory and defamatory comments’ against Ayush. Ayush is an acronym that stands for these scientifically challenged, tradition-based healing systems promoted by the government of India: Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, Sowa-Rigpa, and Homeopathy.”
June 18 – Dani Blum (New York Times): “The thriving black market for a powerful weight loss drug.” “People are buying what they believe to be retatrutide from WhatsApp groups, Chinese labs and websites selling it ‘for research purposes’…some websites claiming to offer retatrutide might just be sending vials of other weight-loss drugs that are currently on the market, like semaglutide…Even if a vial does contain retatrutide, the dearth of oversight means there are a number of other risks that can arise. The drug could be contaminated, or contain an incorrect dose.”
June 18 – Andrea Love (Genetic Literacy Project): “Viewpoint: Wellness influencers (and current federal health officials) fabricate fake 'root causes' to sell wellness woo.” “Science and medicine is ALL about identifying root causes.”
June 19 – David Gilbert (Wired): “Pseudoscientific 'cancer treatment' involves gassing naked people in plastic bags with bleach.” The treatment uses chlorine dioxide gas.
June 20 – Brett Kelman and Rachel Pradhan (KFF Health News): “Tennessee pharmacies sell potent ivermectin, led by anti-vaccine doctor who’s taken ‘bucketloads’.” “The drug is now marketed and sold across the state in roadside shops and small-town strip malls with little oversight from health authorities…The law was also a harbinger of legislation to come: More than two dozen states have since considered look-alike bills that would make the politicized medication available without a requiring a doctor visit.”
Addition to previous month
May 21 - Ahmed Elbediwy and Nadine Wehida (The Conversation): “Prescriptions for ivermectin soar after Mel Gibson claims it cured friends of cancer.” “Prescriptions for two antiparasitic drugs, ivermectin and fenbendazole, have recently surged in the US, according to a new study. Originally developed to treat parasitic worms, the drugs are now being discussed online as possible cancer treatments. In January 2025, Mel Gibson appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast claiming that ivermectin and fenbendazole can treat cancer.” The paper is Rockwell et al., JAMA Netw Open. 2026 May 1;9(5):e2616780.