The intelligentsia is always telling us to “follow the science.” But what happens when “the science” starts undermining academia’s deeply-held beliefs? Suddenly, the definition of science changes — or we’re told we misunderstood it all along.
If you’ve followed the debates over climate change or gender ideology, this story might sound familiar. But what may surprise you is that the same tactics are now at work in elite physics departments around the world. Even the most brilliant minds aren’t immune to bias — or to pushing a philosophical agenda under the guise of objectivity.
So, how is this playing out in the world of advanced physics?
Atheist scientists hold one belief above all: God is fiction. Why? Because God isn’t science. And only scientific claims can be true. Science, they say, explains the universe through natural, blind forces. This picture of reality is supposed to be testable and falsifiable.
But are they still living up to that standard?
In recent decades, physicists uncovered something remarkable. Nature’s laws contain fundamental constants, specific numbers that determine how particles like electrons behave. For years, no one knew where these mysterious numbers came from. Then came the scientific discovery that many of them are finely tuned. Change them even slightly, and the universe as we know it wouldn’t exist. No atoms. No stars. No life.
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The implication was hard to miss. An intelligent cause had <a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/fine-tuning-argument-for-god" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fine-tuned</a> the constants to produce a complex, structured universe. That conclusion sounded uncomfortably like God. And many atheist physicists wanted nothing to do with that.
Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind, himself an atheist, explained the fear:
Physicists dislike mixing religion into physics. I think they were somewhat afraid that if it was admitted that the reason the world is the way it is has to do with our own existence, that that could be hijacked by the creationists, by the intelligent designers. And of course, what they would say is, “Yes, we always told you so. There is a benevolent somebody way up high in the universe who created the universe exactly so that we could live.” I think physicists shrank at the idea of getting involved in such things.
But if the evidence pointed to God, scientists had a choice: follow it, or explain it away.
Enter the multiverse: an infinite set of unobservable universes, each with different laws. If the multiverse exists, then finding ourselves in a fine-tuned universe isn’t all that surprising. With infinite tries, some universes are bound to support life. And naturally, we’d only ever find ourselves in one of those.
Sounds clever, but here’s the problem: science requires observation and testability. One of the most renowned physicists of the prior generation, Richard Feynman, stated clearly: “All scientists will agree that a question — any question, philosophical or other — which cannot be put into the form that can be tested by experiment…is not a scientific question.”
By definition, an infinite number of unobservable universes can’t be tested by experiment. By Feynman’s standard, and that of virtually all scientists for the past 300 years, the multiverse is not science.
So, what does academia do when faced with this problem? It tries to change the rules.
Physicist Bernard Carr openly argues for redefining science: “It is surely dangerous to impose a philosophical prescription that prevents scientists from changing the border of their field. As Susskind cautions, it would be a pity to miss out on some fundamental truth because of an over-restrictive definition of science.”
In other words: if the multiverse doesn’t fit the definition of science that’s guided discovery since the Enlightenment, no problem — just redefine science.
As if redefining science weren’t bad enough, some scientists go further. Johns Hopkins physicist Sean Carroll boldly claims that falsifiability was never a requirement of science:
The ways in which we evaluate the multiverse as a scientific hypothesis are precisely the ways in which hypotheses have always been judged. The point is not that we are changing the nature of science by allowing unfalsifiable hypotheses into our purview. The point is that “falsifiability” was never the primary criterion by which scientific theories were judged (although scientists have often presented it as such).
So, Feynman got it wrong. Einstein too. Generations of scientists? All mistaken. Or so we’re now told.
How long before textbooks are rewritten to teach students that science doesn’t require testing, observation, or falsifiability? We’ve seen this play before, and it doesn’t end well.
This isn’t just semantics. Redefining science erodes public trust in real, tested science. If untestable multiverse theory now falls under the esteemed banner of science, how is anyone supposed to tell the difference between the real thing and its impostor version?
Fortunately, some scientists have sounded the alarm about these shifts. George Ellis, a leading physicist, has warned bluntly:
The foundations must be respected if one is to preserve the core features of science that have led to its phenomenal success: that is, the feedback from reality to theory provided by experiment and observational testing. One abandons that at one’s peril&#8230;it is dangerous to weaken the grounds of scientific proof in order to include multiverses under the mantle of “tested science”.
Ellis is right. If science is to remain credible, scientists need to stop playing word games. Fine-tuning in our one, ordered universe is a real scientific discovery. But it most certainly doesn’t point to an infinite, chaotic multiverse.
The bottom line? The <a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/is-the-multiverse-real" target="_blank" rel="noopener">multiverse isn’t science</a>. It’s a speculative philosophical idea — and not even a good one. Passing it off as science is dishonest. These scientists are hijacking the credibility of science to promote a weak philosophical theory that can’t stand on its own.
We’re not saying God is a scientific theory. That would be dishonest. What we are saying is that science<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/why-modern-physics-points-to-god" target="_blank" rel="noopener"> points to God</a>. Because when you follow the evidence, the most straightforward explanation for fine-tuning is an intelligent designer.
And if academics really believe in “following the science,” then maybe it’s time they followed it themselves — all the way to God.
Rabbi Elie Feder, PhD, and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer, host the “Physics to God” podcast.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Space warp travel trough universe

