Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 19d

Full writeup here:

cen.acs.org/pharmaceutic...

CDC advisers endorse changes to MMR, varicella vaccine schedules

The panel elected not to recommend a combination vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella as well as varicella, also known as chicken pox

cen.acs.org

Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 19d

My colleagues @rowanwalrath.bsky.social and @maxhenrybarnhart.bsky.social watched yesterday’s ACIP meeting so you won’t have to.

They caught this particularly confidence-eroding scientific critique…
💀

Since hepatitis B vaccination at birth was introduced in the US, hepatitis B cases among infants have dropped 69%, according to a presentation from CDC scientist Adam Langer. Some data presented in the meeting also suggested no increased risk of adverse events when the hepatitis B vaccine is given at birth, although Kulldorff disputed that claim after visibly doing napkin math at the conference room table during the meeting.

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 21d

I hadn’t heard of Maxine Scates before reading this poem, but she nails the moment:

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

“Our Elsewhere”

“I wanted to tell you about what it’s like here now, / I wrote to my friend David.”

www.newyorker.com

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Reposted by Laurel Oldach

Krystal Vasquez @kvasquez.bsky.social · 23d

It so was hard to imagine having successful career in science as a disabled PhD student that eventually I just left.

Who could have guessed that years later I would help create a magazine issue dedicated to highlighting Trailblazing disabled chemists!

cen.acs.org/people/profi...

#DisabledInSTEM

Trailblazers: Chemists with disabilities rethink how we do science

C&EN’s 2025 Trailblazers issue, curated by guest editor Mona Minkara, looks at how chemists can solve problems in new ways

cen.acs.org

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · 23d

This is an interesting take from George Church, given that many sequencers seem to be competing on turnaround time, with neonatal diagnosis as a key use case.

www.wired.com/story/whole-...

Screenshot from a Wired story reads : “ But there was one group Church was cool on having their genomes sequenced: newborns. “It’s kind of too late for really early onset [diseases], and it’s way too early for late onset.” The latter conditions, he noted, have very few cures. “It’s kind of a recipe for anxiety more than anything else.””

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Sep 3

Shocking story. I hope that making it public improves life in some small way for the poor surrogate, who nearly lost her life and has lost at least one job to this vengeful family.

WIRED @wired.com · Sep 3

Surrogate pregnancies are increasingly popular in tech circles, and the practice is expected to explode globally in the coming decade. It’s also shockingly unregulated. This is a story about what happens when it goes horribly wrong.

The Baby Died. Whose Fault Is It?

When her son died in utero, a venture capitalist went to extremes to punish her surrogate.

www.wired.com

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Reposted by Laurel Oldach

NightMar on Hicks Street, Part 4: The Rabbit’s Revenge @histoftech.bsky.social · Aug 22

Anne Moffatt's memoir, The IT Girl, details the story behind the photograph with the baby—where Moffatt, then Technical Lead at Shirley’s company, Freelance Programmers, programmed the black box flight recorder for the Concorde

Figure 13-3. Ann Moffatt writes software for the Concorde at home on coding sheets on her kitchen table as her baby daughter looks on. Moffatt's memoir, The IT Girl, details the story behind the photograph.

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Reposted by Laurel Oldach

Leigh Krietsch Boerner @leighkboerner.bsky.social · Jul 30

But my point is that the EPA was going out of their way to keep live coverage of this announcement under the radar

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Reposted by Laurel Oldach

Leigh Krietsch Boerner @leighkboerner.bsky.social · Jul 30

Yesterday at a semi-truck warehouse in the middle of nowhere Indiana, Lee Zeldin annouced that the EPA is trying to recind the regulatory basis to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. I was there. Here's my story for @cenmag.bsky.social: cen.acs.org/policy/regul...

EPA rejects key finding underpinning US climate rules

Energy secretary cites new DOE report on climate change by known climate denialists to justify repeal

cen.acs.org

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 30

CBER director/CMO Vinay Prasad is out at FDA:

www.statnews.com/2025/07/29/v...

