The FDA Just Greenlit a Nationwide Peptide Advance

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPHThe recent FDA panel on peptides has created great enthusiasm in the health freedom and biohacking space, however, without large NIH trials or safety registries, the field will be left without the foundations of clinical evidence.  I touched on this recently with Dr Gina Loudon.🧪 FDA Peptide Deliberations: Importance of Route-of-AdministrationThe FDA’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee (PCAC) just held its most consequential peptide meeting in years — July 23–24, 2026 — and voted to recommendBPC-157, KPV, TB-500, and MOTS-cfor the 503A bulks list, with favorable votes on Epitalon (7-4), Semax (8-5), but rejected Emideltide (DSIP) (6-7), following on Day 2. The margins were tight: 8–6 with one abstention across the board, with MOTS-c squeaking through at 7–5–2.But buried in the procedural drama is a question the FDA itself keeps circling without landing on:route of administration.💉 Injectable Is the DefaultEvery single one of these seven peptides under review isprimarily used as an injectablein practice. BPC-157, TB-500, MOTS-c, KPV — these are administered via subcutaneous or intramuscular injection, with some intranasal and oral formulations.The FDA’s own briefing documents, released June 29–30, flagged this explicitly. Their four recurring concerns across all seven substances:Inadequate human safety dataCharacterization and impurity concernsImmunogenicity risk— this one is directly tied to parenteral administrationInsufficient historical 503A compounding-pharmacy useThat third point —immunogenicity— is where route of administration becomes the unspoken center of gravity. Injecting peptides bypasses the gut’s immune-surveillance machinery and delivers foreign amino acid sequences directly into circulation. The FDA’s career staff hammered this: peptide impurities and sequence variations can trigger immune responses when injected that would be neutralized or simply not occur with topical or oral routes.  The most expedient way of clarifying these concerns is for the National Institutes of Health to fund and conduct large prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized trials in specific disease categories with adjudicated and objective outcomes.  Intravenous therapies are very amenable to this approach.🔬 The BPC-157 ParadoxBPC-157 is the poster child for this tension. It’s a pentadecapeptide fragment of BPC, a protein found in human gastric juice. Nature designed it to function in thegut. The original preclinical work — and there’s a substantial body of it, mostly out of Croatian labs — focused on oral administration for GI indications like ulcerative colitis and NSAID-induced lesions.Yet the biohacking and wellness communities have almost entirely converged onsubcutaneous injectionas the standard route, even for systemic healing. The “Wolverine stack” — BPC-157 + TB-500 injected together — is practically folk medicine at this point.The FDA’s Russell Wesdyk flagged what he called a “foundational challenge”:the agency cannot actually define what these substances are. Different vendors selling “BPC-157” are providing peptides with variations in sequence, purity, and salt form (free base vs. acetate). When you inject a poorly characterized peptide mixture, the immunogenicity risk isn’t theoretical — it’s a direct function of the route.  All of this could be clarified with product manufacture and provision in a randomized trials.  Compounding pharmacies are not in a position to fund these trials, that’s the role of the NIH.🧬 MOTS-c and the Mitochondrial Injection QuestionMOTS-c is particularly interesting here. It’s a mitochondrial-derived peptide — 16 amino acids encoded in the mitochondrial genome — that regulates metabolic homeostasis. The academic work on it (mostly from the Pinchas Cohen lab at USC) has focused on metabolic disorders and aging.The route-of-administration question for MOTS-c is even sharper than for BPC-157. Mitochondrial peptides aren’t supposed to be floating around in extracellular space at pharmacological concentrations. Injecting them subcutaneously creates a pharmacokinetic profile that bears zero resemblance to their endogenous signaling patterns. The PCAC voted to recommend it anyway, but the 7–5–2 split suggests real discomfort with what amounts to anuncontrolled human experiment via injection.🏭 The Compounding Angle: Why Route Matters for 503AHere’s where the regulatory mechanics intersect with the science. Section 503A compounding is forindividualized patient prescriptionsprepared by licensed pharmacies. The whole framework assumes a physician has weighed risks and benefits for a specific patient.But if these peptides land on the 503A bulks list, the actual landscape will be:Telehealth platforms prescribing injectable peptides at scaleCompounding pharmacies shipping pre-loaded syringes or multi-dose vials nationwideNo requirement for large, prospective clinical trials or adverse event reporting— this is the crucial gap. FDA-approved injectable drugs have mandatory MedWatch reporting. Compounded injectables under 503A do not.ThePartnership for Safe MedicinesandPublic Citizenboth raised this exact point during the meeting, framing bulks-list inclusion as a de facto “uncontrolled human trial without necessary adverse event reporting.” They’re not wrong about the mechanics, even if their motives are gatekeeping.🧪 Oral, Intranasal, Topical: The Routes Considered SafeThe FDA deliberations paid little attention is paid tonon-injectable routes. BPC-157 has oral and buccal bioavailability data from animal models. Semax is used intranasally in Russia with decades of clinical experience. KPV has been studied in topical formulations for wound healing.  The Wellness Company’s REGENERATE combines BPC-157, KPV, and TB-500.The FDA’s framework has evaluated narrowly specified indications (ulcerative colitis for BPC-157, wound healing for KPV), however, large NIH clinical trials are needed for broad applications. The FDA has not said: “This peptide probably has a better safety profile orally — let’s evaluate that route separately.”  At TWC we believe REGENERATE is responsibly presented and administered allowing for topical absorption allowing its impact in the body to help heal tissues, particularly for musculoskeletal problems.🔮 Where This Is HeadedThe PCAC vote is advisory. The FDA’s career staff recommended against every single one of these peptides. Historically, the agency follows staff recommendations about two-thirds of the time — but the current panel was stacked with eight new members, several with peptide industry ties, which is exactly why the votes broke the way they did.RFK Jr. at HHS has publicly endorsed easing restrictions and he oversees both the FDA and the NIH. If there is no trial or registry infrastructure, once these peptides are being compounded and injected at scale by a population that learned about them on podcasts, the first case of injection-site abscess, anaphylaxis, immune-mediated cross-reactivity, or death after infusion is going to test whether the FDA’s enforcement discretion was wise.Large, prospective, double-blind placebo-controlled trials are warranted for the higher risk products to fully understand potential clinical indications and safety of the parenteral products.FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse™) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Please subscribe toFOCAL POINTSas a paying ($5 monthly) or founder member so we can continue to bring you the truth.AlterAImay be used to assist in searches, synthesis, and review.Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPHChief Scientific Officer, The Wellness Companywww.twc.health/focalpointsFDA Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee (PCAC), Meeting Briefing Documents, June 29–30, 2026. Federal Docket FDA-2025-N-6895.FDA, “Interim Policy on Bulk Drug Substances Used in Compounding Under Section 503A,” revised April 15, 2026.Associated Press, “FDA reviews BPC-157, TB-500 and other peptides favored by RFK Jr.,” July 23, 2026.FDA Law Blog (Hyman, Phelps & McNamara), “PEPTIDE-L WAVE! PCAC Approves Four Bulk Drug Substances for the 503A List,” July 24, 2026.NPR, “FDA panel supports broadening access to peptides popular with wellness influencers,” Will Stone, July 23, 2026.BBC News, “US health panel loosens restrictions for controversial peptides popular online,” July 23, 2026.Bloomberg Law, “FDA Panel to Revisit Biden Peptide Ban as It Weighs Looser Rules,” July 21, 2026.ArentFox Schiff LLP, “50 Shades of Legally Gray: FDA’s Juicy Peptide Cliffhanger,” July 17, 2026.Goodwin Law, “FDA Signals Potentially Evolving Stance Toward Compounding of Certain Peptides,” May 2026.Peptide News Digest, “What the FDA’s Briefing Documents Actually Say About Each of the Seven Peptides Going to PCAC,” June 30, 2026.Clinical Peptide Society, testimony submitted to PCAC, public docket FDA-2025-N-6895.Partnership for Safe Medicines, Public Citizen, and Collaborative for Evidence-Based Medicine, oral testimony before PCAC, July 23, 2026.

Summary: FDA’s Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee (PCAC) voted without large NIH clinical trials or registries in place.