The Multiverse Scandal: How Academia Is Redefining Science To Avoid God

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For years, we’ve been told that science made God unnecessary.
Atheism had won. God was for the weak-minded. Rational people read Richard Dawkins and watched Neil deGrasse Tyson and Alex O’Connor. Religion, they said, was just a fairy tale.
But as science progresses, that story is beginning to unravel.
Far from removing the need for a Creator, modern physics increasingly points toward one.
Why? Because the deeper scientists dig into the universe’s fundamental laws, the more they encounter a startling truth: the universe appears to be fine-tuned. Not vaguely-tuned, but astonishingly, exquisitely, fine-tuned.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. To understand what fine-tuning actually means, let’s first look at how this discovery came about.
At the foundations of our universe, physicists discovered about 25 physical constants — unchanging numbers that define the structure of reality. You might not have heard of numbers like the fine-structure constant or the cosmological constant, but they are crucial. They determine how atoms hold together, how stars form, and how fast the universe expands.
The big question was, how can physicists explain these strange numbers? Before the discovery of fine-tuning, physicists had two unsatisfying possibilities: either the constants are just brute facts with no explanation, or some deeper law might eventually explain all their seemingly random values.
Since these solutions were neither satisfying nor plausible, Richard Feynman — one of the most celebrated physicists of his time — called explaining the constants “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics.”
Then came fine-tuning.
Scientists slowly realized that if some of these constants were even slightly different, the universe would be completely chaotic, lacking all complexity and structure. No galaxies, no chemistry, no life. It’s almost like the values of the constants have a purpose in producing our complex universe.
Take the cosmological constant. Its value is about 10 to the power of negative 122. That’s a decimal point followed by 121 zeros and then a 1. If it were even a bit lower or higher, the universe would either collapse back on itself or expand so rapidly that no structures would ever form.
Does that seem like a cosmic accident? No one — not even atheist physicists — thinks that. It’s a bit like finding a safe with a trillion-digit combination already set perfectly. That’s not something anyone can reasonably attribute to blind chance.
Once fine-tuning was discovered, the two earlier explanations — that the constants are brute, necessary facts or the result of an unknown deeper law — became nearly impossible to defend. These ideas were only somewhat plausible back when the constants seemed arbitrary, and the challenge was simply to explain their mysterious values. But neither pure necessity nor blind mathematical inevitability accounts for why the constants fall exactly where they do. To continue placing faith in those explanations, despite what fine-tuning reveals, is to ignore the weight of the new evidence.
So, what’s the alternative?
One explanation is <a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/fine-tuning-argument-for-god" target="_blank" rel="noopener">straightforward</a>: the universe is fine-tuned because it has a fine-tuner. An intelligent Creator set the parameters needed for generating a complex and ordered universe that’s full of atoms, molecules, planets, stars, galaxies, and life.
At this point, critics often respond: “You’re just using God to fill in the gaps! That’s the old ‘God of the gaps’ fallacy.”
But that misses the point. This isn’t about ignorance. It isn’t a case of “We don’t know, so it must be God.” This is all about what we do know. We know the values of the constants. We know they are fine-tuned. And we know that when a system is exquisitely calibrated, it suggests an intelligent calibrator. That’s not filling a gap in our knowledge — it’s drawing a clear inference from established scientific evidence.
Yet, for many in the scientific community, the idea of God isn’t seen as a legitimate option — not because science rules it out, but because of prior philosophical prejudices. So, instead, they turn to an alternative: the multiverse.
The multiverse hypothesis posits an infinite number of unobservable universes, each with different physical laws and constants. In such a scenario, anything that can happen does happen — somewhere. Of course, in an infinite multiverse, there would be at least one universe with just the right conditions for life — and that’s the one we happen to observe. After all, we couldn’t exist in any of the countless, lifeless universes where complexity never forms.
This is sometimes presented as a clever way to explain fine-tuning without God. But that impression fades once you consider what an infinite multiverse actually implies.
Physicist Alan Guth said it best: “Anything that can happen will happen; in fact, it will happen an infinite number of times.” So, in an infinite multiverse, there are universes where George Washington is still alive. Where you’re president. Where unicorns are real. Where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs exist.
We’re not joking. That’s what the theory implies.
After all, in an infinite collection of universes, every possible arrangement of atoms must exist somewhere. With infinite universes, science begins to blur into science fiction.
The trouble is, no one has ever observed another universe. By definition, an infinite multiverse is untestable, unfalsifiable, and unobservable. It’s not a scientific theory in the usual sense — it’s philosophical speculation dressed up as science, aimed at avoiding the clear implications of fine-tuning. And that’s just the beginning. From here, the <a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/is-the-multiverse-real" target="_blank" rel="noopener">problems with the multiverse</a> only get worse.
So, let’s consider where this leaves us.
On one side, theists point to the measurable, precise fine-tuning of nature’s constants. We observe one universe — ours — and it appears finely set up for atoms, planets, stars, and life. On the other side, atheists propose an infinite number of unobservable universes to avoid the possibility that ours was fine-tuned.
Now, ask yourself: which seems more rational?
Science has brought us to a turning point. The fine-tuning argument is no relic of ancient theology. It’s a modern, scientifically-grounded case for an intelligent cause of the universe. The resistance it provokes stems not from a lack of evidence, but from discomfort with what the evidence implies.
In the end, modern physics offers us a glimpse into the deep structure of reality. And what we find is not chaos, but extraordinary order and purpose. The universe is fine-tuned. Fine-tuning points to a Fine-Tuner. If we’re serious about science, we must be equally serious about following the evidence wherever it leads — even if it <a href="https://www.physicstogod.com/3-proofs-of-god-from-science" target="_blank" rel="noopener">leads us directly to God</a>.
Rabbi Elie Feder, PhD, and Rabbi Aaron Zimmer, host the “Physics to God” podcast.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Low Angle View Of Silhouette Man Against Star Field

Why Modern Physics Points To God

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A new study of ultraweak photon emission, the process in which organisms exhibit a spontaneous emission of light without an external excitation, used a technology to demonstrate that the glow from that process ends upon death, a technology that may be <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2479590-all-living-things-emit-an-eerie-glow-that-is-snuffed-out-upon-death/">used in the future</a> to aid in the detection of human disease.
University of Calgary Professor Dan Oblak and his colleagues studied rats using digital cameras while the temperature remained steady and light was excluded.
“The fact that ultraweak photon emission is a real thing is undeniable at this point,” Oblak stated. “This really shows that this is not just an imperfection or caused by other biological processes. It’s really something that comes from all living things.”
A 2024 <a href="https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/download/f35a0e7ae5d24dc4263db3032e8abe8f41ae87a1c852d83a8a8f13f0fa44c4ce/2292116/fphys-15-1348915.pdf">study</a> from Great Britain of ultraweak photon emission spoke of the link between reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are &#8220;reactive molecules and free radicals&#8221; produced during cellular metabolism, and ultraweak photon emission. The study stated: “Sustained exposure to high levels of ROS, via elevated production or the failure of antioxidant defenses, is associated with the pathophysiology of multiple diseases, Furthermore, the failure to produce ROS effectively in response to stressors is also indicative of metabolic dysfunction. The intrinsic link between ROS production and biophoton release means that monitoring UPE in living organisms represents a real-time, non-invasive method of early-state disease diagnosis.”
“The nice thing about ultraweak photon emission is it’s a complete passive monitoring process,” Oblak asserted.
“According to literature, the UPE seems to be influenced by some diseases (including diabetes, hemiparesis, Protoporphyria, or a typical cold), and even by the cerebral intention/relaxation (brain activity/meditation),” a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1011134421000191">2021 study</a> claimed. “These allow to consider UPE as a natural and promising non-invasive spectroscopic tool for helping during the diagnosis of a variety of illnesses or stress-/mood-state disorders.”
Ultraweak photon emission should be differentiated from bioluminescence, which has greater light intensities and is connected to specific biochemical reactions. Bioluminescence is exhibited in fireflies and jellyfish, for example. Ultraweak photon emission, conversely, results from oxidative stress reactions.

