Sunday, August 23, 2026 Evidence-led medical research news
The First Cohort
Medical research, with the receipts

cdc

5 stories tagged "cdc"

Infectious Disease

Kindergarten Vaccine Exemptions Doubled in Five Years. The Number Is a Verdict on the Agencies, Not the Parents.

Exemptions climbed to a record 4.2 percent of kindergartners while medical exemptions never budged from 0.2 percent. The rise is not a medical event. It is five years of institutional credibility spent, showing up in the one column parents control.

Investigations

RFK Jr. Promised Radical Transparency. His HHS Gutted the Staff Who Release FDA Inspection Reports and CDC Outbreak Data.

The FDA, CDC, and NIH fielded more than 15,000 records requests in 2024. In April 2025 HHS fired the staff who answer them, rehired some FDA workers a month later under legal pressure, and by August 2026 the federal records backlog had only grown.

Infectious Disease

A Blocked Vaccine Study, and the Statistical Method Its Own Lead Author Warned About

A CDC vaccine-effectiveness study pulled from the agency's own journal landed in JAMA, and the press called it censorship. The method it used has a documented blind spot its own lead author once published on.

Infectious Disease

American Infant Mortality Just Hit a Record Low. The International Comparison Is Half an Accounting Trick. The Mississippi Gap Is Not.

Preliminary CDC data put the 2025 U.S. infant mortality rate at 5.4 per 1,000 live births, a record low. The international comparison the headlines lean on is partly an artifact of how countries count. The domestic gap is not.

Investigations

Aaron Siri Wrote a Book Made of Court Filings

A new book by attorney Aaron Siri assembles a decade of FOIA wins, court filings, and depositions into one record of what the federal vaccine docket does and does not say.