Sophia Blessinger

How a decades-old study gave hormone therapy for menopause a bad reputation Menopause is a chapter in women’s lives that brings a myriad of sometimes debilitating medical issues that can last for more than a decade. It’s an area of medicine that for years has been overlooked ...

www.pbs.org/newshour/sho...

Okay, but Louisiana creole genealogy facebook just started pulling out two hundred years of the new Pope's whole family records back to Saint Domingue, in case you thought Chicago was going to be insufferable alone.

Today I lost an NIH grant training clinicians to do research about intimate partner violence with perinatal women.

More women are murdered in the perinatal period than die of obstetric complications.

I didn't just lose a grant. We lost an entire cohort of people building careers to prevent that.

Timeline cleanse with nicest day we’ve had all year in San Francisco

Hi Marcus! Intriguing, I’ll have to try that at some point!

Abandoning research participants is an unconscionable betrayal In 1964, the Declaration of Helsinki created a set of universal ethical principles to protect human participants in health research.1 Described as “the cornerstone of research ethics,”2 these principles establish an overarching duty to safeguard the safety, dignity, and rights of people involved in medical research. In the United States this was followed, in 1979, by the Belmont Report, sub-titled “ Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research.” 3 It set out three principles: respect for persons, and especially those with diminished autonomy; beneficence, maximising benefits and minimising harms; and justice, avoiding research conducted on groups who will not ultimately benefit from it. For poorer or otherwise vulnerable populations that have been historically mistreated, such protections are all the more critical.4 No research can be conducted ethically that lacks an absolute commitment to the wellbeing of participants.5 Sixty-one years later, the sudden cessation of multiple trials across the world threatens all of these duties at the foundation of research ethics. Specifically, by signing an executive order to freeze all foreign aid provided by the United States for at …

Abandoning research participants is an unconscionable betrayal

In these ways, Trump has placed many thousands of people across the world at risk of some of the most profound violations of their fundamental rights as research participants.

www.bmj.com/content/...

Does this mean you didn’t have to use sourdough starter in this loaf ?

A king cake with purple, green and, yellow colored sugar. If you look at the top of the image you will see the tail of a pug who thinks the king cake is for her !

First Hoosier King Cake !

A research lab from Northwestern, chosen because it's generic and sort of zoomed out. Three scientists are visible in lab coats, and there are benches and shelving, with glass along one wall showing another high-rise building nearby. Overhead fluorescents provide light.

This is a room where we turn very modest salaries and budgets (and lots of coffee) into new knowledge, life-saving innovations, and technology that feeds business growth.

It's literally the loom that spins hay into gold but these numpties are suddenly worried about the cost of hay.

NIH cuts billions of dollars in biomedical funding, effective immediately The move halts a large slice of money for most universities and research institutions virtually overnight, imperiling vital research in everything from cancer to heart disease.

This will cause generational harm to millions of patients, to the careers of thousands of scientists, and to America’s research preeminence

www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

I am SHOCKED 😂

YES. Need to say this loudly and often! This 2.46x is also the short-term ROI. Long-term ROI (more difficult to estimate) may ~10x. Highest for any gov't spending. And the source of discoveries necessary for all new drugs (industry important too but without NIH funded science there's no foundation)

On changes to #NIH indirect rates, there is a law in place that prohibits NIH from making such changes without the approval of Congress. See Division D, Title II Section 224 of The Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (Public Law No: 118-47) grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

She would eat my homework if she could

The entire website for the NIH Office of Research on Women's Health (ORWH) is very nearly stripped bare. This is so, so devastating. orwh.od.nih.gov/research/fun...

I must not be wording this right. Lemme try again.

There is only one (1) office (not even an institute) at the NIH dedicated to women’s health research. That office is now being dismantled, with only a bland landing page remaining on their website. This is a five-alarm fire!

orwh.od.nih.gov

Scientists at NIH can’t purchase supplies for their studies after Trump administration pauses outside communications | CNN Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have been told the communications pause announced by the Trump Administration earlier this week includes a pause on all purchasing, including supplies f...

🧪 "Researchers who have clinical trial participants staying at the NIH’s on-campus hospital, the Clinical Trial Center, said they weren’t able to order test tubes to draw blood."

www.cnn.com/2025/01/24/h...

Hey #HoosierSky

The NIH provides a TON of funding to Indiana Universities and companies

Every $1 spent on NIH funding provides $2.46 of downstream benefit in the form of new discoveries, etc

Pausing it even for a short time will have major detriments to science and scientists

Egg prices are soaring again. Here’s why and what to expect Bird flu has killed millions of hens in recent weeks, shrinking the supply of eggs and hiking up prices at grocery stores.

The price of eggs in the US is spiking, mostly due to #H5N1 bird flu. Solving the problem requires urgent, important communications from the CDC & FDA* and rapid development of research by the NIH**

* Currently paused by Executive Order
** Grant reviews now all canceled
www.kcur.org/news/2025-01...

Does Wisconsin know you took its snow Mary?

A very grumpy pug with a blanket on top of her as she’s walking around still wearing it

Sydney’s first real snowstorm #TexasPug

Been looking for dill at 3 different stores up in NorCal today and haven’t found any!

If I wear an Indiana related outfit will I still be allowed admittance ?

Sydney’s first time meeting Santa !!!

Reading “The Divine Comedy” and “The Odyssey” this month. Calling it iambic pentameter December!

Study paints clearer picture of disadvantaged leukemia patients’ struggle to get bone marrow transplants Study reveals how socioeconomic factors create barriers to bone marrow transplants for AML patients in disadvantaged communities

🧪A study shared at the American Society of Hematology’s annual meeting revealed socioeconomic barriers to stem cell transplants for acute myeloid leukemia, with education and financial status impacting access.

Access rather than therapy efficacy maybe a primary reason for a higher death rate.
🩺 🛟

Maybe if they hadn’t gone and killed the PAC-12 we’d have a west coast team in the CFB playoff 🤡

Act now to stop millions of research papers from disappearing Digital preservation is not keeping up with the growth of scholarly knowledge. Recognizing its causes is the first step to securing records everywhere for future generations.

My work features prominently in a Nature editorial today. Great to see digital preservation being taken seriously.

"Millions of research articles are absent from major digital archives. This worrying finding, [...] was laid bare in a study by Martin Eve" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Will the tar and feathers be next ?