A futuristic woman exploring outer space

‘Glow’ From Humans Stops At Death, Study Says. Here’s Why Understanding It Could Save Lives.

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President Donald Trump took action on Monday to stop federal money going toward gain-of-function research, a controversial practice linked to the COVID origins debate, in China and other countries.
The move came in the form of an executive order, which Trump showed off in the Oval Office of the White House, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, and others in attendance.
&#8220;It&#8217;s a big deal,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;It could have been that we wouldn&#8217;t have had the problem we had if we had this done earlier,&#8221; he continued, alluding to the COVID pandemic, which began during Trump&#8217;s first term.
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🚨 BREAKING: <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a> just signed an executive order protecting Americans from dangerous gain-of-function research.
The order:
— Ends any present and all future Federal funding of dangerous gain-of-function research in countries of concern like China and Iran and in foreign… <a href="https://t.co/4Cn7iQ4i3L">pic.twitter.com/4Cn7iQ4i3L</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1919497045204992144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 5, 2025</a></blockquote>
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The <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/improving-the-safety-and-security-of-biological-research/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">order</a> halts federal funding for &#8220;dangerous&#8221; gain-of-function research conducted in China — which is believed to be ground zero for the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019 that led to millions of deaths and various lockdowns around the world — and other foreign countries with &#8220;insufficient&#8221; levels of oversight, citing risks to public health and national security.
Gain-of-function research — in which viruses are enhanced by scientists, often to study potential treatments or prepare for future outbreaks — has become a major focus of the lab leak theory <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/cia-assesses-chinese-lab-leak-responsible-for-coronavirus-pandemic" target="_blank" rel="noopener">increasingly</a> favored by U.S. agencies.
Last year, the federal government <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hhs-moves-to-defund-ecohealth-alliance-says-action-needed-to-protect-the-public-interest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suspended</a> funds to EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based nonprofit group that was receiving <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/health/ecohealth-alliance-peter-daszak-nih-grants.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">millions</a> of dollars in grant money as it faced intense scrutiny for its collaboration with a lab in Wuhan, China, suspected in the COVID outbreak.
Dr. Anthony Fauci denied under oath that NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, but he did not convince Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who accused the longtime health official of lying to Congress with a criminal <a href="https://x.com/RandPaul/status/1685370259451109376" target="_blank" rel="noopener">referral</a> to the Department of Justice.
While President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-issues-last-minute-pardons-for-fauci-mark-milley-and-jan-6-committee" target="_blank" rel="noopener">issued</a> Fauci a preemptive pardon before leaving office, the Trump administration may yet have more to say on the matter. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard recently <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-reveals-when-her-team-will-pinpoint-exact-moment-of-covid-lab-leak" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> her team is working with Bhattacharya and hoped to release information &#8220;very soon&#8221; on gain-of-function and the COVID outbreak.
Trump&#8217;s executive order also mandates stricter oversight, transparency, and enforcement mechanisms for federally funded life-science research, while demanding frameworks for regulating non-federally funded research and nucleic acid synthesis to prevent misuse.
&#8220;Anthony Fauci essentially restarted the bio-weapons arms race and did it under the pretention [sic] of developing vaccines — eventually moving his experiments offshore, mainly to the Wuhan Lab,&#8221; Kennedy <a href="https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1919543281349734858" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> on X. &#8220;[The president] today moved to shut down this kind of research in this country and to stop funding it abroad.&#8221;

President Trump Signs Executive Orders

Trump Signs Order To Cut Funds For Gain-Of-Function Research

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Scientists claim they have brought the dire wolf species back from extinction after 13,000 years, thanks to genetic engineering.
On Monday, the Texas-based biotechnology and genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences announced that three dire wolf pups were born last fall. The species became popular in modern culture thanks to their inclusion in the popular HBO series “Game of Thrones,” which inspired the company to name the young wolves Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi, which references characters in the series.
“Our team took DNA from a 13,000-year-old tooth and a 72,000-year-old skull and made healthy dire wolf puppies,” Colossal CEO Ben Lamm said, per the <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/07/us-news/dire-wolf-from-game-of-thrones-revived-in-de-extinction-project/">New York Post</a>. “It was once said, ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Today, our team gets to unveil some of the magic they are working on and its broader impact on conservation.”
The team used &#8221; somatic cell nuclear transfer&#8221; to clone high-quality cell lines, which were transferred into donor egg cells and then implanted into a surrogate, the Post reported. 
Two pups were born in October 2024, while a third was born in January 2025.
Colossal made headlines last month for engineering a “woolly mouse,” which they made by injecting mammoth DNA into mice to make them grow thick coats. Per <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14580605/colossal-biosciences-extinction-revive-dire-wolf-remus.html">The Daily Mail</a>, the company has a stated goal of bringing the woolly mammoth back from extinction by 2028. 
Paleontologist Julie Meachen told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/science/colossal-dire-wolf-deextinction.html">The New York Times</a> that dire wolves lived in North America during the Ice Age and were contemporaries of mastodons and saber tooth tigers. Their closest living relatives are gray wolves, which are about 25% smaller. Dire wolves also have more muscular jaws and shoulders. 
The company’s announcement has inspired many reactions online, ranging from excitement to skepticism. The official “Jurassic World” account posted its response to X, saying, “We see no possible way this could go wrong.”
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We see no possible way this could go wrong <a href="https://t.co/EQaOH4fJYk">https://t.co/EQaOH4fJYk</a>
&mdash; Jurassic World (@JurassicWorld) <a href="https://twitter.com/JurassicWorld/status/1909386233744330991?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Many commenters said it was a stretch to call these genetically modified wolf cubs actual dire wolves.
“While these genetically engineered wolves exhibit physical and behavioral traits reminiscent of dire wolves, they are not true dire wolves,” one person <a href="https://x.com/CryptoNDN/status/1909287183309037846">wrote</a>. “The genetic modifications introduced specific dire wolf characteristics into the gray wolf genome, resulting in animals that are essentially gray wolves with selected phenotypic traits of dire wolves, rather than exact replicas of the extinct species.”
&#8220;This isn’t life finding a way, this is human interference,&#8221; another person <a href="https://x.com/thehamburglar33/status/1909575090544820231">observed</a>. &#8220;Someone forgot the lesson of just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should. Or in other terms did they step back and ask the question &#8216;why are we doing this?'&#8221;