NIAID’s David Morens Pleads Guilty to Concealing Records of Coronavirus Gain-of-Function Research Grant

The U.S. Department of Justice just announced in a press release thatFormer Senior NIAID Official Pleads Guilty to Charges Connected to Concealing Federal Records During COVID-19 Pandemic.David M. Morens served as aSenior Advisor to the Director(specifically in NIAID’s Office of the Director) from 2006 through 2022, and was also a long-time senior advisor to former NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.The charges pertain to the notorious NIH grant titledUnderstanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergencethat funded Peter Daszak, Ralph Baric et al. to perform their gain-of-function research on SARS bat coronaviruses with their colleagueShi Zhengliat the Wuhan Institute of Virology.The gist of the federal criminal charge to which Morens pleaded guilty is, according to the press release:Morens, Co-Conspirator 1, Co-Conspirator 2, and others conspired during the COVID-19 pandemic to defraud the United States after NIH terminated Co-Conspirator 1’s grant. NIH terminated the grant,Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence, based on allegations that COVID-19 emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in Wuhan, China. NIAID awarded the grant to Company 1 and Co-Conspirator 1, who made a subaward to the WIV.Following the termination, Morens and Co-Conspirator 2 pledged to help Co-Conspirator 1 restore the termination of the bat coronavirus grant and counter the narrative that COVID-19 leaked from a lab. In anticipation that their communications would be requested through FOIA Requests, Morens, Co-Conspirator 1, and Co-Conspirator 2 agreed in writing to intentionally hide their communications from public view by corresponding using Morens’s personal Gmail account, rather than his official NIH email account.The co-conspirators used Morens’s personal Gmail account to exchange non-public NIH information; correspond about their efforts to influence NIH to fund Company 1; exchange edits to drafts of letters addressed to NIH leadership for Company 1 and Co-Conspirator 1; and “back-channel” information to Senior NIAID Official 1. According to court documents, each of these matters fell within Morens’s role as senior advisor and constituted federal records that needed to be created, maintained, and exchanged on government systems.I perceive this criminal charge and guilty plea for conspiracy to defraud the US government as akin to Al Capone being convicted for income tax evasion. The real issue here is not the concealment of public records and communications, but the illegal creation and subsequent illegal concealment of a bio-weapon in a Chinese biosecurity lab that resulted in incalculable death and damage to all of humanity.Though Morens will likely serve time behind bars, his guilty plea and his punishment for this particular act of fraud strike me as a distraction from the elephant in the room.Morens was one of Fauci’s top advisors, and I find it highly conspicuous that he took such a keen personal interest inUnderstanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,which was reviewed by the NIH in January 2014—the beginning of the period covered by Dr. Fauci’s preemptive pardon, as I documented in my postPresident Biden’s Preemptive Pardon of Fauci.Subscribe nowShare

Summary: Like Al Capone going to jail for income tax evasion.


The First Intervention: Eat Differently

FromHomesteading for HealthThe following is an excerpt from our book,Homesteading for Health. It comes from a section in which we move from diagnosing what has gone wrong with the modern food system to the much more practical question:What can we actually do about it?The short answer is surprisingly simple. Eat real food. Prioritize protein. Reduce processed carbohydrates and ultra-processed foods. Pay attention to how your food was grown and raised. And, where possible, shorten the distance between yourself and the people, animals, and soil that produce what you eat.For us, this was not an abstract exercise in nutrition. In 2022, both Robert and I were in poor metabolic health despite believing, as many people do, that we ate reasonably well. Changing what we ate, and eventually producing much more of that food ourselves, changed our health dramatically. We each lost fifty pounds and kept it off. Other chronic problems improved or disappeared.That experience became one of the central ideas behindHomesteading for Health:you do not have to become a homesteader to take back some control over your food, your health, and your environment.You do not need forty acres, a dairy cow, or a flock of chickens. You can begin with a garden bed, a farmers market, a local farmer, better choices at the grocery store, or simply learning to cook again.The book goes much further into the science, the food system, regenerative agriculture, environmental exposures, and what we have learned from building our own farm. But this section is where much of it becomes practical.It begins with the first intervention:eat differently.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share everywhere: X, Facebook, Notes, or email.  All is good!ShareThe First Intervention: Eat DifferentlyWe have described, at length, what the modern food system has done to dietary patterns. Now we want to describe, from our own experience, what changing those patterns actually looks like and what it produces.In 2022, after a decade of chronic stress, significant injuries, and the disruptions of the pandemic years, both of us were in poor metabolic health. We were technically obese. Robert was dealing with cardiac arrhythmia, chronic digestive problems, and the lingering effects of post-COVID illness and vaccine injury. Jill was managing neuropathic damage from a trimalleolar fracture and recovering from facial reconstruction after a horse injury. We had been vegetarians for over thirty years and believed we were eating reasonably well. The blood work told a different story.When Dr. Brooke Miller, Robert’s physician, reviewed those numbers, his recommendation was blunt: Eat meat, prioritize protein, and eliminate the processed carbohydrates that had quietly colonized our diet over three decades. We spent a month researching before acting. Then we acted.What followed was not a temporary diet. It was a structural change. We committed to whole foods: our own eggs, grass-fed meat, raw milk from cow shares and then our growing mini Jersey herd, garden vegetables, and organic grains we milled ourselves. We eliminated seed oils, added sugars, refined flour, and processed foods. We adopted intermittent fasting and reduced total caloric intake by 30 to 40 percent. Over the following year, we each lost fifty pounds. Years later, we have not regained them. More significantly, the arthritic symptoms that had plagued both of us largely resolved. Robert’s chronic digestive distress, which had followed him for years, is gone. These were not minor adjustments to a marginal condition. They were meaningful reversals of what had seemed like the inevitable trajectory of aging.We tell this story not because our experience proves anything at a population level (it does not) but because we want to be concrete about what a dietary transformation looks and feels like when it is grounded in real food you have grown and raised yourself. The farm did not just provide the ingredients; it provided the framework. When you are eating eggs you collected this morning, milk from an animal you milked yesterday, and vegetables you harvested from your own soil, the relationship to food changes. You stop eating passively. You start eating with intention.That is available to everyone in some form, whether you have forty acres or a balcony.What to eat: the non-prescriptionThe science of nutrition is genuinely contested in many of its particulars, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What is not contested, however, is the broad direction. Dietary patterns centered on minimally processed whole foods such as animal protein, vegetables, fruits, intact grains, and healthy fats, consistently outperform dietary patterns built around refined carbohydrates, added sugars, and ultra-processed products. This finding holds across observational studies, feeding trials, and the lived experience of millions of people who have changed how they eat and watched their health improve as a result.Our own approach, shaped by both the research and by what our farm actually produces, centers on several consistent principles.Prioritize protein from quality sources.Eggs from pastured hens, meat from animals raised on grass or hay, fish, dairy from animals on pasture . . . these are among the most nutrient-dense foods available and were central to human diets long before industrial agriculture created the alternatives. If you raise your own livestock, you know exactly what went into them. If you do not, buy as close to the source as you can and ask questions.Eliminate or sharply reduce ultra-processed foods.This category covers most of what fills the interior aisles of a modern grocery store: packaged snacks, breakfast cereals, commercial bread, processed meats, most fast food, sweetened beverages, and any product whose ingredient list reads like a chemistry text. These foods are engineered for palatability and shelf life, not for nutrition. They deliver calories efficiently and nutrients poorly. They are also, as we have discussed, the primary vehicle by which glyphosate and other agricultural chemical residues reach the human body.Reduce refined grains and added sugars.White flour, white rice, corn syrup, and the dozens of sweetener variants that appear on ingredient labels under different names all share the same metabolic effect: rapid glucose delivery, insulin response, and, over time, the progressive impairment of insulin sensitivity. This is not about eliminating all carbohydrates. It is about recognizing that the structure of a food, whether whole grain or refined, intact starch or extruded powder, matters as much as its macronutrient composition.Use fats that humans have actually eaten for most of their history.Butter, lard, tallow, olive oil. These are the fats that appeared on traditional tables before industrial seed oil extraction became economically viable. The evidence that saturated fat causes cardiovascular disease, which drove the low-fat era and the substitution of seed oils for animal fats, has not held up.The evidence is accumulating that excess seed oil consumption, particularly the omega-6-rich linoleic acid found in canola, soybean, corn, and sunflower oils, promotes inflammation. We are not claiming certainty here. We are suggesting that when in doubt, the food your great-grandmother would recognize as food is a reasonable heuristic.Source food grown in living soil.The regenerative farming evidence reviewed earlier in this section makes clear that how food is grown matters to its nutritional content. Organic certification does not guarantee regenerative management, but it does prohibit synthetic herbicide and pesticide use and is therefore a reasonable proxy for lower chemical exposure. Local food, when you can know something about its production, is often preferable to certified organic from a distant source. Grown yourself is best of all.Reduce glyphosate exposure where practical.Given the accumulating evidence reviewed in Chapter 4, a precautionary approach is warranted. Buy and grow organic grains, legumes, and oilseeds when possible. If you bake, use organic flour or mill your own from organic berries. Be attentive to conventionally grown oats, wheat, and chickpeas, which are among the crops most commonly treated with preharvest desiccants. Jill regularly sources Italian durum or einkorn wheat pasta and flour, which are subject to different regulatory requirements than their American equivalents. These are not guarantees. They are reductions in a cumulative exposure whose long-term consequences we do not yet fully understand, and where the asymmetry of risk clearly favors caution.The next section of the book is titled “practical starting points,” and for that, we direct you to the book itself, and now the audiobook version (personally recorded by Robert) which is sold from many bookstores and digital distributors listed below, for those who want to listen instead of reading.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Homesteading for Healthis available throughAmazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Target, Walmart, independent booksellers, and other retailers in the U.S. and internationally.Amazon- hardcover, Kindle and Audio currently listed at$29.99. The shopping listing shows it as in stock.Barnes & Noble— hardcover, currently listed at$29.99. The shopping listing shows it as in stock.Target— hardcover, currently$22.99, discounted from $29.99.Walmart— hardcover, listed at$22.99, sold and shipped by Walmart.Books-A-Million— hardcover, listed at$22.99.BookPal— hardcover, particularly interesting forbulk purchases. They advertise quantity discounts beginning at 25 copies and going up through 1,000+.Skyhorse Publishing— the publisher’s page has direct purchasing plus links to several retailers.There are alsodigital editionsthroughApple Books, as well asBarnes & Noble, Google Play, and Kobo

Summary: A section from our new book: “Homesteading for Health”