Sounds like the rare disease community played a major role in pushing for his ouster, after a dizzying series of moves on Sarepta's DMD therapy (which has been implicated in the deaths of several patients).

Vinay Prasad, a powerful FDA official, departs after controversy over rare disease drug

Vinay Prasad, a top FDA official, is out after less than three months on the job.

www.statnews.com

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 25

www.npr.org/2025/07/05/n...

The deadly risk of trying to reach food in Gaza

An NPR journalist in Gaza describes his experience seeking food from a site run by private American contractors, facing Israeli military fire, crowds fighting for rations, and masked thieves.

www.npr.org

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Reposted by Laurel Oldach

Charlotte Clymer @charlotteclymer.bsky.social · Jul 25

POLITICO compiled a list of all the Washington Post staffers who have left in the past eight months. It’s at least a hundred names, many of them among the biggest names in journalism. This is the fastest erosion of a major outlet ever.

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Reposted by Laurel Oldach

Karen James @kejames.bsky.social · Jul 25

An intentional, avoidable mass starvation event is happening in the context of an ongoing genocide and not only is the US not doing anything to stop it, we are actively enabling it, both materially by continuing to fund and arm Israel and also by silencing protest here. www.bbc.com/news/article...

More than 100 humanitarian groups warn of mass starvation in Gaza

A joint statement says the Israeli government's "siege" has left aid supplies "totally depleted".

www.bbc.com

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 24

Hang in there, Scott. Sorry everything is such a mess. Hope you can have some gummy bears or jam sometime soon.

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Reposted by Laurel Oldach

Dr. Jen Gunter @drjengunter.bsky.social · Jul 21

Treating women in pregnancy is a necessity, not a luxury. We shold not neglect treating mental health concerns just as we should treat high blood pressure (paraphrasing the expert)

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 21

As a 37-weeks-pregnant person who just spent 45 minutes on the phone trying to assure continuity of care since UHC is kicking my OB out of network 10 days prior to my due date, ASK ME HOW I FEEL ABOUT THIS FDA PANEL ON PREGNANCY CARE. GO AHEAD. JUST ASK.

Dr. Jen Gunter @drjengunter.bsky.social · Jul 21

Holy shit the FDA panel on antidpressants seems wild to me. I am not an expert, but apparently depression is a useless term and that is preventing us from feeling emotional distress. We should experience everything as a signal and learn to pay attention to it.

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 18

Oh, thanks! That's a great idea, didn't think about potential shifts in nomenclature

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 18

(Also, if anyone can tell me where to look for a catalog of human ApoE alleles... I'm mystified that I've not yet come across an ApoE1 or ApoE6, when there exist numbers 2-5 and 7. OMIM didn't shed any light, but maybe that's the wrong database to look in.)

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 18

Today in "AI fails to answer basic factual questions correctly, even while citing sources that have a correct and nuanced answer:

Screenshot of a Bing search (don't at me, it's my work computer) asking "how many ApoE alleles are there?" with a big Copilot-generated answer: THREE. The response lists apoE2, apoE3 and apoE4, which are indeed the *most common* human alleles, but absolutely not the only ones. (The response also links to a wikipedia article that lists two other alleles!)

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 18

Important (depressing) coverage from @leighkboerner.bsky.social

cen.acs.org/environment/...

How the White House is dismantling the heart of US climate policy

Gutting the National Climate Assessment is just one way the Trump administration is undermining the legal justification to limit greenhouse gas emissions

cen.acs.org

Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 18

Laid off from a bioinformatics/AI lab lately? Perhaps you'd like to land $10K-25K by jailbreaking the latest release of ChatGPT into generating bioweapons.

openai.com/bio-bug-boun...

Agent bio bug bounty

Testing universal jailbreaks for biorisks in ChatGPT Agent

openai.com

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 15

This is a really really helpful articulation of this dynamic!

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 14

Alternative title we rejected for this one: "You would not BELIEVE how much pseudoscience we left out of this story in favor of reminiscing about Northern blots."

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Laurel Oldach @laureloldach.bsky.social · Jul 11

Mentioned females, triaged.

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