Howling wolf

Scientists Claim They Brought Back Extinct Dire Wolves With Birth Of 3 New Pups

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Dr. Jay Bhattacharya was confirmed Tuesday night by the Senate in a party-line vote to lead the National Institutes of Health.
The Senate voted 53-47 to confirm Bhattacharya with all Republicans supporting his nomination and every Democrat voting against confirming the Stanford School of Medicine medical professor. Bhattacharya has promised to bring more accountability to the NIH, which oversees tens of billions of dollars in federal grant dollars. 
“The mission of the NIH is to address the health needs the American people have and to expand life expectancy of the American people. And we have not achieved that. It’s flatlined,” Bhattacharya <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jay-bhattacharya-promises-to-bring-accountability-to-nih-after-covid-failure" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> during his confirmation hearing earlier this month before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.
Bhattacharya widely rose to prominence during the COVID pandemic, when he was a sharp critic of the government-imposed lockdowns and was one of the first to express concerns about the safety and efficacy of vaccine mandates. During COVID, he was an advisor to Florida, aiding Governor Ron DeSantis in the reopening of the Sunshine State. 
“Science should be an engine for freedom. Knowledge and freedom … it shouldn’t be pushing mandates for vaccines like the COVID vaccines,” Bhattacharya said during his confirmation hearing. “The role of the scientist should not be to say that you can’t send your kid to school for two years.”
In his nomination announcement, President Donald Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-nominates-dr-jay-bhattacharya-to-lead-nih" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that Bhattacharya would work alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to “Make America Healthy Again” and “restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest Health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease.”
Bhattacharya also promised during his confirmation hearing that he would support experiments that take different approaches to an issue, saying that much of the established scientific community has failed to provide satisfactory answers. 
On Tuesday, the Senate <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-names-marty-makary-to-lead-food-and-drug-administration" target="_blank" rel="noopener">also voted</a> 56-44 to confirm Dr. Marty Makary to head up the Food and Drug Administration. Democrat Senators Dick Durbin (IL), Maggie Hassan (NH), and Jeanne Shaheen (NH) joined Republicans in voting for Makary. 
When he nominated Makary, Trump said that he would work with RFK Jr. to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our Nation’s food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our Nation’s youth, so that we can finally address the Childhood Chronic Disease Epidemic.”

NIH Director Nominee Jayanta Bhattacharya

Senate Confirms COVID Lockdown Opponent Dr. Jay Bhattacharya To Lead NIH

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Genetic testing company 23andMe has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Missouri federal court, leaving one question on everyone&#8217;s minds: what happens to all the DNA it collected?
The company was once valued at more than $6 billion thanks to its at-home DNA testing kits allowing customers to gain insight into their ancestry and genetic profiles, CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/24/23andme-files-for-bankruptcy-anne-wojcicki-steps-down-as-ceo.html">reported</a>. In 2021, the company went public and was valued at $3.5 billion. But soon after, its stock began to fall as it failed to continue to find viable recurring revenue. It currently has a market capitalization of just $25 million, CNBC reported.
The company made clear that the bankruptcy filing would not change how it stores or manages the data it has received from customers, but there are concerns that the bankruptcy filing could mean that customer DNA profiles are sold to the highest bidder. The Harvard Gazette published a <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/03/what-happens-to-your-genetic-data-if-23andme-collapses/">report</a> recently discussing these exact concerns and noted that certain laws protecting health information would not be covered since 23andMe is not a hospital or physician. The company has already shared customer data with service providers and contractors.
They did note, however, that in “some instances, bankruptcy law had required a consumer privacy ombudsperson to investigate a sale and determine whether it’s keeping with the bankrupt company’s privacy statements, as well as the law,” meaning customer data could be protected.
In September 2024, 23andMe <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/23andme-settles-data-breach-lawsuit-30-million-2024-09-13/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">settled a lawsuit</a> accusing it of failing to protect customer data after 6.9 million users&#8217; personal information was exposed during a data breach.
The once billion-dollar company has struggled in recent years to generate recurring revenue and build lasting research and therapeutics businesses, CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/24/23andme-files-for-bankruptcy-anne-wojcicki-steps-down-as-ceo.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. Early Monday morning, company CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki announced she was resigning from her executive role but would remain on the company’s board.
“The 23andMe Special Committee released news today indicating their plan to take the company through the Chapter 11 process,” Wojcicki wrote on X. “While I am disappointed that we have come to this conclusion and my bid was rejected, I am supportive of the company and I intend to be a bidder. I have resigned as CEO of the company so I can be in the best position to pursue the company as an independent bidder.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
The 23andMe Special Committee released news today indicating their plan to take the company through the Chapter 11 process. While I am disappointed that we have come to this conclusion and my bid was rejected, I am supportive of the company and I intend to be a bidder. I have…
— Anne Wojcicki (@annewoj23) <a href="https://twitter.com/annewoj23/status/1904036140077969563?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 24, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Last March, the company formed a committee to come up with solutions. Wojcicki devised several proposals to take the company private but was rejected.
Chapter 11 bankruptcy doesn’t require the liquidation of assets, but 23andMe’s bankruptcy proposal <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.moeb.462638/gov.uscourts.moeb.462638.1.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">filed</a> with the court includes a plan to sell off company assets. The plan calls for the company to “actively solicit qualified” bids over a 45-day process, CNBC reported. In her note on X, however, Wojcicki said she was looking to secure the assets herself.
“If I am fortunate enough to secure the company’s assets through the restructuring process, I remain committed to our long-term vision of being a global leader in genetics and establishing genetics as a fundamental part of healthcare ecosystems worldwide,” she wrote.
The company has between $100 million and $500 million in estimated assets, but between the same amount in estimated liabilities, per the <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.moeb.462638/gov.uscourts.moeb.462638.1.0.pdf">bankruptcy filing</a>.

23andMe

23andMe Is Going Bankrupt. What Happens To All The DNA Samples?

23andMe Is Going Bankrupt – What Happens To All The DNA Samples?

