regulatory-capture
18 stories tagged "regulatory-capture"
The Checklist Drove ICU Infections to Zero. The Federal Ethics Office Halted the Study.
A five-step checklist cut central-line infections 66 percent and was credited with 1,500 lives saved in Michigan ICUs. Then the federal office that guards research ethics ordered it halted, because the hospitals had never run it past an institutional review board.
InvestigationsMonths Before Officials Told Pregnant Women the COVID Shot Was Safe, Fauci Privately Flagged a Theoretical First-Trimester Miscarriage Risk
Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul pulled the first messages off Fauci's government iPhone: a January 2021 chain in which he privately flagged a theoretical first-trimester miscarriage risk, months before official guidance told pregnant women the shot carried no such concern.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Said No to Moderna's mRNA Flu Shot in February. By August, the Two Men Who Said No Were Gone.
The FDA refused to even review Moderna's mRNA flu shot in February because it was never tested against the enhanced vaccines seniors are steered toward. The two officials who objected are gone, and the agency approved it anyway, for the oldest patients, on a promise to prove it works later.
InvestigationsBuilt to Find Nothing: Merck Tested Gardasil's Safety Against Its Own Aluminum Adjuvant
In ten of eleven pivotal trials, Merck's Gardasil 'placebo' was 225 micrograms of the same aluminum adjuvant that is in the vaccine, and serious harms counted only inside a 14-day window.
InvestigationsA Gene-Editing Trial Killed a Six-Year-Old. The Only Official Penalty Was a $3,500 Fine.
Xinhua Hospital paid about 24,000 yuan in September 2025. The death it was fined over stayed out of the medical literature for another ten months, and out of the Nature paper entirely.
InvestigationsThe Phone-Radiation Study Everyone Called a Debunking Was Too Small to Find the Tumor
Japan and Korea spent two years 'validating' the NIH finding that cell-phone radiation gave rats heart tumors. They used one dose, one sex, and too few animals to detect it. Korea's rats grew the tumor anyway.
InvestigationsTwo Journals That Buried the Lab-Leak Question Now Warn of a 'Gilded Age' in American Science
The Lancet and Science marked America's 250th by casting the administration's research cuts as vandalism. Both journals spent the public trust they now invoke, and the editorials never mention how.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Office That Vets Gene Therapy Has Run Through Its Entire Top Tier in a Year
The office that decides whether gene therapies reach patients has lost its director, her deputy, and the man brought in to replace them, all inside twelve months.
InvestigationsA Top Cancer Scientist, a Deleted Study, and the Question Washington Won't Fund
A June 2026 Senate subcommittee hearing centered on a Brown University cancer researcher's review of 333 post-vaccination cancer case reports, and on the retractions, censorship, and cyberattack that met it.
InvestigationsWe Fixed the Ozone Hole. The Replacement Is Now in Your Blood.
A new Lancaster modeling study finds CFC replacement refrigerants and anesthetic gases have rained 335,500 tonnes of the forever chemical TFA across the planet since 2000, and it is now the dominant PFAS in American blood.
Drugs & FDAMedicare's Product-Hopping Loophole Is Back On The Chopping Block. The Bigger Pharma Giveaway Isn't.
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed closing the product-hopping loophole that lets drugmakers reset Medicare's negotiation clock by tweaking inactive ingredients. It is the same fix the same administration quietly tabled in October.
Drugs & FDAEurope had this sunscreen in 1999. The FDA approved it Tuesday.
A new chemical UV filter Europe approved in 1999 just cleared the FDA after a 21-year wait, while Americans relied on ingredients the agency's own 2019 review could not call safe.
Brain & AgingNitrate from spinach behaves nothing like nitrate from tap water. A 27-year cohort says the brain can tell.
54,804 Danes followed for a quarter-century: less dementia from vegetable nitrate, more from drinking water. The risk signal shows up at roughly one-ninth of what the US EPA still permits.
Infectious DiseaseThe AI Vaccine That 'Passed' Its First Trial Three Years Ago
Cambridge finished the Phase 1 trial in 2023. The press tour arrived in 2026. The paper, when you read it, said the immunogenicity was modest.
CancerSix melanoma patients, six weeks, one common variable: the question oncology is choosing not to study
An oncologist's bedside pattern, a Senate hearing, and a mechanism paper sitting in a mainstream oncology journal: the case that repeated mRNA boosters may be lifting the brakes off cancers oncologists thought they had quiet is no longer fringe enough to wave away.
InvestigationsA Senate Subcommittee Just Put the COVID Shot Cancer Question on the Record
A Senate Homeland Security subcommittee took testimony on whether mRNA COVID shots can plausibly cause cancer, and on the parallel campaign to keep that question out of the journals. Dr. John Campbell walked his audience through it.
InvestigationsThe founder of Kentucky's biggest rehab chain was indicted this week. The wire fraud charge is the smaller of his problems.
A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Kentucky indicted the founder of Addiction Recovery Care on June 4 for selling the same COVID-era tax credit twice. The bigger case, the FBI Medicaid investigation into the company he built, is still open.
Drugs & FDAFDA's New Gene Therapy Shortcut Leans on 'Platform Knowledge.' Six Months Ago, They Revoked Sarepta's After Three Patient Deaths.
FDA's new gene therapy draft guidance invites sponsors to lean on "platform knowledge" to streamline submissions, six months after the agency revoked Sarepta's AAVrh74 platform designation following three patient deaths.