Bioethicist, Associate Professor, & CIHR Applied Public Health Chair at Western University in London, Ontario, Canada. Also Director, Western's Centre for Bioethics and Associate Director, Rotman Institute of Philosophy. Views are my own.
maxwellsmith.ca
Maxwell Smith, PhD
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I agree w/ @shobitap.org that lamenting the politicization of "science" and the health professions is both nonsensical and strategically problematic. The enterprise of science -- basic, clinical, and any other variety -- is fundamentally political in +++ ways.
I've written about this here:
1/
NEW: Regulators have linked Mark McAfee’s raw dairy farm to more than a dozen recalls and outbreaks that left hundreds of people ill.
“I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital,” McAfee said. “But here’s the thing: I’m a pioneer.”
Just published in BMJ Public Health: "Coercion in public health: a scoping review of definitions"
bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/4/2/...
"They have spent so much time talking about not having the government impose on peoples individual decisions..."
"And yet, in response to the hantavirus and Ebola, this administration has chosen to impose very draconian and extreme public health measures."
www.npr.org/2026/06/11/n...
This is an important & original analysis of whether & how “coercion” is defined in scholarship about public health. Very well done.
Can something similar be done for the word “politics” in public health? My sense is the word is much used, rarely defined, and this confuses things.
I criticize the concern over the politicization of public health policy as a justification for preferring a narrow to a broad model of public health. My critique proceeds along 2 lines. First, the fac...
With Raw Farm, the largest raw-milk dairy in the country, Mark McAfee has capitalized on a once-fringe product that's been thrust into the mainstream in recent years and backed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“Cervical cancer elimination isn't just a public health objective. It's a moral imperative. No one should be diagnosed with or die from a cancer we have the ability to prevent."
www.cidrap.umn.edu/human-papill...
Secretary Kennedy pretended in the past to support free speech.
Now he is using his position to bully a medical journal, in a way that's reminiscent of the conduct the Supreme Court struck down here: supremecourt.gov/opinions/23p...
He cites no regulatory authority, and has none.
ACOG’s Maternal Immunization Schedule: "Together with the RSV and Tdap vaccines, the flu and COVID vaccines can help to keep both pregnant mothers healthy and their baby safe ...before they develop immunity from their own vaccines." open.substack.com/pub/stopanti... @aboutpediatrics.bsky.social
Just a reminder that all those LLMs are built on the pilfered vast libraries of humanistic and social scientific knowledge production. Good luck, society. You’re gonna need it.
www.hpherald.com/evening_dige...
Daniel S. Goldberg
ProPublica
bmjpublichealth.bmj.com
The administration imposed mandatory quarantine orders on two passengers from the cruise ship hit by hantavirus and is blocking Americans who catch Ebola from returning home for treatment.
The University of Chicago will pause or scale back graduate admissions in more than a dozen programs next year as the school confronts what administrators have called “very real budget