bankruptcy

Genes

A group of South African scientists trapped in a remote research station in Antarctica have sent a desperate email pleading to be rescued before it is too late, saying one member of the team had sexually assaulted another member and threatened to kill another.
&#8220;The 10-person team is trapped at the remote Sanae IV base, which is on a cliff edge about 105 miles inland from the ice shelf, by encroaching ice and weather as the southern hemisphere winter sets,” The Telegraph <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/03/17/scientists-trapped-antarctica-plead-help-sexual-assault/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">noted</a>.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Frightened scientists are begging to come home from Antarctica. <a href="https://t.co/GFrbOymJe6">pic.twitter.com/GFrbOymJe6</a>
&mdash; Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) <a href="https://twitter.com/MailOnline/status/1901701951147933784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2025</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.timeslive.co.za/sunday-times/news/2025-03-16-sa-team-fear-for-safety-at-antarctica-base-after-assaults-death-threat/">The Sunday Times</a> out of South Africa reported that a member of the team sent the email to South African officials stating that the behavior of the dangerous member of the team had become “increasingly egregious,&#8221; and that they were &#8220;experiencing significant difficulty in feeling secure in his presence.”
“It is imperative that immediate action is taken to ensure my safety and the safety of all employees,” the email continued. “Regrettably, [his] behaviour has escalated to a point that is deeply disturbing. Specifically, he physically assaulted [name withheld], which is a grave violation of personal safety and workplace norms. Furthermore, he threatened to kill [name withheld], creating an environment of fear and intimidation. I remain deeply concerned about my own safety, constantly wondering if I might become the next victim.”
“There was a verbal altercation between the team leader and this person,” South African Environment Minister Dion George <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/antarctica-south-africa-scientists-research-base-violence-2045869" target="_blank" rel="noopener">confirmed</a>. “Then it escalated and then that person did physically assault the leader. You can imagine what it&#8217;s like, it is close quarters and people do get cabin fever. It can be very disorientating.”
The Sunday Times reported that the only escape would be to a German base roughly 190 miles away.
One source told the Times, “They were informed of the situation [at Sanae IV] well in advance – way before the season closed &#8230; Now there’s nothing they can do as there are no planes or ships going to or leaving Antarctica. &#8230; They had all the time to remedy the situation but they simply buried their heads in the sand hoping that it’ll go away. They were informed about the problem as early as December.”

NASA’s Operation IceBridge Studies Ice Loss In Antarctica

Horror Film Come To Life: Scientists Trapped In Antarctic Send Desperate Email About Violent Member

Antarctica

Violence

World

Last Friday we attended a “<a href="https://standupforscience2025.org/">Stand up for Science</a>” rally in Seattle, Washington. Given that we both have science PhDs, have spent years doing research, and think science is a great tool for investigating the world, we were hopeful we’d find something to agree with. It wasn’t easy.
The rally was part of a national movement of “Stand Up for Science” events in dozens of cities, including one on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The ostensible purpose was to protest budget cuts to science funding as part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. And certainly the rally we saw offered plenty of budgetary complaints. Some research scientists who had lost their jobs or funding told personal stories that tugged at our heartstrings. There was something palpable throughout the protest, however, that muddied those sympathetic messages: far-Left politics, and lots of it.
Multiple times, after dutifully declaring their personal pronouns, speakers mentioned the importance of preserving “diversity, equity and inclusion,” charged that “When they come after transgender people we must fight,” and lamented Israel’s “attack” on Palestine while asking “How many Palestinians have died in Gaza?” The crowd cheered, and held up numerous protest signs affirming these messages.
Many signs bore trans symbols (one said “Trans Girls for Truth!”), LGBTQ rainbows, Palestine flags, or progressive slogans like “Eat the Rich” (one of which was amusingly biologized as “Phagocytose the Rich”). Calls for DEI and “inclusion” were ubiquitous, with a popular slogan on multiple rainbow-colored signs saying, “Powered by Science, Strengthened by Diversity.” One sign echoed Luigi Mangione, the new progressive folk-hero currently awaiting trial for the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, saying “Deny Fascism, Defend Science, Depose Oligarchy.”
There were plenty of classic “anti-fascist” (aka cultural Marxist) slogans on display. One sign said, “Science over fascism,” another read “Believe scientists, not fascists,” another promoted the hashtag “#fightfascism,” and another declared “Real Americans reject fascism.” Perhaps the strangest showed a picture of a pipet and declared, “This machine kills fascists.” So it seems everyone working in a biology lab must now support Antifa.
We saw an occasional upside-down American flag. One sign showed Trump’s face crossed out, saying “America has no king, it just has a traitor.” Others said “Trust Science Not Trump,” “Farmers Against Trump,” “Dump Trump … Send Elon to Mars,” “Trash Trump,” and of course “F*** Trump.” One sign seemed to yearn for the death of the President, saying “Compost Trump” on one side, while the other side asked, “Is he dead yet?” to which the answer “No” was given, followed by “F***.”
The rally also pushed scientism — the idea that science is the only valid source of knowledge. One sign read “Without Science, It’s All Fiction,” while another turned science into a religion: “Believe, Call, Repent … Science Saves.”
<div id="attachment_890393" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-890393" class="size-large wp-image-890393" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2203278899-864x576.jpg" alt="US TV presenter and former mechanical engineer Bill Nye &quot;The Science Guy&quot; speaks as demonstrators take part in a &quot;Stand Up For Science&quot; rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on March 7, 2025. (Photo by Alex wroblewski / AFP) (Photo by ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2203278899-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2203278899-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2203278899-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2203278899.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP via Getty Images</div>
Amazingly, many in the crowd feigned ignorance that Left-wing ideology permeated the protest. Signs said, “Get your politics out of science!” or “Science is based on facts, not politics,” or “Science is Critical, Not Political.” Yet promoting an unholy union of science and politics is precisely what the “Stand Up for Science Rally” was about.
Most of the smart folks with PhDs at the protest seemed blissfully uninterested in the irony that they were protesting the interference of politics within science while they themselves endorsed the interference of politics within science. But, to his credit, one speaker got the point. Professor Chetan Seshadri of the University of Washington Department of Global Health told the audience precisely why their science funding was being cut.
“The root cause” of these budget cuts, he said, “is the erosion of trust in institutions” and “The erosion of trust in science by the voting public.” He then charged scientists in the audience to show more “humility” in how they do science.
Great idea! But if the rally wanted to reassure mainstream voters that taxpayer-funded science isn’t heavily infiltrated by Left-wing scientists-turned-activists, this absolutely was not the way.
Oh, and the rally repeatedly paid lip service to “academic freedom,” while trashing minority scientific views. The very ethos underlying the event was that “Science” represents a monolithic set of consensus ideas, and “Standing Up for Science” means not just promoting those viewpoints, but squelching those who disagree.
The public is rightfully repelled by this hypocrisy. In recent years they’ve witnessed too many politically motivated attempts to suppress credible scientists who challenged the consensus on Covid vaccines, pandemic lockdowns, evolution, climate change, and more. Here’s a final example.
One speaker at the main &#8220;Stand Up for Science&#8221; Rally in D.C. was Francis Collins, who headed the NIH from 2009 to 2021. As political scientist John West <a href="https://x.com/JGWestDI/status/1898198640331763734" target="_blank" rel="noopener">notes</a>, while Collins played guitar at the rally, “Behind him stood … people carrying signs like ‘Trump Trashes Science,’ ‘He Musk Go,’ and … ‘Diabolical Oligarch Grifting Efficiently’ (DOGE).” Also appearing at the D.C. rally was science popularizer Bill Nye “the science guy,” who charged that those on “the other side” must “oppose this suppression of science” and stop “censoring science.” Yet Collins himself has become notorious for doing just that.
In 2020, Collins sought to dismiss credible experts and lockdown critics like Jay Bhattacharya as “fringe” and “not mainstream science.” But Bhattacharya wasn’t fringe. He was a professor at Stanford, and author of the Great Barrington Declaration — a warning from epidemiologists and public health experts that the lockdowns were doing more harm than good. Scientists like Collins used name-calling and rank-pulling to shout down credible minority scientific viewpoints.
For the record, we’re not “anti-vax” (we both got the Covid vaccine), but much more than that, we are pro-academic freedom. So is the public — and their disgust at politically driven intolerance in the scientific community led them to vote accordingly last November.
As a consequence, Bhattacharya is now poised to replace Collins as head of the NIH, hopefully heralding a new era of real intellectual freedom and objectivity — showing what it really means to “stand up for science.”
* * *
<a href="https://caseyluskin.com/">Casey Luskin</a> and <a href="https://jonathanmclatchie.com/">Jonathan McLatchie</a> are PhD scientists working at Discovery Institute in Seattle.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Stand Up For Science Rally Held In D.C.