Moderna, the Rasputin Company

With former NIAID director Anthony Fauci in the Senate hot seat and his senior advisor David MorensPleadingGuilty to Concealing Records of Coronavirus Gain-of-Function Research Grant,NIAID’s commercial partner in developing the mRNA-1273 “Spikevax” against COVID-19,Moderna Inc., just enjoyed one of the best days in its company history, with its stock spiking 177% in today’s trading.A few weeks ago I posted an essay on this newsletter (Senator Paul Should Ask Fauci Why Moderna’s 2016 Patented Gene Sequence Turned Up in SARS-CoV-2)about what appears to be smoking gun evidence that Moderna and NIAID were part of the cabal that created SARS-CoV-2 or at least a critical part of its genome around the year 2015.Today, Moderna and its partner Merck announced positive interim results from the Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial ofintismeran autogene(also known as V940 or mRNA-4157), a personalized mRNA-based neoantigen therapy.Modernaclaimsthis is the first successful late-stage clinical readout for any mRNA cancer vaccine and the first time an individualized neoantigen therapy has demonstrated a clinically meaningful benefit over standard care in a randomized Phase 3 setting.The therapy targets high-risk melanoma—the deadliest form of skin cancer—specifically in patients with completely resected Stage IIB–IV disease. Melanoma remains a significant public health challenge, with more than 1.5 million people in the United States living with the disease as of 2023.After surgical removal of the primary tumor, many patients still face a substantial risk of recurrence or metastasis.Moderna claimsthatIntismeranis designed to address this residual threat by analyzing mutations unique to each patient’s tumor, encoding those neoantigens into an mRNA sequence, and delivering the personalized vaccine (typically up to nine intramuscular doses) so that the patient’s immune system learns to recognize and attack residual cancer cells.In the trial, the vaccine was given in combination with Merck’s established PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda), the current standard of care in the adjuvant setting.Moderna claimsthat evidence of effectiveness is compelling., touting that its pre-planned interim analysis of the 1,137-patient trial, the combination met its primary endpoint of recurrence-free survival and a key secondary endpoint of distant metastasis-free survival, both with statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements over pembrolizumab alone.Moderna claimsits Phase 3 findings build on earlier Phase 2b data (KEYNOTE-942), which showed sustained benefit at five years of follow-up: a 49% reduction in the risk of recurrence or death and a 59% reduction in the risk of distant metastasis or death compared with pembrolizumab monotherapy.Regarding safety,Moderna claimsPhase 3 results indicated that the safety profile of intismeran plus pembrolizumab was consistent with prior studies of the combination, with no new safety signals observed.Moderna claimsof its Phase 2 data that most treatment-related adverse events were low-grade and transient (fatigue being among the most common), grade ≥3 events related to the mRNA vaccine were limited (approximately 10–11% of patients), and there were no grade 4 or 5 events attributed to intismeran itself. Immune-mediated adverse events occurred at rates similar to pembrolizumab alone.Moderna claimsthese data highlight intismeran autogene as a potential new standard for adjuvant melanoma treatment. The companies are already discussing regulatory submission. If approved, the therapy could become available as early as 2027, “offering thousands of high-risk patients a more personalized and effective means of preventing disease return.”Finally,Moderna claimsthe success also strengthens the broader promise of mRNA technology beyond infectious disease vaccines, opening avenues for similar approaches in other solid tumors.I suppose we shall see how this plays out. AuthorsNicolas Hulscher, MPH, Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH, and John A. Catanzaro, NMD, PhD just published a paper titledReanalysis of FDA Clinical Data for mFLUSIVA (mRNA-1010): Unfavorable Risk-Benefit Profile Supports Market Withdrawalin which they concluded that Moderna’sclaimsabout the safety and efficacy of its mRNA influenza vaccine do not stand up to scrutiny.Considering the abominable safety and efficacy profile of the Moderna-NIAID mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, it is only prudent to regard today’s news of a melanoma vaccine with skepticism.Today’s stunning stock performance was not only the result of market enthusiasm for the announcement, but also of a major short squeeze, as 14% of its free float (roughly 49.8 million to 52.4 million shares were sold short prior to today’s news.A witty friend has anointed Moderna the “Rasputin Stock” which made me laugh, as Rasputin has long struck me as one of the most mysterious charlatans in history. For those who are not familiar with his story, Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (1869–1916) was born a peasant in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye. For much of his life he was a wandering pilgrim and self-proclaimed holy man. Though never ordained as a monk, he claimed to be a mystic, faith healer, and prophet, blending the occasional appearance of Orthodox piety with magnetic charisma.He made his way to the Romanov court, where Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra’s only son, Tsarevich Alexei, suffered from hemophilia, a life-threatening bleeding disorder for which contemporary medicine offered little help.Beginning around 1906–1908, and most importantly during a near-fatal hemorrhage in 1912, Rasputin was summoned to the boy’s bedside. Through prayer, a calming presence, and possibly hypnotic suggestion—or simply by discouraging doctors from administering blood-thinning treatments such as aspirin—he appeared to ease Alexei’s pain and halt the bleeding. The imperial couple became convinced of his divine gift, granting him extraordinary influence as a spiritual adviser and political confidant.The Tsar’s personal correspondence reveals that he eventually wised up to the fact that Rasputin was an inspired charlatan, but the Tsarina kept her faith in the strange man. In one letter the Tsar wrote to one of his cousins (I don’t remember which one) who advised him to banish Rasputin from court, Nicholas II wrote, “Better one Rasputin than several fits of hysterics per day,” referring to his wife’s constant worry about the sick boy.One of the strangest features of Rasputin was the mysterious effect he had on women, including aristocratic ladies in Saint Petersburg. Though accounts are probably colored by anti-royalist propaganda, it seems that many women really did find him fascinating. They especially enjoyed his combination of conviviality (he was often drunk) and mysticism. The “monk” is said to have had many lovers and also to have spent much of his time in brothels and bathhouses.Prince Felix Yusupov concluded that Rasputin’s influence at court had gone way too far and was causing a national security risk by destroying the reputation of the royal family. Thus, on the night of 29–30 December 1916, Yusupov and some of his friends lured Rasputin to the Moika Palace. According to the widely circulated (and self-serving) account of the assassins, they first fed him cyanide-laced cakes and wine. When the poison produced no effect, Yusupov shot him in the chest. Rasputin collapsed, then revived, attacked his host, and fled into the courtyard, where he was shot again—once in the back and once in the head—beaten with a heavy object, and finally bound and thrown through the ice into the Neva River. Legend claims he was still alive and drowned only after struggling beneath the ice.Forensic examination established three gunshot wounds—one to the left side of the chest, one to the back, and a close-range shot to the forehead that was almost certainly fatal—along with extensive blunt-force trauma to the face and body, a possible knife wound, and other injuries sustained during the attack. Rasputin thus died of gunshot wounds after enduring poisoning attempts that failed, multiple shootings, and a savage beating. The drowning was post-mortem.Like Moderna’s stock, Rasputin became a figure of mythic resilience who died just before the collapse of the Russian Empire.RasputinModerna CEO Stéphane BancelSubscribe nowShare

Summary: MRNA stock up 177% on news of favorable interim results from the Phase 3 INTerpath-001 trial of intismeran autogene.


Start Before It Becomes Severe: A Gentle Daily Ritual for Comfortable Ease of Movement

