The Present Illness White House's Fever Dream Photoshoot
In their final episode of 2025, Drs. Salles & Burgart perform a brief examination of the Vanity Fair exclusive featuring Trump's new White House staff. Our physician hosts dissect the viral photoshoot that's causing more raised eyebrows than a Botox convention, with special attention to the inflammatory rhetoric surrounding Susie Wiles and her supporting cast of characters.
The physicians perform a thorough examination of HHS cutting AAP funding while also funding an extremely unethical study of the Hepatitis B vaccine, news of HHS abandoning Hepatitis B vaccine recommendations for newborns, and Idaho’s anti-scientific tossing of school vaccine mandates (and Florida showing symptoms of the same). The doctors discuss ethical complexity in mitochondrial risk assessment for anesthesia in the setting of bombing of boats off the coast of Venezuelan.
Resources:
- Interview with Vanity Fair photographer, Christopher Anderson
- RaeShanda Lias’s video about the Vanity Fair photos
- CDC adopts ACIP’s anti-scientific recommendation on Hepatitis B vaccination
- Lecture on emerging anesthesia safety concern in kids. (I would stop at the Q&A because the speakers are not prepared to answer several genetic & safety questions)
- DHS’s original post about remigration. Here is the post with the added context.
- Alyssa’s paper: Pregnancy Testing without Consent
- Pregnancy Justice’s report: Pregnancy as a Crime
- Keeping Police out of Pregnancy Care (Fact Check: the second author of the essay is the CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health)
- Stephanie Tillman’s paper on opt-in consent
💊Take Two and Call Me in the Morning💊
- Taylor Ann Gallo’s makeup tips
- Glenn DeVar’s first drag video and a more recent
Thanks for listening to The Present Illness with Drs. Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart!
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Credits
- Production by Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart
- Editing by Alyssa Burgart
- Theme Music by Joseph Uphoff
- Social Media by Arghavan Salles