This ‘Science’ Rally Took A Hard Left Turn. We Were There.

This 'Science' Rally Took A Hard Left Turn. We Were There.

Bill Nye

Francis Collins

Leftists

Opinion

Seattle

Washington D.C.

Woke Culture

In a first in the history of physics, scientists have turned light into a supersolid.
“A supersolid is a counter-intuitive phase of matter in which its constituent particles are arranged into a crystalline structure, yet they are free to flow without friction,” the abstract for the study in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08616-9">Nature</a> revealed.
“We actually made light into a solid. That’s pretty awesome,” Dimitris Trypogeorgos, from the National Research Council (CNR) in Italy, enthused. Along with his colleagues, he took a different route from prior research, which created supersolids in experiments using extremely cold atoms. Instead, they used the semiconductor aluminium gallium arsenide and a laser, as New Scientist <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2470908-light-has-been-transformed-into-a-supersolid-for-the-first-time/?utm_source=nsnew&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=nsnew_060325&amp;utm_term=Newsletter%20NSNEW_Weekly" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>, adding that the connections between the light and the material created a “polariton,” which formed the supersolid.
“To create their supersolid, the researchers fired a laser at a piece of gallium arsenide that had been shaped with special ridges. As the light struck the ridges, interactions between it and the material resulted in the formation of polaritons—a kind of hybrid particle—which were constrained by the ridges in a predesigned way,” <a href="https://phys.org/news/2025-03-laser-supersolid.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">phys.org</a> wrote. “Doing so forced the polaritons into forming themselves into a supersolid.”
“To confirm that their system had entered a supersolid phase, the researchers measured the density of the polaritons. They exhibited a ‘distinct modulation’ in space, as if it were crystallizing. But they also observed signs of coherence — a sign that the system maintained its superfluid character,” ZME Science <a href="https://www.zmescience.com/science/scientists-just-turned-light-into-a-supersolid-both-solid-and-liquid-at-the-same-time/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">stated</a>.
The advantages of supersolids include use as coolants for quantum devices, aiding the stability of qubits, which store data and perform calculations in quantum computing, use in high-capacity batteries or supercapacitors, or as high-performance lubricants in precision engineering, thus cutting down wear and tear on machinery.
“This is really at the beginning of something new,” Trypogeorgos concluded.
Trypogeorgos has co-authored <a href="https://polaritonics.nanotec.cnr.it/people/dimitris-trypogeorgos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">many articles</a> regarding working with light, including, “Condensation Dynamics in a Two-Dimensional Photonic Crystal Waveguide,” “Supersolidity of Polariton Condensates in Photonic Crystal Waveguides,” “Emerging Supersolidity from a Polariton Condensate in a Photonic Crystal Waveguide,” “Reconfigurable Quantum Fluid Molecules of Bound States in the Continuum,” and “Exciton-Polariton Ring Josephson Junction.”

3D rendering abstract background

Historic First: Scientists Turn Light Into Supersolid

Light

Quantum computing

Starting Friday evening and lasting for a few more evenings, humans will have the rare opportunity to view all seven non-Earth planets in the solar system at the same time. The next time such an opportunity will arise won’t be until 2040.
The planets will be formed in what is called a planetary alignment, or “planetary parade.” Normally, such a view is not possible because the orbital period of each planet is different.
“The eight planets in our solar system orbit the sun in roughly the same plane because they all originally formed from the same <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2260005-weve-seen-a-planet-being-born-while-its-star-is-still-forming/">disc of debris</a> around the sun,” New Scientist <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2470069-how-to-see-every-planet-in-the-solar-system-at-once-this-week/">explains</a>. “The line the sun traces across the daytime sky – called the ecliptic – aligns with this plane, so when the planets appear in the sky, they all appear roughly along the ecliptic. It isn’t a perfect line of planets, because their orbits are tilted slightly, but it is fairly close.&#8221;
The outlet stated that the best time to view the planets is just after sunset. Mars, Jupiter, and Uranus, unlike Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Neptune will not lie close to the horizon and thus will not disappear as quickly.
“It’s great to see the interest the planetary parade is generating,” Professor David Armstrong of the University of Warwick, U.K., reflected. “Engagement in astronomy, looking up at the sky, and appreciating the wonder of our solar system are all fantastic, and I encourage anyone interested to take the time to step outside and see the planets with their own eyes if they get the chance over the next few days, and a clear sky.”
Ed Krupp, director of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, cautioned that people needed more than the naked eye to see the planets. He asserted that the planets “are always more or less on the same path, and occasionally a few more of them are visible in the night sky. But the general message is that, ‘I will go outside and see these planets strung like pearls across the sky.’ That’s just not the case.”
“If you wanted to see Mercury, you might get lucky around the evening, shortly after the sunset, in the twilight, but only if you knew where to look,” Krupp added. “Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are all up in the sky between the western horizon and a bit overhead to the east.”
“Uranus and Neptune are hard to spot without a telescope, as both planets are blue and orbit in the dim outskirts of the solar system,” The Los Angeles Times <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-02-26/7-planet-parade-lines-up-in-the-sky-on-friday-how-to-see-it-from-socal">noted</a>.

