Carl Zimmer
@carlzimmer.com
NYT columnist. Signal: carlzimmer.51 Newsletter: https://buttondown.com/carlzimmer/ Web: http://carlzimmer.com [This account includes a tweet archive]
Moderna's mRNA vaccine reduces the recurrence of skin cancer in a clinical trial. wapo.st/4gosZtG
Cancer treatment could face landmark moment with promising vaccine
A therapy using the same mRNA technology in coronavirus vaccines showed positive results in trial for skin cancer patients, drugmakers Moderna and Merck said.
wapo.st
A skeptical view of real-time airborne pathogen detection, from Lidia Morawska and Henry Oswin. doi.org/10.1021/acse...
Real-Time Detection of Airborne Pathogens: Science Fiction or Imminent Reality?
Abstract. A device capable of reporting the airborne pathogen concentration within an indoor space in real time may sound fictional, but such devices have
doi.org
Grateful for review of Air-Borne by @cbo.bsky.social: "Zimmer combines narrative precision, journalistic range, and scientific synthesis to produce a book that is both informative and intellectually ambitious." www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.... & www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724793...
Air-Borne by Carl Zimmer: 9780593473597 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
One of Smithsonian Magazine's Ten Best Science Books of 2025 The fascinating, untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside dow...
penguinrandomhouse.com
“The Bundibugyo virus disease (BVD) outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is in a phase of intense transmission. It is the largest Ebola outbreak ever reported in the country and expanding faster than any previous Ebola outbreak.” www.who.int/emergencies/...
Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus - Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Bundibugyo virus disease (BVD) outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is in a phase of intense transmission. It is the largest Ebola outbreak ever reported in the country and expanding f...
who.int
Spain removes remains of 11th century kings from monastery as wildfire rages reut.rs/4zAAN4r
Spain removes remains of 11th century kings from monastery as wildfire rages
Spanish authorities on Thursday removed the remains of three kings who ruled the Aragón region in the 11th century from a monastery threatened by a wildfire.
reut.rs
With my colleague Roni Rabin, I dug into the evidence around Covid vaccine safety in pregnancy, and broke down a statistic about miscarriage that has been repeatedly debunked but was still widely circulated again this week.
Covid Vaccines Are Not Linked to Miscarriage. Here’s How We Know. (Gift Article)
Prominent Republicans and others have falsely claimed this week that the shots are linked, despite years of data showing they are safe.
nytimes.com
Trump wants MMR vaccine split up: the science behind why it’s a bad idea. www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Trump wants MMR vaccine split up: the science behind why it’s a bad idea
Numerous studies have shown that separating childhood jabs will delay protection and increase costs for families.
nature.com
“Merck told Reuters that separating the MMR vaccine could take up to 10 years, even under current expedited pathways.” www.cidrap.umn.edu/state-us-vac...
Organizations hit back at Trump’s call to reduce childhood vaccines
cidrap.umn.edu
A new study suggests that the current Bundibugyo epidemic is a new spillover from an animal host--not a resurgence of human cases from the two previous human outbreaks. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Emergence of a Bundibugyo virus variant in the 2026 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda - Nature Medicine
A phylogenetic analysis of 22 genomes from the recent Bundibugyo virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda suggests the outbreak was caused by a new zoonotic spillover event.
nature.com
NEW: The NIH is quietly restricting funding for research that evaluates how public policy impacts human health. According to internal documents I obtained, the agency no longer considers policymakers "mission relevant" — a massive shift for the biomedical funder. My latest for @nature.com:
NIH limits funding for research on the health effects of public policy
US biomedical agency no longer considers policymakers as ‘mission relevant’, leaving dozens of grants in limbo.
nature.com
How viruses travel around planets. A map of showing the arrival of H5N1 2.3.4.4b influenza in Australia. Preprint: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
Congo says 2,000 people have died in its Ebola outbreak, the fastest growing on record #bundibugyo apnews.com/article/cong...
Congo says 2,000 people have died in its Ebola outbreak, the fastest growing on record
Congo's Ebola outbreak has claimed at least 2,000 lives, making it the fastest-growing on record. Government data shows 4,381 confirmed cases, with 2,011 deaths.
apnews.com
Trump: "At one year, you should have 5 separate visits for vaccines rather than getting them all in the same day. I've seen proof of where they have a vaccination thing that looks like the size of a bottle of soda and pour it into a little child's body."