By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPHAs we age, virtually all of us will develop some degree of chronic stiffness and pain in our back, arms, hips, and legs.  That is why we developedPureRelieffromThe Wellness Company.🧭 The Daily-Approach Revolution: Rethinking Chronic Pain in Older AdultsFor millions of older adults, pain isn’t anevent. It’s abaseline condition—a constant hum of stiffness in the knees at sunrise, a dull ache in the lower back after an hour of gardening, fingers that won’t cooperate first thing in the morning. This reality is precisely why the standard “pop a pill when it hurts” model fails so many people.💊 The Problem With PRN Pain ReliefPRN(pro re nata—”as needed”) painkillers likeacetaminophen(Tylenol) andibuprofen(Motrin), and especially prescription opioids, are built around a reactive philosophy:They chase symptomsrather than modulating their underlying drivers.They do nothing to resolve inflammationor support tissue repair—they only mute the downstream signaling.They carry cumulative risk—chronic NSAID use is linked to gastrointestinal bleeding, kidney strain, and elevated cardiovascular risk; chronic Tylenol burdens the liver; opioids bring dependence, tolerance, and the well-documented downward spiral of escalating doses.For someone living withdailystiffness and inflammation, this is a treadmill that runs in place. The pain returns the moment the dose wears off, because thepathology was never addressed.🌱 Pure Pain Relief: A Fundamentally Different CategoryPure Pain Relieffrom The Wellness Company isnota fast-acting analgesic. It belongs to a different category entirely: adaily, foundational protocolthat works upstream of pain, at the level of inflammation, nerve sensitization, and repair.The PhilosophyRather than suppressing a pain signal at the finish line,Pure Pain Reliefaims to:Modulate inflammatory pathwayscontinuously, so the baseline inflammatory load drops over time.Dampen the sensitization of pain pathways(central and peripheral), reducing theamplificationof pain signals.Facilitate tissue repair, giving joints, muscles, and connective tissue the raw materials and signaling environment to actually recover.This is along-term solution, not an immediate one. The honest expectation is weeks of consistent daily use—not minutes—before meaningful shifts in baseline stiffness occur.🔬 Ingredient Breakdown: Why This Formula Is Built for Daily UseEach ingredient here was selected forsustained, low-grade inflammation management, not acute analgesia:🧬 Palmitoylethanolamide (PEA) — 400 mgPEA is anendogenous fatty acid amidethat acts as a master modulator of the endocannabinoid system and has substantial research supporting its role inreducing neuroinflammation and chronic pain, particularly neuropathic and inflammatory pain. It works by downregulating overactive mast cells and glial cells—the very machinery thatsensitizespain pathways. This is the workhorse ingredient, and 400 mg daily is squarely within the clinically studied range.🌿 White Willow Bark Extract — 300 mgThe botanical precursor to aspirin (salicin), but delivered as awhole-plant extractthat’s gentler on the stomach and provides a broader spectrum of compounds. It offers mild, sustained anti-inflammatory support without the GI burden of isolated salicylates.🌸 Baikal Skullcap Root Extract — 150 mgA traditional Chinese medicine staple rich inbaicalin and baicalein, flavonoids with documented anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, andneuroprotectiveproperties. It complements PEA by targeting oxidative stress and inflammatory cytokines.🫚 Ginger (T3 Supercritical CO₂ Extract) — 125 mgA highly bioavailable ginger extract standardized forgingerols and shogaols, compounds with well-established anti-inflammatory activity. Supercritical CO₂ extraction preserves the heat-sensitive actives far better than conventional extraction, meaning you get more of the good stuff per milligram. Ginger has shown benefit in osteoarthritis and muscle soreness in clinical trials.🧂 Magnesium Glycinate — 15 mgMagnesium plays a role inmuscle relaxation, nerve function, and hundreds of enzymatic reactions, including those governing inflammation and repair. The glycinate form is highly bioavailable and gentle on the gut (unlike magnesium oxide or citrate, which can cause loose stools). Note: 15 mg is a low dose—this is a complementary supporting role in this formula, and is fine for those of you who take much higher amounts of magnesium each day.The SynergyWhat matters here is not any single ingredient in isolation, but themulti-pathway approach: PEA modulates neuroinflammation, willow bark and ginger hit the COX/prostaglandin axis, skullcap adds antioxidant and neuroprotective depth, and magnesium supports muscular and nervous system function. This is a “surround the problem” strategy rather than a single blunt instrument.⚠ Honest Expectations: What This Is (and Isn’t)Pure Pain Relief IS:✅ Adaily foundational supplementfor chronic stiffness, inflammation, and age-related aches✅ A tool forgradually reducing relianceon PRN Tylenol, Motrin, and potentially prescription painkillers✅ A long-game investment in tissue repair and pain-pathway desensitization✅ Generally well-tolerated, with gentler GI profile than NSAIDsPure Pain Relief ISN’T:❌ A fast-acting acute pain reliever❌ A replacement for your doctor’s care for acute injury or severe pain❌ An overnight fix—expect4–8 weeksof consistent daily use for noticeable baseline changes🎯 Who Should Consider ItThis product is best suited for the older adult who:Wakes up stiff and takes an hour to “loosen up”Lives with nagging osteoarthritis, old injuries, or general inflammatory achesFinds themselves reaching for Tylenol or Motrinmore days than notWants aproactive, root-causeapproach rather than perpetual symptom-chasing🏁 The Bottom LineThe Wellness Company’sPure Pain Reliefis a thoughtfully formulated,multi-pathway daily protocolfor chronic pain and stiffness—not a band-aid. For older adults tired of the PRN treadmill, it represents a legitimate shift in strategy: treat thecondition, not just thesymptom. For those willing to commit to daily use, the payoff is a meaningful reduction in baseline pain and a breaking of the dependency cycle on as-needed painkillers.  Functional nurses should consider this product in their arsenal of recommendations for patients with chronic pain and stiffness.  To learn more about the field, visitThe Functional Nurse Academy.FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse™) is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.📝Please subscribe toFOCAL POINTSas a paying ($5 monthly) or founder member so we can continue to bring you the truth.AlterAImay be used to assist in searches, synthesis, and review.Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPHChief Scientific Officer, The Wellness Companywww.twc.health/focalpoints📚 ReferencesGabrielsson L, Mattsson S, Fowler CJ.Palmitoylethanolamide for the treatment of pain: pharmacokinetics, safety and efficacy.Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2016;82(4):932–942.Keppel Hesselink JM, Hekker TA.Therapeutic utility of palmitoylethanolamide in the treatment of neuropathic pain associated with various pathological conditions: a case series.J Pain Res. 2012;5:437–442.Varrassi G, Paladini A, Marinangeli F, Racz G.Neural modulation by blocks and infusions.Pain Pract. 2006;6(1):34–38.Shara M, Stohs SJ.Efficacy and safety of white willow bark (Salix alba) extracts.Phytother Res. 2015;29(8):1112–1116.Li C, Lin G, Zuo Z.Pharmacological effects and pharmacokinetics properties of Radix Scutellariae and its bioactive flavones.Biopharm Drug Dispos. 2011;32(8):427–445.Altman RD, Marcussen KC.Effects of a ginger extract on knee pain in patients with osteoarthritis.Arthritis Rheum. 2001;44(11):2531–2538.Black CD, Herring MP, Hurley DJ, O’Connor PJ.Ginger (Zingiber officinale) reduces muscle pain caused by eccentric exercise.J Pain. 2010;11(9):894–903.de Baaij JHF, Hoenderop JGJ, Bindels RJM.Magnesium in man: implications for health and disease.Physiol Rev. 2015;95(1):1–46.Product link:Pure Pain Relief — The Wellness Company

Summary: PureRelief from The Wellness Company fills an unmet need for many


“Dangerous Intellectuals” Podcast Makes Its YouTube Debut with Guest John Leake

Blaine Holt is a great patriot with a marvelously nimble mind, and he has led a very adventurous life. A few days he graciously invited me to join him on his “Dangerous Intellectuals” podcast on which he has interviewed an impressive array of heterodox thinkers. Our conversation was one of the most enjoyable I can remember.I felt a fair measure of trepidation when he told me he was going to post our conversation on YouTube — the first time he has dared to do so — given thecensorship and shadow banning I have experienced on YouTube.Please support his Blaine’s new (and risky) YouTube venture by listening to our conversation and sharing it with your friends.Subscribe nowShare

Summary: In a risky move, USAF Brigadier General (Ret.) Blaine D. Holt takes the hazardous step of publishing his podcast about heterodox thinkers on the YouTube platform.


BREAKING: FDA Data Reanalysis Sent to Secretary Kennedy Finds Moderna’s mRNA Flu Shot Approval Should Be Immediately Withdrawn