All 7 Other Planets Visible Simultaneously Over Next Few Days

Earth

General

Imagine we&#8217;re back in the late 1980s or early 1990s. You&#8217;re feeling depressed and no one wants to talk to you, so you pay a psychiatrist to listen to your problems. But even after talking things out with your shrink, you&#8217;re still not feeling great. All hope seems lost. Then the shrink tells you not to despair, because you have the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial for a new class of drug that has the potential to cure all of your symptoms, called Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, or SSRIs.
If you enter the trial, you have a chance of getting the new SSRI drug, or you could get a placebo that does nothing. You&#8217;re told it&#8217;s a win-win: If you participate in the clinical trial, Big Pharma will get some more data on whether this new class of drugs actually works. And you have a chance of being cured. If you&#8217;re not cured, then in all likelihood, the worst-case scenario isn&#8217;t a big deal. Either you get a placebo and nothing changes, or you get the real drug, which has relatively modest side effects — like dry mouth, nausea, dizziness, and so on. And in exchange for enduring those side effects, your depression might go away. So what do you have to lose?
This was the process drug companies used to convince the world that SSRIs worked. After running a bunch of &#8220;double-blind&#8221; clinical trials, they found that people who took the SSRIs ultimately reported that they felt better than people who received the placebo. Therefore, we were told that the whole &#8220;serotonin theory of depression&#8221; must be true. After all, when people took SSRIs and had more serotonin in their brains, their depression went away. The people who took the sugar pill didn&#8217;t do as well. So there you have it. Science wins again.
There&#8217;s a major problem with this whole methodology, however. It&#8217;s a problem that somehow didn&#8217;t occur to any of the media outlets or physicians who pushed SSRIs for decades. You might have to think about it for a few minutes, but eventually it becomes obvious. Here&#8217;s the issue: In practice, these clinical trials weren&#8217;t actually double-blind. The vast majority of patients were able to &#8220;break blind,&#8221; as they say in the industry. And that means they were able to figure out whether they got the real SSRI or the placebo. That&#8217;s because, in most cases, the patients who got the real drug very quickly noticed they were experiencing some of the side effects. After all, if you take a pill and you start experiencing dry mouth or nausea or something like that, then you&#8217;ll probably conclude that you&#8217;re taking an active medication. And that&#8217;s exactly what happened in many of these trials. In fact, in one study, <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4172306/#c25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">conducted</a> by researchers at Columbia, 89% of participants correctly guessed that they were on the SSRI. That&#8217;s an extremely high number for a clinical trial.
Now you can probably see the issue. If the studies aren&#8217;t really double-blind, then we have no way of knowing if the SSRIs actually improved people&#8217;s moods. It&#8217;s quite possible that these patients were actually feeling better because they thought they were taking a wonder drug. And then they convinced themselves that it was working, so they told the therapist they were improving. This is commonly referred to as the &#8220;placebo effect,&#8221; and the only way to defeat it — particularly when you&#8217;re trying to assess the effectiveness of psychoactive drugs — is with double-blind studies. And that didn&#8217;t happen with SSRIs.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1539-the-matt-walsh-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
This is not some crackpot theory, by the way. A few years ago, a researcher at Harvard named Irving Kirsch <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4172306/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found:</a>
<blockquote>Analysis of the published data and the unpublished data that were hidden by drug companies reveals that most (if not all) of the benefits are due to the placebo effect &#8230; The relatively small differences between drug and placebo in antidepressant trials are at least in part due to &#8216;breaking blind&#8217; and discerning that one is in the drug group, because of the side effects produced by the drug.</blockquote>
Kirsch goes on to suggest that, instead of SSRIs, maybe all patients should be given a placebo. After all, based on the FDA&#8217;s data, less than 45% of SSRI trials showed a statistically significant benefit of the SSRI over a placebo. And the placebo, of course, has no side effects.
But as we all know, there&#8217;s no money in prescribing sugar pills. So instead, doctors and the pharmaceutical industry pushed SSRIs. Based on these garbage clinical trials — which fall apart under the slimmest possible scrutiny — the use of SSRIs among teenagers and adults in this country increased by almost 400% from the early 1990&#8217;s to 2006. And it kept going up. By 2014, one in ten adults was filling an SSRI prescription. From 2015 to 2021, SSRI use increased by another 35%. We&#8217;re talking about tens of millions of prescriptions here.
Meanwhile, the number of Americans suffering from depression has kept increasing. According to Gallup, in 2023, &#8220;The percentage of U.S. adults who report having been diagnosed with depression at some point in their lifetime reached 29.0%, nearly 10 percentage points higher than in 2015.&#8221; In other words, we&#8217;re more depressed than ever, and at the same time, we&#8217;re taking more antidepressants than ever.
These prescriptions have continued even after one of the most prominent medical journals on the planet admitted that actually, doctors no longer think low serotonin levels are linked to depression. In other words, if these drugs actually work, then no one can actually explain why. <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Quoting</a> from the journal Molecular Psychiatry: &#8220;Our comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity. Most studies found no evidence of reduced serotonin activity in people with depression compared to people without. &#8230; This review suggests that the huge research effort based on the serotonin hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression.&#8221;
I&#8217;ll say that again. &#8220;This review suggests that the huge research effort based on the serotonin hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression.&#8221; This was a paper published in the summer of 2022, by one of the top journals in the entire field of medicine. No serious person disputes it.
And yet, to this day, if you suggest that depression isn&#8217;t related to a chemical imbalance, as I did this week, you will be dogpiled for doing so. It’s been impossible to have anything approaching an honest conversation about depression and SSRIs because many of the people on these drugs will lash out with blind rage if you even suggest that depression might have causes that go deeper than “chemical imbalances.” If you try to talk about the problem of despair with any depth or nuance at all, you are screamed out of the room by drug addicts who don’t know they’re drug addicts. The truth is, though, that none of the support for SSRIs is based in reality. This whole class of drugs has been peddled to tens of millions of people based on complete fabrications. It&#8217;s not an overstatement to say that this is one of the great medical scandals of our time.
What&#8217;s changing now is that, finally, someone in a position of authority is finally willing to investigate these drugs — and many other drugs like them. A few days ago, via executive order, the Trump administration established something called the &#8220;Make America Healthy Again Commission,&#8221; or &#8220;MAHA,&#8221; and it&#8217;ll be headed by RFK Jr. The purpose of the commission, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/establishing-the-presidents-make-america-healthy-again-commission/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to the White House, is to determine why Americans have shorter life expectancies than people living in other nations — as well as higher rates of chronic diseases like cancer and asthma. Part of this effort means assessing the, &#8220;prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs.&#8221; Watch:
