Broken Trust · When Science Became Political
Two investigations of the same institutions, under pressure from two directions
The NIH, the CDC, and HHS are supposed to be the parts of government Americans can trust regardless of who is in charge. Two books examine what happened when that stopped being true — one asks how public trust in these institutions collapsed, the other asks what was done to them once it had.
Two Investigations
Broken Trust looks backward, at COVID-19. In spring 2025, 77% of American adults said they trusted the CDC's health recommendations; a year later, 50% did. The book asks what collapsed in that 27-point drop — not by picking a side, but by holding both the institutions and their critics to the same standard, and finding that both claimed more certainty than the evidence supported.
When Science Became Political looks at what came next. In 2025, the NIH, CDC, and HHS were rapidly reshaped under new leadership: roughly a quarter of the CDC's workforce was eliminated within weeks, all 17 members of the federal vaccine advisory committee were fired, and more than $2.45 billion in NIH research grants were terminated. The book documents what was done, and what it has already cost — including the return of measles deaths for the first time since 2015.
Read separately, each book stands on its own. Read together, they trace a single institutional crisis from two different vantage points: the erosion of public confidence, and the structural dismantling that followed it.
Two Books
Kindle eBook · 2026
COVID-19 and the Cost of Certainty
Why trust in the CDC fell 27 points in a year, and what that number was actually measuring — an investigation that holds institutions and their critics to the same standard.
About the book →
Kindle eBook · 2026
The Crisis Inside NIH, CDC, and HHS
What happened when the agencies responsible for American public health were reshaped in 2025 — who was appointed, what they claimed, what they did, and what it has already cost.
About the book →Trust and structure are not the same thing. One collapsed first. The other was taken apart after.
Both are documented, in full, with sources.