byNicolas Hulscher, MPHThe approval of mFLUSIVA represents a major escalation in the expansion of nucleoside-modified mRNA technology into routine, repeated vaccination. We concluded that the FDA’s own clinical data demanded an independent risk-benefit accounting before this product becomes entrenched as an annual vaccine.The result is one of the most severe benefit-harm imbalances we have encountered in a licensed vaccine program, and it warrants immediate regulatory reversal.Our new manuscript,“Reanalysis of FDA Clinical Data for mFLUSIVA (mRNA-1010): Unfavorable Risk-Benefit Profile Supports Market Withdrawal,”directly reanalyzes the FDA briefing document and underlying clinical-trial counts used to support approval. Rather than accepting the regulatory presentation at face value, we placed the vaccine’s benefits and harms on thesame absolute scaleand asked the question that should have been made explicit before licensure:what is the human cost required to prevent one serious influenza outcome?The answer is extraordinary. To avertONE influenza hospitalization, approximately5,017 adultshad to receive mFLUSIVA instead of a standard-dose influenza vaccine, at theCOST of:~2 excess unexplained DEATHS~278 disabling Grade 3 systemic reactions~3,798 adverse reactionsCompared with the standard-dose flu vaccine, that amounts to approximately1,454 ADDITIONAL adverse reactions and 233 ADDITIONAL disabling Grade 3 systemic reactions for every hospitalization prevented.The broader safety pattern was just as one-sided.Unexplained deaths were 2.55-fold more frequent, Grade 3 systemic reactions were6.15-fold more frequent, andevery solicited symptom was more frequentin the mFLUSIVA group.Neither pivotal trial included a placebo arm, and no properly adjudicated influenza-mortality endpoint was ever specified, collected, or reported.This is the central regulatory failure our reanalysis exposes:the underlying numbers were available, but the benefit and harm were never presented together on the same absolute denominator.Benefits were presented primarily as relative efficacy, while harms were presented separately as event percentages. That leaves obscured the most important practical question in the entire approval decision:how many people must be exposed, and how many adverse outcomes occur, to prevent one serious influenza event?Our analysis answers that question directly using the FDA’s own numbers. Once the calculation is made, the imbalance is impossible to ignore.The manuscript sets out17 grounds for reversal. The first nine arise directly from FDA’s regulatory record and trial arithmetic. The remaining grounds address the additional hazards of extending nucleoside-modified mRNA technology into annual lifelong administration, including published evidence involving residual DNA contamination, reverse transcription and genomic integration, ribosomal stalling and frameshifting, protein misfolding and proteostatic disruption, broad biodistribution, prolonged persistence, and cumulative biological effects with repeated dosing.We decided that publishing these findings alone was not enough.We are undertaking the task of challenging this approval directly before it becomes another precedent for the unchecked expansion of mRNA products across infectious diseases despite an extreme risk-benefit profile.Accordingly, we formally sent the manuscript and supporting information toSecretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and officials at HHS, FDA, CDC, and NIH, requesting immediate withdrawal of the approval and a halt to distribution before widespread administration begins.Below is the exact letter sent to federal health officials.Letter Sent to Secretary Kennedy and Federal Health OfficialsSubject: URGENT: Immediate Withdrawal of mFLUSIVA (BLA 125869/0) Warranted Based on FDA Clinical Data ReanalysisDear Secretary Kennedy,As physicians and researchers who have reanalyzed the licensure record for this product, we respectfully request that the Department, in coordination with the Food and Drug Administration, initiate proceedings to withdraw the approval of Moderna’s mFLUSIVA (Influenza Vaccine, mRNA; mRNA-1010), BLA 125869/0, approved August 5, 2026, and halt its distribution pending that review.Attached is our manuscript, “Reanalysis of FDA Clinical Data for mFLUSIVA (mRNA-1010): Unfavorable Risk-Benefit Profile Supports Market Withdrawal.” The analysis rests principally on FDA’s own regulatory record and on the clinical-trial counts submitted in support of licensure. The full manuscript is also publicly available on Zenodo at:https://zenodo.org/records/22016811The findings are deeply concerning. In the pivotal efficacy trial, approximately 5,017 adults had to receive mFLUSIVA instead of a standard-dose influenza vaccine to avert a single hospitalization. On that same scale, the switch was associated with approximately 1,454 additional solicited adverse reactions, 233 additional Grade 3 systemic reactions severe enough to prevent normal daily activity, and approximately 2 excess unexplained deaths.Expressed another way, among 5,017 mFLUSIVA recipients, approximately 3,798 would experience a solicited adverse reaction and approximately 278 would experience a Grade 3 systemic reaction, while the demonstrated clinical benefit is one hospitalization averted.The mortality findings are especially difficult to dismiss. Unexplained deaths were 2.55-fold more frequent among mFLUSIVA recipients, and related pooled fatal-event terms were also significantly elevated. Yet no properly adjudicated influenza-mortality endpoint was ever specified, collected, or reported anywhere in the development program, and no autopsy was performed on any mFLUSIVA recipient whose death remained unexplained.The broader safety pattern was similarly one-sided. Every solicited symptom was more frequent in the mFLUSIVA group, and Grade 3 systemic reactions were 6.15-fold more frequent than with the standard-dose comparator. Neither pivotal trial included a placebo arm, meaning absolute vaccine-attributable harm and background event rates were never established.Our manuscript sets out 17 grounds for reversal. The first nine arise directly from FDA’s own regulatory record and trial arithmetic and do not depend on the platform-level literature. The remaining grounds address the additional risks inherent in extending nucleoside-modified mRNA technology to annual lifelong administration.Importantly, the core case for withdrawal does not depend on accepting any platform-level concern. FDA’s own regulatory record and trial arithmetic establish an extraordinarily unfavorable benefit-risk exchange and multiple unresolved deficiencies in the evidence supporting licensure. The platform-level evidence only compounds an approval that is already unsustainable on its own terms.Those additional concerns include published evidence involving residual DNA contamination, reverse transcription and genomic integration, ribosomal stalling and frameshifting, protein misfolding and proteostatic disruption, broad biodistribution, prolonged persistence, and the possibility of cumulative biological effects with repeated dosing.The approval is further weakened by the fact that the highest-risk age group was not shown to have superior clinical benefit against the preferentially recommended comparator before licensure. The required confirmatory study is a noninferiority trial powered under an assumption of 0% true relative vaccine efficacy and can succeed without demonstrating clinical superiority or a meaningful absolute benefit.The central calculations underlying our request derive directly from the FDA briefing document and underlying trial counts. Yet the regulatory presentation never placed benefit and harm on the same absolute scale. Benefits were presented primarily as relative efficacy and harms as event percentages, leaving uncalculated the most decision-relevant question: how much harm is incurred for each severe clinical outcome prevented. Our reanalysis performs that calculation explicitly using FDA’s own numbers.This is therefore not a situation that can be corrected through stronger labeling, routine pharmacovigilance, or promises of future evidence. The evidence required to establish a favorable benefit-risk profile was not demonstrated before approval. Allowing widespread administration to proceed would convert unresolved pre-licensure deficiencies into population-level exposure while the government waits for answers that should have been obtained before licensure.We respectfully request that you direct the appropriate HHS and FDA officials to reexamine this approval, initiate withdrawal proceedings, and halt distribution before widespread administration begins during the 2026-2027 season.If the Department concludes that mFLUSIVA should remain on the market, the American public is owed a clear accounting of how one hospitalization averted per 5,017 vaccinations is to be set against approximately 1,454 additional adverse reactions, 233 additional disabling Grade 3 systemic reactions, and an unresolved excess of deaths of undetermined cause, on the same scale derived from FDA’s own data.Thank you for your attention to this urgent matter of public safety.Respectfully submitted,Nicolas Hulscher, MPHEpidemiologist, McCullough FoundationPeter A. McCullough, MD, MPHPresident, McCullough FoundationJohn A. Catanzaro, NMD, PhDChief Executive Officer, Neo7Bioscience, Inc.We hope Secretary Kennedy and federal health officials make the life-saving decision to remove this extremely hazardous product from the market before widespread administration begins. In light of the evidence now before them, allowing mFLUSIVA to remain approved would be a grave mistake. The government has been given the data. It now has the responsibility to act.Nicolas Hulscher, MPHEpidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough FoundationSupport our mission:mcculloughfnd.orgPlease consider following both theMcCullough Foundationandmy personal accountonX(formerly Twitter) for further content.Subscribe now

Summary: We directly reanalyzed the FDA’s own data used to approve mFLUSIVA and found an extreme risk-benefit profile that is impossible to justify.


Djokovic Film Details His 2022 Ordeal in Melbourne at Hands of VAX Sadists

A new Novak Djokovic documentary titledThe Wolf in Winteris set to be released on Amazon tomorrow.In the pre-release publicity, Djokovic has stated the film reveals the ordeal he suffered at the hands of Australian authorities when he arrived in Melbourne in 2022 to compete in the Australian Open. After receiving a visa and green light to fly all the way to Australia to compete because he had already contracted and recovered from COVID-19, the Australian authorities rescinded his visa upon his arrival because he wasn’t vaccinated. He was then placed in a hotel-detention center and subjected to all manner of arbitrary, chicken-shit tyranny.As I related in my interview with Tucker Carlson (in which I muddled Melbourne with Sydney) this was a deliberate act of sadism to humiliate the champion.After he was finally released and allowed to go home, he was subjected to the most repulsive interview I have ever watched in which a BBC reporter stated thatall he had to do was get the shotand he would be allowed to continue on his path to becoming the Greatest of All Time.Though I didn’t mentionMatthew 4:8–10,in which the devil takes Jesus to a high mountain, shows him the kingdoms of the world, and tries to tempt him, the story is exactly what I was thinking about, and Mr. Carlson had the same thought.The attempt to force the COVID-19 vaccine on all of humanity was the work of a globalist oligarchy that has made the deal with the devil that Jesus turned down.Subscribe nowShare

Summary: “The Wolf in Winter” celebrates the life of a champion who steadfastly ignored the envious, tyrannical twits of the world.