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HHS Secretary RFK Jr. pledges “NOTHING is gonna be off limits” in chronic disease investigation
“The childhood vaccine schedule, electromagnetic radiation, glyphosate, other pesticides, ultra processed foods, artificial food additives, SSRI and other psychiatric drugs, PFAs,… <a href="https://t.co/kWV2LHuqTG">pic.twitter.com/kWV2LHuqTG</a>
&mdash; Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) <a href="https://twitter.com/Holden_Culotta/status/1891888695185375248?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 18, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
As of right now, as you heard, RFK&#8217;s commission is going to be focused on gathering data. They&#8217;re not banning anything outright. They&#8217;re not punishing doctors for prescribing anything. Instead, they&#8217;re doing what the government should&#8217;ve done several decades ago. They&#8217;re looking at the existing evidence and determining whether it&#8217;s valid or not. They&#8217;re not going to simply accept &#8220;clinical trials&#8221; without looking closely at them. They&#8217;re going to see whether it makes sense to keep prescribing these drugs to so many Americans, particularly young people.
You have to wonder what kind of person would object to a fact-finding effort like this. After all, if SSRIs (and the other drugs he mentioned) actually work as advertised, then the extra scrutiny wouldn&#8217;t be a problem at all. But RFK Jr. has received a lot of push back already. Newsweek, for example, recently took aim at RFK&#8217;s claim that antidepressants can be more addictive than heroin. They cited a Stanford professor as <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/rfk-jr-antidepressants-ssris-drugs-maha-2032297" target="_blank" rel="noopener">saying</a>: &#8220;Antidepressants and heroin are in different universes when it comes to addiction risk. In my 35 years in the addiction field, I&#8217;ve met only two or three people who thought they were addicted to antidepressants versus thousands who were addicted to heroin and other opioids.&#8221;
So we&#8217;re meant to conclude that RFK is a conspiracy theorist for even suggesting that SSRIs can cause dependency. Just a few years ago, however, that was not a conspiracy theory at all. It was settled science. In 2018, the New York Times published an article entitled, &#8220;Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit.&#8221; Here&#8217;s some of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/health/antidepressants-withdrawal-prozac-cymbalta.html?rsrc=ss&amp;unlocked_article_code=1.s04.GyfR.MCfR9TrwZ4dZ&amp;smid=nytcore-ios-share&amp;referringSource=articleShare" target="_blank" rel="noopener">relevant findings</a>: &#8220;In New Zealand, where prescriptions are at historic highs, a survey of long-term users found that withdrawal was the most common complaint, cited by three-quarters of long-term users. &#8230; In a recent survey of 250 long-term users of psychiatric drugs — most commonly antidepressants — about half who wound down their prescriptions rated the withdrawal as severe. Nearly half who tried to quit could not do so because of these symptoms. In another study of 180 longtime antidepressant users, withdrawal symptoms were reported by more than 130. Almost half said they felt addicted to antidepressants.&#8221;
Now, if you compare those numbers to the percentage of heroin users who become addicted within a month of using the drug, you&#8217;ll find that RFK actually has a point. By one <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2681168" target="_blank" rel="noopener">estimate</a>, up to 38% of new heroin users become dependent within a year. That&#8217;s a lot, obviously, but it&#8217;s less than the number of antidepressant users who reported feeling severe withdrawal symptoms.
This is why RFK&#8217;s commission is an important step. It&#8217;s clear we have a lot of evidence that antidepressants are causing far more harm than most people realize. But they&#8217;re not seeing the evidence because it&#8217;s being suppressed. A transparent commission can solve that problem. It can also address this objection, which was <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/kennedy-rfk-antidepressants-ssri-school-shootings/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">just published</a> by the Left-wing outlet Mother Jones.: &#8220;In a 2023 livestream on X with Elon Musk, [RFK] claimed that &#8216;tremendous circumstantial evidence&#8217; suggested people taking antidepressants were more likely to commit school shootings. (Actually, most school shooters were not taking those drugs, evidence shows.).&#8221;
This is another common refrain you hear from defenders of SSRIs. They say &#8220;most school shooters&#8221; were not taking SSRIs. As we&#8217;ve previously discussed, there are two major problems with this line. First of all, we don&#8217;t know what drugs a school shooter was taking unless the family discloses it. The police and hospitals won&#8217;t tell anyone, citing privacy laws. And in pretty much no case does the family definitely state that the shooter wasn&#8217;t taking any kind of medication. Secondly, a lot of &#8220;mass shootings&#8221; are really gang violence, and those incidents get lumped in with school shootings. So they flood the data set, and make it hard to determine whether SSRIs are influencing a certain kind of shooting.
Anecdotally, of course, you&#8217;ll find plenty of evidence that SSRIs might be linked to school shootings. From Columbine to Northern Illinois University to the Navy Yard to the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, to the black church in Charleston to the Old National Bank in Kentucky, the shooters were all confirmed to be on antidepressants. In response to these shootings, you might say that correlation doesn&#8217;t prove causation. After all, these shooters were taking SSRIs because they were unstable. That doesn&#8217;t necessarily prove SSRIs made their condition worse.
And that&#8217;s true. But there is additional, affirmative evidence to believe that SSRIs are in fact making these shooters&#8217; condition worse. For one thing, there&#8217;s the FDA black box label on these drugs, which indicates that they can &#8220;increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior.&#8221; And then there&#8217;s this. A few years ago, researchers writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5066537/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">found</a> that antidepressants doubled the risk of suicidality and violence, when they&#8217;re given to healthy people with no mental health disorders. From the journal: &#8220;Antidepressants double the occurrence of events in adult healthy volunteers that can lead to suicide and violence.&#8221;
How is that possible? The truth is we have no idea. We have no clue why these drugs supposedly work in the first place. And we have no idea why they might turn normal people into violent maniacs. It&#8217;s obviously a very concerning finding, especially given how much doctors are over-prescribing these drugs to any patient who claims to be depressed.
Doctors would rather prescribe those drugs than tell patients the truth about their depression, and how to deal with it. I can say that, in my personal life, I have known many people who take antidepressants. And in almost every case, there are glaringly obvious things in their lives that would cause any normal person to be depressed. Depression is a totally rational response to their circumstance. Instead of making lifestyle changes or dealing with the underlying trauma, however, they are given drugs that effectively numb their brain. It’s like giving someone a painkiller to make it hurt less when they put their hand on a hot stove. The stove is still burning them. The pain from the stove is not the problem. Their hands and nervous system work just fine. It’s where they’re putting their hand, that’s the problem.
The reason the medical establishment and Democrats are panicking over RFK&#8217;s commission is simple. The moment people realize they have agency — when they realize they can take their hand off the stove — they become a lot harder to control. They also become a lot harder to monetize. For Big Pharma and corporate media outlets that sell advertising space to Big Pharma, the implications are obviously dire. Nevertheless, for Americans hoping to reverse this country&#8217;s long-standing public health decline, after a generation of junk science and fake clinical trials, it&#8217;s a change that&#8217;s long overdue.

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