Dana Howard
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thedanahoward.bsky.social
Dana Howard
@thedanahoward.bsky.social

Assistant Professor | Bioethics and Philosophy. Views are my own and not that of my employer.

Professional website: https://sites.google.com/site/danasarahhoward/

Art 30%
Public Health 22%
NIH is losing so may good people. First they were fired or RIFd or pressured to retire early.

Now they are leaving because “no longer lend our credibility to an organization that has lost its integrity.”

Proud to know these brave scientists!

www.statnews.com/2026/01/10/n...
The NIH has lost its scientific integrity. So we left
“We can no longer lend our credibility to an organization that has lost its integrity,” write four scientists and administrators who recently resigned from the NIH.
www.statnews.com
“Uruguay did what most nations still call impossible: it built a power grid that runs almost entirely on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. The physicist who led that transformation says the same playbook could work anywhere—if governments have the courage to change the rules.”
Uruguay’s Renewable Charge: A Small Nation, A Big Lesson For The World
Uruguay built a power grid that runs 99% on renewables—at half the cost of fossil fuels. Here’s how its bold energy overhaul became a global model.
www.forbes.com
Using FDA Law to Threaten Medical Practice | New England Journal of Medicine www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

The expert authors (Lewis Grossman, @nathancortez.bsky.social & @pzettler.bsky.social) explain why this is troubling and may have implications far beyond the treatment of gender-affirming care.
Using FDA Law to Threaten Medical Practice | NEJM
Though recent subpoenas from the U.S. DOJ target providers of gender-affirming care, the legal arguments behind them could affect physicians prescribing off-label treatment for any reason.
www.nejm.org
MAHA is weaponizing fertility awareness based methods to undermine access to the full spectrum of reproductive health care (e.g., other forms of contraception, abortion, IVF, Title X). Here, I argue that FABMs must be grounded in evidence & reproductive justice: www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore...
Health Affairs Journal
www.healthaffairs.org

Reposted by Dana Howard

"It seems that Republican lawmakers in Ohio can’t take no for an answer. Despite a 2023 ballot measure codifying reproductive freedom in the state constitution, Republicans are still trying everything they can to make abortion inaccessible." - Susan Rinkunas www.democracydocket.com/opinion/ohio...
Ohio Republicans are defying voters to pursue a backdoor abortion ban
Read more here.
www.democracydocket.com

Reposted by Dana Howard

A pretty startling example of what 21st Century agricultural extractivism looks like in the United States.

Reposted by Dana Howard

Interesting to see how this situation has evolved. Several of the folks quoted here attended our rural groundwater workshop earlier this year, and there was definitely strong appetite for action azwaterinnovation.asu.edu/arizona-comm...

Reposted by Dana Howard

A noninvasive treatment for one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer has been successful in animal trials. Using nanotechnology, researchers developed nasal drops that travel along the nerves of the nose into the central nervous system to fight glioblastoma.
newsnationnow.com/health/nasal...
newsnationnow.com

Reposted by Dana Howard

Rep. Melanie Miller is behind a bill that advocates say would stigmatize abortion and send more clients to her nonprofit. “Crisis pregnancy center director introduces anti-abortion model legislation” is a ready-made headline—so why was this fact only a footnote?
Ohio Anti-Abortion Bill Sponsor Runs a Crisis Pregnancy Center. Few News Stories Mentioned It.
Rep. Melanie Miller is behind a bill that advocates say would stigmatize abortion and send more clients to her nonprofit.
www.autonomynews.co

The Tuskegee trial was also described as an "unparalleled opportunity" at the time by those in power. nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.In...

“ Rigorous analyses later showed declines not only in polio vaccination but also in routine childhood immunizations particularly among educated mothers who were most aware of the trial.”
The planned hepatitis B birth-dose trial in Guinea-Bissau raises serious ethical concerns. Withholding a proven, life-saving vaccine from newborns to answer speculative questions is an absence of equipoise with real downstream harms for trust in vaccines.
bktitanji.substack.com/p/how-unethi...
How Unethical Research Seeds Medical Mistrust
The absence of equipoise can turn research into harm
bktitanji.substack.com
The planned hepatitis B birth-dose trial in Guinea-Bissau raises serious ethical concerns. Withholding a proven, life-saving vaccine from newborns to answer speculative questions is an absence of equipoise with real downstream harms for trust in vaccines.
bktitanji.substack.com/p/how-unethi...
How Unethical Research Seeds Medical Mistrust
The absence of equipoise can turn research into harm
bktitanji.substack.com
Should scientists apply to OpenAI's fund for research on AI & mental health? Should policymakers consider it a credible safety effort?

Avriel Epps & I see it as "grantwashing," and it's an insult to anyone whose loved one's death involved chatbots. We explain:

www.techpolicy.press/beware-of-op...
Beware of OpenAI's 'Grantwashing' on AI Harms | TechPolicy.Press
J. Nathan Matias and Avriel Epps say OpenAI's announced research funding is the perfect corporate action to make sure we don't find answers for years.
www.techpolicy.press

Reposted by Dana Howard

It is unethical to randomize children to placebo or other intervention in order to assess the efficacy of an intervention whose effectiveness and clear benefits are already supported by robust clinical trial and longterm surveillance data. I hope the outcry will halt this abominable study.

Reposted by Smith, Dana Howard

“NIH is in crisis, grants are being terminated, labs are closing….but they found $1.6 million for an unsolicited proposal to study whether we should delay a vaccine we’ve been safely giving for 40 years, in a country where infants are at high risk of infection”

www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-va...
CDC awards $1.6 million for hepatitis B vaccine study, likely to controversial Danish researchers
www.cidrap.umn.edu
NEW: Louisiana and lawyer Erin Hawley of ADF just asked a federal judge to IMMEDIATELY end telemedicine prescriptions of the abortion drug mifepristone while their lawsuit against the FDA proceeds. They cite Fifth Circuit opinion and the Comstock Act of 1873
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

A clear case of "ethics dumping"
This study would be unethically to conduct in the US according to federal regulations, importantly it also goes against the International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans (CIOMS): cioms.ch/publications...

From

There are, of course, other research methodologies that can learn from the fact that SOC is not available in a setting. CIOMS identifies that RCT trials that withhold SOC should be held up to extra scrutiny.

From how I understand the ethical guidance, unless there is a local need to study the difference between birth dose and witholding birth dose, then it is unethical. You are not justified in using a population as a convenience sample just because SOC is not widely available locally.

There is no plausible local health need that would make it ethical to conduct this study in Guinea-Bissau, but not in the US.

CIOMS discusses the situation of when withholding established effective interventions may be appropriate in low-resource settings. The trial must be "responsive to local health needs."

From CIOMS: "when an established effective intervention exists for the condition under investigation, study participants must receive that intervention within the trial."

This study would be unethically to conduct in the US according to federal regulations, importantly it also goes against the International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans (CIOMS): cioms.ch/publications...

Reposted by Dana Howard

New research ethics case study just dropped☹️.

Reposted by Dana Howard