The Measles Booster Problem

Two decay curvesPeter Panum sailed to the Faroe Islands in 1846 to investigate an epidemic that infected some six thousand of the islands’ seven thousand eight hundred residents. The exceptions were the elderly who had survived the epidemic of 1781. Not one of them was reinfected sixty-five years later (Panum 1847).Influenza changes its surface proteins continuously, which is why last year’s antibodies stop fitting this year’s virus. Measles does not do this. It carries a single serotype and does not drift, so an antibody response raised against the wild virus of 1781 still fitted the virus of 1846 exactly. The durability question for measles is a question about the human immune system alone, uncomplicated by any change in the target.Vaccine-induced immunity behaves differently from what Panum found among the Faroese. Bianchi and colleagues tested 611 Italian students and hospital residents. Twenty percent of the twice vaccinated had no detectable protective IgG, against six percent of those reporting natural infection, with geometric mean antibody levels of 92.2 and 213.3, respectively (Bianchi et al. 2021). A 2022 systematic review in the Journal of Infectious Diseases put the general finding in its title: in elimination settings, measles antibodies wane after vaccination but not after infection. Kennedy and colleagues at Mayo reached a parallel conclusion on the differential durability of the measles and mumps components of MMR (Kennedy et al. 2019).Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareHow the body decides how long to rememberA B cell is a white blood cell carrying a single antibody design on its surface, generated by a random shuffling of gene segments before the cell ever meets anything. Each of us carries billions of them, and collectively they hold an enormous library of possible shapes. When a virus arrives, the small subset whose antibodies happen to fit some piece of that virus structure (a viral antigen) gets activated.Those cells do not begin producing antibody straight away. They migrate into a temporary structure called a germinal center, which forms inside lymph nodes, tonsils, and the spleen during an infection and dissolves afterward. Inside it, B cells introduce mutations into the genes encoding their own antibodies at a rate a million times higher than ordinary genetic mutation. They then compete for limited access to the virus antigen and for survival signals from helper T cells. A cell whose mutation improved the fit captures more antigen, receives more help, survives, and divides. A cell whose mutation worsened the fit dies. The cycle repeats for weeks, and immunity gradually improves over the course of an infection rather than appearing fully formed at the start. The antibody a patient carries in week four grips its target far more tightly than the one they carried in week one. Immunologists call that grip strength avidity, and it matters as much or more than the quantity of antibody present.  Antibody quantity is measured as titer and is easy to measure, which is why titer is what gets reported.  Antibody avidity is much harder to measure, and so is rarely reported except in academic studies and a few clinical trials.The germinal center produces two surviving antibody-associated B cell types, and the difference between them determines everything that follows.Memory B cells leave the germinal center and go quiet. They circulate for decades doing nothing measurable, carrying their refined antibody design on the surface, waiting. On re-exposure to the antigen they are primed to recognize, they activate, divide rapidly, and begin manufacturing antibody in quantity, a process taking three to seven days.  In vaccine terms, this is called a recall response.Long-lived plasma cells do something else. They abandon surface antibody production, migrate to the bone marrow, and settle into specialized niches where supporting cells keep them alive. There they secrete antibody continuously into the bloodstream for decades, neither dividing nor requiring further contact with the virus. A plasma cell seeded in a Faroese child in 1781 was still pumping measles antibody into that person’s blood in 1846.When a laboratory reports a “resting” measles antibody level (titer), it is measuring the output of that bone marrow population. Memory B cells contribute nothing to a resting titer because they are secreting nothing. Every seroprevalence study on this subject inherits the resulting ambiguity. A low number establishes that the plasma cell pool has thinned, and says nothing directly about whether the memory cells remain.How large a plasma cell pool a person ends up with depends on how much antigen the germinal centers processed and for how long during the period when this germinal center B cell “education” process occurs, which is the key characteristic that separates disease from vaccination.  This helps explain why “natural immunity” from an infection usually works better than vaccination for producing durable, long-lasting immunity.  Basically, like a lot of things, good B cell education takes time and experience.Why the vaccine cannot match the diseaseWild measles is a systemic infection. The virus replicates for days to enormous titers, spreads through every lymph node in the body, and feeds antigen to germinal centers across the whole lymphoid system for two weeks or more. The plasma cell pool that processes produces is very large, and because those cells persist without further stimulation, so does the antibody they produce.Attenuated vaccine strains are crippled on purpose. They were passaged repeatedly in cell culture until they lost the ability to replicate efficiently in humans, which is also what makes them safe. An attenuated vaccine strain (like what is used in the measles vaccines) produces a brief, limited, largely local infection. The germinal centers it drives are smaller and shorter lived, and the plasma cell population they seed into marrow is smaller in proportion. Antibody from a smaller pool falls below detection sooner as individual plasma cells die off.The vaccine's safety and its shorter durability are basically the same property viewed from two angles. That fact is uncomfortable for those who take the simplistic view of all vaccines being “safe and effective”.  It argues for a better product rather than against vaccination, but it does mean that vaccine-induced and “natural” immunity achieved through actual infection should not be described as equivalent.  They are not equivalent.  Naturally acquired immunity from measles is clearly superior, but it comes with a cost: the risks associated with a primary live measles infection.Two further consequences follow that typical oversimplified “public health” messaging tends to skip past. Until elimination, vaccinated people were regularly re-exposed to circulating wild virus. Those exposures were usually silent, producing no illness, but they restimulated memory cells and topped up antibody levels. Eliminating measles removed that free, silent booster, and universal vaccination program success unmasked the gradually waning memory-cell immunity that endemic circulation had been correcting for decades. Separately, infants of vaccinated mothers receive lower antibody levels across the placenta than infants of naturally immune mothers, widening the window of infant vulnerability before the first dose. Both effects are permanent features of the transition away from a naturally immune population.  Vaccination also has a “public health” cost, one that is never tallied in the approved pro-vaccination messaging narratives.Where the susceptibility accumulatesMeasles mortality does not track age in a straight line. It traces a U. Infants under one year carry the highest risk (particularly infants born of vaccinated mothers relative to mothers with naturally acquired immunity). The curve falls through early childhood, bottoms out between ages five and nine, then climbs again through adult life. The World Health Organization places the bottom of this U-shaped curve (adult inflection point) near age thirty (WHO 2026).Set that curve against the serology. Seropositivity is defined by measuring total circulating anti-measles antibodies. Recent Czech survey data put seropositivity at 61.5 percent in the 30 to 39 cohort, the lowest of any age stratum, while those fifty and older who were infected in the pre-vaccine era sat at 96 percent and above. The population accumulating antibody gaps is the same population moving onto the steeper arm of the severity curve.  In other words, the consequences of waning vaccine-induced immunity in the elderly are currently masked because they have natural immunity from being infected as children.  But over time, as the global elderly population will become dominated by those who were vaccinated rather than infected, the problems and risks associated with the relative lack of durable protection from measles vaccines will become more prevalent.Adult measles is a different disease from the pediatric version. Hospitalization runs several fold higher, and pneumonia dominates the mortality. Hepatic involvement has been reported in the large majority of adult cases. Encephalitis holds roughly flat by age at about one per thousand, but a patient with reduced physiologic reserve tolerates it far worse.Older adults are almost absent from current case counts, and that absence is immunity rather than resistance. Americans born before 1957 nearly all contracted measles as children. Whatever we know about measles in a seventy-year-old comes from scattered case reports, because no susceptible elderly cohort exists to study. That naturally immune generation is dying off, and what replaces it is a population whose protection decays on a schedule.The obvious remedyThe intuitive policy response to all of this is another dose. Serological modelers in Thailand proposed a third measles-containing dose at age eighteen to twenty, calculated to close the young adult gap. Korea is weighing a third MMR dose for young healthcare workers. Occupational health programs in most countries already do a version of this, screening staff and revaccinating the seronegative regardless of documented history.Extend that logic, and you arrive at the proposal worth examining. Give a third dose in late adolescence. Give a fourth somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five, when the serological data say a vaccinated cohort has spent decades decaying without natural boosting. The reasoning is coherent, the target population is real, and the delivery infrastructure already exists. Inconveniently, it also does not work.Why the boost failsAnichini and colleagues followed twenty-four individuals who remained seronegative for measles years after completing the two-dose schedule. Eleven seroconverted after a single booster, and thirteen required a second. Antibody levels were then tracked at one and three years. Booster doses in subjects with waning antibodies produced low IgG levels that declined significantly over three years, and neutralizing antibody stayed low in single- and double-booster recipients alike (Anichini et al. 2024). The paper’s title states the conclusion without hedging: seronegative vaccinees may not benefit from multiple booster doses in restoring immunity.Fiebelkorn and colleagues had reported the same shape in young adults given a third MMR dose, measuring neutralizing antibody, cell-mediated immunity, and antibody avidity before and after (Fiebelkorn et al. 2016). Levels rise and then return toward where they started. Korean investigators following seronegative healthcare workers two years after one or two booster doses found fewer than half retaining a medium or high neutralizing titer.The explanation lies in what a live attenuated vaccine has to do in order to work. It must replicate. A dose of MMR contains a small quantity of weakened virus, and the response it provokes depends on that virus multiplying enough to generate a meaningful quantity of antigen over a sustained period. Only sustained presentation drives germinal centers hard enough to seed new plasma cells.In a partially immune person, whatever antibody remains, even at levels a laboratory calls negative, binds the incoming vaccine virus and neutralizes it. The particles are cleared before they can establish an infection, and the germinal center machinery never fully engages. What happens instead is a recall response. Existing memory B cells recognize the antigen, wake, divide, and secrete antibody, which raises the measured level for a period of months to a couple of years. Immunologists call this an anamnestic response, and it is real protection while it lasts. But memory cells doing a temporary job is a different thing from construction of a new bone marrow plasma cell population, and when the recall response subsides the person returns to where they began.The result runs backward from what the policy intends. Boosting works best in people carrying no residual antibody, meaning those who never responded properly in the first place, and works worst in people with partial immunity, who are the population the exercise means to protect. A dose at fifty buys a few years of elevated antibody in some fraction of recipients. It cannot restore the durability that natural infection confers, because the mechanism generating that durability is structurally unavailable to an attenuated virus meeting pre-existing antibody.Clearly a better vaccine is needed.  