BREAKING — Trump is planning to sign an executive order today that calls for spacing out childhood vaccines, breaking the MMR into three separate shots and making other key vaccine changes. @lenasun.bsky.social @rachelroubein.bsky.social
Trump administration order would upend nation’s childhood vaccine schedule
The president has pushed to narrow which vaccines are administered to children and split shots up into multiple appointments.
washingtonpost.com
Taylor Farms, which has been linked to a large outbreak of cyclosporiasis associated with iceberg lettuce in the United States, said on Sunday that it was voluntarily recalling several of its products made with fresh jalapeños that have been tied to a multistate salmonella outbreak
Taylor Farms Voluntarily Recalls Fresh Jalapeños Over Salmonella Concerns
The company said it was unaware of any reported illnesses linked to its products containing jalapeños, which were distributed to major retailers across 26 states.
nyti.ms
Here's a new kind of virus that scientists have generated with AI. And here's my story about what it means for us to have gotten to this remarkable moment: nyti.ms/4bBhoWB (Gift link) 🧪
Twofer here: Last night Moderna got word the #FDA had approved its mRNA flu vaccine for older adults. www.statnews.com/2026/08/05/f... The decision came on the anniversary of when Health Sec. Kennedy axed flu pandemic preparedness funding for Moderna. www.statnews.com/2026/08/06/m...
FDA approves Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine, the first to use the technology
The FDA has approved Moderna’s influenza vaccine, the first licensed flu shot made using messenger RNA technology.
statnews.com
RFK told Dana Bash that Lyme disease “almost certainly” came from gain of function research. Which is utterly false. www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdi...
Lyme Disease Did Not Come From a Secret Military Lab, Contrary to FDA Chief's Claim
Bacterium that causes it circulated long before the lab opened, decades of evidence show
medpagetoday.com
I'm not sure folks have realized just how crazy the second half of 2026 and 2027 will be for global temperatures – on the back of a record-smashing El Niño event. Here is my latest estimate of where both years will end up compared to global temperatures since 1850.
A freelance reporter has been fighting a subpoena from the Trump administration seeking to force him to reveal his sources for a New York Times article about a failed top secret mission in North Korea. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/u...
Justice Dept. Subpoenas Times Freelancer in Effort to Identify Sources
A previously undisclosed subpoena, involving reporting on a failed SEAL Team 6 mission in North Korea, reflects the government’s expanding campaign to investigate leaks of secrets.
nytimes.com
It's been two and a half months since the Ebola outbreak in the DRC was declared and it is now the biggest the country has ever experienced and the second largest the world has ever seen. Dozens of cases continue to be reported each day across three separate provinces. 🧪 insp.cd/sitrep-n077-...
For a disease as spectacularly scary as smallpox, its history is remarkably mysterious. Here is my look at what ancient DNA from the viruses is revealing. Gift link: nyti.ms/4vTU11D
‘This Is Very Strange’: Ancient Smallpox May Have Been Less Deadly (Gift Article)
Scientists have found smallpox viruses in the remains of people in Chile from around 500 years ago, revealing how the virus may have evolved into a global killer.
nyti.ms
The policy take-home of our new study, in 15 words: 🏭 Fossil fuels kill children 🔋 Decarbonization will slow malaria expansion 🦟 Malaria eradication will save lives everywhere 🔓 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The past and future impact of climate change on childhood malaria in Africa - Nature
Climate and econometric modelling reveal that human-induced climate change is shifting the burden of childhood malaria in Africa.
nature.com
my god www.reuters.com/world/africa...
US government map of Africa mislabels every country at global conference
A U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a State Department presentation at a global conference in Brazil this week, causing a stir among attendees who took screenshots and po...
reuters.com
I finished another really interesting read by science writer @carlzimmer.com called “Air-Borne”—a history of studying life in our atmosphere. Meanwhile: Once eradicated in the U.S., measles has made a sad comeback in the U.S. due to falling vaccination rates. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...
NEW At a lunch at his northern Virginia golf course in May, president Trump told his health secretary RFK Jr. that he had the yips. Our look inside Trump's push to get Kennedy to do more on vaccines: www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
Trump Turns Up the Heat on RFK Jr. to Cut Back Childhood Vaccines
The president is focused on the shots’ alleged tie to autism, even though White House advisers wanted to tone down attention to the issue ahead of the midterms.
wsj.com
NEW: A large trove of Claude-generated documents have been exposed to the web and indexed by Google. We reviewed what appear to be real medical records, the full names and phone numbers of school-aged children, and company documents marked for internal use only. futurism.com/artificial-i...
A Whole Bunch of People's Claude Chats Are Publicly Accessible Online, and There's Some Wildly Private Stuff in There
A trove of documents generated by Anthropic's Claude were indexed by Google. They included medical records and student information.
futurism.com