One that immunologically acts more like an attenuated measles virus, but does not require viral replication.  That is precisely the rationale that I developed in the late 1980s for using nucleic acid-based gene therapy (DNA or mRNA) for vaccination purposes. The challenge both then and now is how to do this safely.The seroprevalence numbers also overstate the gapThe twenty percent figure predicts something we ought to be able to see. If a fifth of two-dose adults were genuinely susceptible, outbreaks would generate adult attack rates that nobody observes. Measles is among the most transmissible pathogens known, and a susceptible fifth of the adult population would show up in outbreak data immediately.The gap between plasma cells and memory cells explains the discrepancy. As previously discussed, serum antibody levels measure the first population and are blind to the second. Someone whose measured antibody has fallen below the laboratory threshold may still carry an intact memory compartment holding the high-avidity antibody designs refined during their original germinal center response.Timing decides whether that matters. Measles has an incubation period of ten to fourteen days between exposure and illness, and a memory recall response begins producing antibody within three to seven days. Someone with no circulating antibody but functional memory can therefore mount a defense before the virus completes its expansion, and will often experience either nothing at all or a mild, modified illness. This is why the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices declines to recommend routine antibody screening of documented two-dose recipients, a position defensible on the biology rather than merely being conservative or cost-driven.The threshold itself is also thin. The currently accepted working correlate of protection near 120 mIU/mL descends largely from a single college outbreak investigation, where investigators compared pre-exposure antibody levels against those who subsequently fell ill, and used that correlation to derive a number (Chen et al. 1990). An entire architecture of screening, revaccination, and occupational policy rests on that one study. Nobody has re-derived it in an elimination-era population (ergo, the current situation rather than a population with many who had natural immunity), and every argument about waning, this one included, inherits its uncertainty.What re-dosing can reasonably accomplishSome of the case survives. Targeted revaccination has defensible indications, though not the ones a fixed-age schedule would capture.As if all of this were not complicated enough, birth cohort is more important than chronological age in this case. The American two-dose schedule did not become universal until 1989, so people born between 1957 and 1985 may have received a single dose, and single-dose recipients carry documented secondary failure risk that twice-vaccinated recipients largely do not.Occupational, travel, and outbreak-response revaccination all remain sensible for this birth cohort based on the same reasoning that supports post-exposure prophylaxis. A transient antibody elevation is worth having when you can predict the exposure window, and worth much less when you cannot.One population no dosing schedule reaches. Adults on rituximab (a monoclonal antibody indicated for the treatment of B-cell malignancies and autoimmune disorders)or other B-cell depleting therapy, on methotrexate, on chronic corticosteroids, or with active malignancy face the highest measles risk among adults, and they cannot receive a live attenuated vaccine at all. Rituximab destroys the B cell compartment outright, erasing both memory cells and the capacity to respond to a new dose. Their protection depends on the immunity of the people around them and on post-exposure immune globulin. Any honest discussion of adult measles policy has to account for the group the policy structurally cannot help.The one cohort worth actually findingAn argument about waning immunity in the general population is a diagnosis. A narrower group in this country has a concrete policy ask that already exists, sits on the books, and goes almost entirely ignored and unexecuted by “public health” guidance and practice.Two measles vaccines were licensed in the United States in 1963. One was a live attenuated Edmonston B product. The other was a formalin-inactivated killed vaccine, marketed as Pfizer-Vax Measles-K. The killed Pfizer product did not protect, and it was withdrawn in 1967. Fewer than one million American children received it (CDC 2026c).Failure to protect was the smaller problem. Fulginiti and colleagues described what happened when those children met wild measles years later. They developed atypical measles syndrome: high fever, a rash beginning peripherally on the palms and soles and spreading inward, nodular pulmonary infiltrates, pleural effusions, and very high antibody levels (Fulginiti et al. 1967).The immunology behind that syndrome is worth spelling out. Killing a virus with formalin cross-links its surface proteins and distorts their shape, so the immune system builds antibodies against a deformed template. Those antibodies bind the real virus, but they bind it in the wrong places and with poor grip, failing to block it from entering cells. Antibody that attaches without neutralizing causes harm. Virus and antibody form clumps called immune complexes, which lodge in small blood vessels and in lung tissue and recruit inflammatory cells to attack them. Much of the lung damage in atypical measles is the patient’s own immune system reacting to those deposits. The helper T cell response was also skewed toward supporting antibody production rather than destroying infected cells, leaving the patient with the wrong tool for the job.  This is an example of vaccine-induced disease enhancement, one of many.Clinically the syndrome runs backward from ordinary measles, which produces a rash starting on the face and moving down and out. Atypical measles starts at the extremities and moves inward, so a physician pattern-matching on the classic description will not recognize it.ACIP has recommended revaccinating this group for decades. Anyone who received killed measles vaccine, or measles vaccine of unknown type, between 1963 and 1967 should be considered unvaccinated and given at least one dose of live attenuated vaccine (CDC 2026c). Documented receipt of live vaccine in that window remains valid and needs nothing further. But finding documentation of which vaccine was given to whom decades ago is essentially impossible.Children vaccinated between 1963 and 1967 were born between 1953 and 1966. Those born before 1957 are presumed immune from natural infection anyway, which leaves a birth cohort of 1957 to 1966. In 2026, they are approximately sixty to seventy years old.They now sit on the climbing arm of the severity curve. Reduced pulmonary reserve and comorbid disease are common at that age, and so is immunosuppressive therapy for rheumatologic or oncologic indications. They are young enough that the pre-vaccine natural immunity of their older siblings does not cover them, and they would present, if infected, with a syndrome almost no practicing American physician has seen.Practically nobody holds a 1963 vaccination card. That is not an obstacle to the recommendation. It is the reason for it. Without documentation that the dose was live, the guidance directs revaccination, and one dose of MMR in an immunocompetent sixty-five-year-old is a cheap, well-characterized intervention. The screening question fits in a sentence, belongs in every adult primary care visit for that birth cohort, and is not being asked.  A rational public health response would be to make monovalent measles vaccine available for these people, so that they were not forced to receive unnecessary mumps and rubella vaccine products.This is the version of a re-dosing recommendation I would defend before a policy committee. It targets a defined cohort rather than a chronological band, and rests on a documented product failure rather than a modeled seroprevalence curve. No new guidance is required, because the guidance was written decades ago and has simply stopped being executed.What happens when the virus meets a susceptible hostClemens von Pirquet reported in 1908 that children with measles lost their reactivity to the tuberculin skin test (von Pirquet 1908). That test works by injecting a tuberculosis protein under the skin and looking for a raised area two days later, which appears only if the person carries T cells already primed against tuberculosis. Children who had that reaction before measles stopped having it afterward, for weeks. Their T cell memory had been damaged, and physicians of that era also watched tuberculosis itself re-appear after measles.Michael Mina and colleagues put numbers on the consequence a century later. They compared measles incidence against subsequent deaths from other infectious diseases in England and Wales, the United States, and Denmark, testing how long a delay best explained the relationship. The best fit corresponded to twenty-seven months, implicating measles in a large share of the pre-vaccine childhood mortality that had been attributed to other organisms (Mina et al. 2015).  In other words, live measles infection produces a short-term (approximately 27-month) acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.  Just so that Wikipedia editors and corporate media shills are clear, I am not saying that measles causes the AIDS disease classically associated with HIV infection.  I am saying that primary live measles infection in children causes a different form of an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.The same group (Mina et al.) later measured the damage directly. Their assay, VirScan, uses a library of engineered viruses displaying short fragments of thousands of human pathogens on their surfaces. Serum is washed over the library and whatever antibodies the patient carries stick to their matching fragments. Sequencing the captured fragments produces an inventory of everything a person’s antibodies recognize. Applied to seventy-seven unvaccinated Dutch children before and after natural measles, it showed elimination of between eleven and seventy-three percent of that inventory (Mina et al. 2019). Petrova and colleagues sequenced the antibody genes of B cells in a subset of the same children. They documented loss of previously expanded memory clones alongside incomplete rebuilding of the naive pool, which returned in an immature state (Petrova et al. 2019).  Read that last part again.  What that means is that recovery from this type of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome did not result in recovery of the lost “educated” memory B cells.  “Recovery” in this case means getting back to a population of B cells that are in a pre-educated, pre-immune stateRepertoire loss unfolds across two to three years. A separate and much faster failure accounts for the deaths.How does this happen? Measles virus enters cells by latching onto a specific surface protein, in the way a key fits a lock. Its principal lock on immune cells is a molecule called CD150, also known as SLAM. Distribution of that molecule determines what the virus can infect, and CD150 is displayed on activated and memory T and B cells, on dendritic cells, and on macrophages. These are the cells that get killed by measles virus.  Resting naive cells carry little of it. By the accident of receptor choice, the virus targets the cells that hold a person’s accumulated immunological memory.Acute measles produces a profound drop in circulating lymphocytes that resolves within one to two weeks, and the speed of that recovery is why the damage went underestimated for a century. Macaque work from de Vries and colleagues showed why the recovery misleads (de Vries et al. 2012). Lymphocytes repopulating the blood are overwhelmingly new cells generated during the response to measles itself, specific for measles and little else. A complete blood count reports how many lymphocytes a patient has, and cannot report what those lymphocytes recognize. The count normalizes while the range of things the immune system can answer does not.Simultaneously, the virus destroys the ciliated cells lining the airway. Those cells beat in coordinated waves to sweep mucus, debris, and inhaled bacteria upward and out. With them gone, bacteria that would ordinarily be cleared settle into the lower airway instead.So the patient with measles pneumonitis has an injured airway with no clearance mechanism, a hollowed-out immune memory compartment, and a complete blood count that reads reassuringly normal- which is what physicians are trained to focus on. Secondary bacterial pneumonia is the modal mechanism by which measles causes death, rather than an alternative diagnosis to it.  Which is why physicians must be hyper-alert to the onset and treatment of bacterial pneumonia after measles infection, instead of relying on the old clinical saw of not treating a viral infection with antibiotics.West Texas as the demonstrationCDC reviewed medical records for 54 of the 60 patients hospitalized during the first two months of the Gaines County outbreak. Forty-nine were under eighteen, and forty-eight had no underlying condition. All were unvaccinated or of unknown status. Seventy-two percent developed pneumonia, and seventy percent required supplemental oxygen (CDC 2026b).Thirty-one and a half percent carried a documented co-infecting pathogen. Mycoplasma pneumoniae accounted for five, influenza four, respiratory syncytial virus three, and group A Streptococcus three, with further organisms recovered from sputum and blood cultures. Just over half received antibiotics (CDC 2026b). Infection and disease from those organisms are what an emptied memory B-cell compartment and a stripped airway produce.Two previously healthy unvaccinated children died in Lubbock hospitals, in February and April of 2025. A third death occurred in an unvaccinated New Mexico adult. Pierre Kory reviewed records released by the families and argued that both children died of bacterial pneumonia that was mismanaged (Kory 2025). He faults the antibiotic selection and the discontinuation of antibiotics on a readmission days after ICU discharge. He also faults a late sputum culture and the failure to consider hospital-acquired organisms until day six of eight. Those records have not been published in full, and no independent panel has adjudicated the reading, so the criticisms stand as hypothesis rather than finding.If the hypothesis is correct, what it claims is that the treating teams anchored on the viral diagnosis and were slow to pursue the bacterial one. That would confirm rather than contradict measles as the cause of death. Post-measles bacterial superinfection is the specific pathway measles uses, and a clinician misses it because measles occupies the diagnostic frame physicians are typically focused on. Most American pediatricians practicing in 2025 had worked their entire careers without seeing a measles case.The United States has now confirmed 2,566 measles cases in 2026, exceeding the 2,289 recorded in all of 2025 and standing as the highest annual count since 1991 (CDC 2026a). No one has died. Three deaths across 2,289 cases in 2025 works out near 1.3 per thousand, which predicts roughly three deaths this year, and observing zero carries a probability near four percent under a simple Poisson assumption. The hospitalization rate moved further and more convincingly, from eleven percent to seven percent (CDC 2026a). Ascertainment differences and community differences deserve a hearing, and the year is not over. My own reading is that clinicians changed, because the Lubbock deaths generated more argument about post-measles bacterial pneumonia than any American measles case in thirty years.  Unfortunately, three died; those deaths probably could have been avoided if the clinicians involved had promptly recognized the threat of secondary bacterial pneumonia, but the resulting widespread coverage in media (although predominantly misinformed) alerted virtually every US physician of the threat posed by post-measles bacterial pneumonia.The product, not the scheduleThe current vaccine cannot generate the bone marrow plasma cell population that wild infection generates, and repetition cannot make it do so, because pre-existing antibody neutralizes each subsequent dose before it can replicate.A better product would have to clear a specific bar. It must seed durable plasma cell memory without inflicting the lymphocyte depletion and memory loss that produce that durability in natural infection. It must remain immunogenic in the presence of residual antibody, which a replication-dependent platform cannot do by definition.A non-replicating platform sidesteps that problem. Because it does not need to multiply, neutralization of the inoculum does not defeat it. Deliver enough antigen in the dose itself, with an adjuvant to drive germinal center activity, and you can immunize someone who already carries antibody. Candidate approaches include adjuvanted subunit protein directed at the two measles surface glycoproteins, viral vectors, and nucleic acid platforms.Every one of those carries the shadow of Pfizer-Vax Measles-K. Atypical measles arose from exactly this design category: a non-replicating measles antigen generating binding antibody without neutralizing capacity, which skewed the helper T cell response the wrong way. Modern adjuvants and modern antigen design address that failure mode directly, and the immunology is far better understood than it was in 1963. The burden of proof still sits with the challenger. Any non-replicating measles immunogen must demonstrate high-avidity neutralizing antibody and appropriate helper polarization before it approaches a pediatric population, and must be followed for years afterward.  It will take many years to responsibly demonstrate “safety and effectiveness”.Live attenuated vaccine carries a warning from the opposite direction. WHO recommended high-titer Edmonston-Zagreb vaccine for infants in 1989 and withdrew the recommendation in 1992, after prospective African cohorts showed increased mortality among vaccinated girls (Garenne et al. 1991). In the case of measles, increasing the antigen dose is not a safe default with live-attenuated virus technology.None of it can be evaluated without a defensible correlate of protection. Developing against a threshold derived from one 1985 outbreak means developing against a number nobody has interrogated in forty years, while ignoring the memory compartment that appears to do much of the actual protecting. Re-deriving that correlate in an elimination-era population, with cell-mediated and avidity endpoints alongside neutralization, is the prerequisite work, and it will be expensive, but still cheap relative to what it would inform and the consequences of just continuing to ignore the problem.Why it will not get builtThe scientific case for a better measles vaccine is straightforward. The economic case against building one is stronger.MMR is off patent, manufactured at very low unit cost, and carries a headline effectiveness figure of ninety-seven percent after two doses. A challenger would need to demonstrate superiority against that incumbent, in an elimination setting where clinical endpoints are nearly unobtainable, across a trial population large enough to detect durability differences that take twenty years to manifest. No sponsor will fund that. No regulator has a pathway for it. The people who would benefit are forty years downstream and cannot express a preference today.This is a market that cannot price a benefit deferred past the planning horizon of every participant. Public health agencies respond to the incentive structure the same way manufacturers do. Acknowledging that vaccine-induced immunity wanes invites an argument they would rather not have, so the durability question stays unfunded and largely unasked. The result is a population trading a permanent, durable immunity for a decaying one, with no serious program underway to close the difference.The two-dose schedule remains the right recommendation for a child today, and the ninety-three percent of current American cases occurring in unvaccinated people is where the marginal dose does the most good. Both statements hold at once, alongside the observation that we have built an entire elimination strategy on a product whose central limitation we decline to study.While that argument waits, work is available that requires no new science, no new authorization, and no new money. The cohort is identifiable. Americans born between 1957 and 1966 are now sixty to seventy years old, and any of them vaccinated against measles before 1968 may have received the inactivated product. ACIP has directed for decades that such a person be treated as unvaccinated.I am in this cohort. I turn sixty-seven this year; my wife and partner Jill Glasspool Malone turns sixty-six, and neither of us can produce a vaccination record from the 1960s. Almost no one our age can. Under the guidance as written, both of us count as unvaccinated against measles. Were either of us to meet the wild virus, we would be candidates for a syndrome that no physician now in practice has seen outside a textbook.The question at the physician’s visit takes one sentence. Were you vaccinated against measles before 1968, and is there any record of which vaccine you got? Almost no one will have the record. That absence settles the question rather than complicating it. The existing recommendation turns on documentation of a live dose, and revaccination is the default when none exists. One dose of MMR suffices for most, two for anyone with elevated exposure risk through occupation or travel.  Ideally, the physician would offer a monovalent measles vaccine, but those have been taken off the market for convenience in the childhood vaccination schedule.Ordering serology first is tempting, but it answers the wrong question. An antibody level in a sixty-five-year-old cannot distinguish childhood infection from a live vaccine dose from an inactivated one. The problem in this cohort is a response that was defective from the beginning, not one that decayed. Presumptive revaccination costs a single dose of an off-patent product with sixty years of safety data behind it. Screening costs a blood draw, a return visit, and a result that will not tell the clinician what to do.One exception carries over from the discussion of immunosuppression. Live attenuated vaccine cannot be given to a patient on B cell depleting therapy, on chronic corticosteroids, or with active malignancy, and those patients sit inside this same age band. Their protection runs through exposure avoidance, post-exposure immune globulin, and the immunity of the people around them, which argues for vaccinating their household rather than leaving the cohort alone.Every year this group ages further onto the climbing arm of the severity curve, and every year more of them acquire the comorbidities and the immunosuppressive prescriptions that would close the option. Adult primary care already sees them. Medicare annual wellness visits already provide the encounter.Nothing stands between the recommendation and its execution except the fact that nobody is doing it. The last time this country distributed a measles vaccine that did not work, it wrote a correction and then stopped looking for the people who needed it.Malone News is funded by readers rather than sponsors, advertisers, or grants. The argument above is that the measles durability question stays open because nobody with money benefits from closing it. The same incentive structure governs writing about it. Nineteen primary sources went into this piece, including a federal recommendation that has sat unexecuted on a guidance page since the Nixon administration. Free subscribers receive every essay. Paid subscribers are the reason there is a next one.Nothing here constitutes medical advice for any individual patient. Clinical and vaccination decisions belong to patients and the physicians who examine them.RWMReferencesAnichini, Gabriele, et al. 2024. “Seronegative Vaccinees May Not Benefit From Multiple Booster Doses of MMR Vaccine in Restoring Immunity.”Journal of Medical Virology96 (12): e70135.Bianchi, Francesco Paolo, Simona Mascipinto, Pasquale Stefanizzi, Sara De Nitto, Cinzia Germinario, and Silvio Tafuri. 2021. “Long-Term Immunogenicity After Measles Vaccine vs. Wild Infection: An Italian Retrospective Cohort Study.”Human Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics17 (7): 2078-2084.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2026a. “Measles Cases and Outbreaks.” Data as of August 13, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html.Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2026b. “Characteristics of Patients Hospitalized with Measles During an Outbreak: West Texas, January to March 2025.”Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report75 (20).Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2026c. “Chapter 13: Measles.” InEpidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases(Pink Book). 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Metcalf, Rik L. de Swart, Albert D. M. E. Osterhaus, and Bryan T. Grenfell. 2015. “Long-Term Measles-Induced Immunomodulation Increases Overall Childhood Infectious Disease Mortality.”Science348 (6235): 694-699.Mina, Michael J., Tomasz Kula, Yumei Leng, Mamie Li, Rory D. de Vries, Mikael Knip, et al. 2019. “Measles Virus Infection Diminishes Preexisting Antibodies That Offer Protection from Other Pathogens.”Science366 (6465): 599-606.Panum, Peter Ludvig. 1847.Observations Made During the Epidemic of Measles on the Faroe Islands in the Year 1846. Copenhagen.Petrova, Velislava N., Rory D. de Vries, Colin A. Russell, et al. 2019. “Incomplete Genetic Reconstitution of B Cell Pools Contributes to Prolonged Immunosuppression After Measles.”Science Immunology4 (41): eaay6125.von Pirquet, Clemens. 1908. “Das Verhalten der kutanen Tuberkulinreaktion wahrend der Masern.”Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift34: 1297-1300.World Health Organization. 2026. “Measles.” Fact sheet, July 15.

Summary: Vaccine immunity fades, and another dose does not restore it.