This piece documents how policymakers have stigmatized mRNA vaccination, in contrast to other forms of vaccine technology, following the COVID-19 pandemic. It further argues that, although it is presently unclear whether elites’ efforts to stigmatize mRNA vaccines have spilled over to shape US public opinion, there is growing reason to believe that it might. Ultimately, mRNA vaccine stigmatization could erode public confidence in mRNA vaccination and limit access to life-saving vaccines. This piece concludes by outlining a research agenda for researchers at the intersection of politics and the life sciences who hope to better understand the causes and consequences of mRNA vaccine stigmatization.

In many countries, a large portion of animal studies serve publicly funded research purposes, yet a transition beyond animal research is politically desired. This article argues that a gradual transition is obstructed by three commitments of traditional science policy: (1) the state should provide resources for research; (2) it should leave the direction of research to the scientific community; and (3) it should set side constraints for research. This framework severely restricts public influence on the amount and kind of animal research conducted with public funds. The public can allocate some extra resources to the innovation of alternatives to animal models or tighten legal side constraints, but neither approach is likely to significantly decrease reliance on animal research overall. A gradual transition away from publicly funded animal research toward new approaches is feasible only if the second commitment is reconsidered, allowing the public greater influence over the research agenda.

COVID-19 deepened the interface between health and security, making information the decisive currency of collaboration. This paper foregrounds the “confidentiality–utility dilemma”: how health and security communities—each premised on strict secrecy in distinct operational contexts—can share information without undermining the other side’s core values. We argue that purposeful managerial design is both necessary and feasible. First, we address the structural limitations of global rule-making and the concomitant drift toward diversification of sources and strengthened capabilities to uncover hidden information that renders security-sector actors increasingly relevant. Drawing on previous assessments and cases, we reformulate the importance of three managerial levers: (1) organizational and structural interventions including two-tier arrangements; (2) tiered classification and de-identification that embed share-by-design access controls for both health and security data; and (3) joint investigations and co-analysis, exemplified by UN-SGM (United Nations Secretary-General’s Mechanism)-type mechanisms, which can act as clearinghouses by enabling full sharing within the team while preserving external neutrality.

Past research has linked stronger physiological threat and disgust responses with conservatism, suggesting a neurobiological basis for ideology. However, replication failures cast doubt on a direct link between physiology and political attitudes. Given interoception’s role in awareness and emotion regulation, we tested whether interoceptive sensibility (i.e., awareness of internal bodily states) moderates the relationship between disgust sensitivity and political orientation. In 632 US citizens, we found that the association between disgust sensitivity and political orientation was moderated by interoceptive sensibility. Among those with lower interoception, higher disgust sensitivity was associated with more conservative ideology and a greater likelihood of Republican identification, whereas this association weakened or disappeared among those with higher interoception. We suggest that among individuals with lower interoception, socially acquired meanings may play a larger role in interpreting disgust-related experiences, strengthening their association with ideology. These findings lay the groundwork for mechanistic, replicable research on psychophysiological antecedents of political cognition.

Genomic biobanks are increasingly embedded in the United States’ criminal justice system and scientific research institutions. Yet, we do not clearly understand how much the public supports these societal uses, why they do (or do not), and whether public perspectives are even meaningful given minimal familiarity with biobanks. Few studies have queried representative samples of the U.S. public, and almost all address only one moment in time and one of the two uses. In contrast, we draw on original survey data that (1) address scientific and forensic biobanks, (2) are representative of the U.S. public, (3) include re-interviews several years later, and (4) mix qualitative and quantitative measures of opinion. We find a public using value-based reasoning to express a mix of optimism and caution. We conclude that well-constructed surveys enable policymakers and experts to consider lay views as they craft policy relevant to genomics.

Over the past 50 years, attention has intensified on Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) Article X, which obligates states parties to provide international cooperation and assistance (ICA) and ensure the broadest accessibility of biology for peaceful purposes. In the absence of a treaty protocol and institutional support, Article X’s scope of activities and standard for compliance remain up to the interpretation of each state party. The Ninth BWC Review Conference established the Working Group on the Strengthening of the Convention (Working Group) and mandated it to address ICA, including establishing a mechanism to facilitate Article X implementation. Utilizing a mixed-methods methodology, this study characterizes the landscape of Article X and ICA perspectives among BWC delegations and other stakeholders. It identifies concrete opportunities to strengthen Article X implementation, in support of the Working Group’s efforts, including a pillar framework to illustrate alignment across an ICA mechanism’s roles, activities, and resources.

This paper examines Ghana’s COVID-19 response through a biopolitical and biosecurity lens. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, it analyzes how interventions such as lockdowns, biosurveillance, and vaccination campaigns functioned both as technologies of care and instruments of control, expanding state authority over biological and social life. The study shows that biopolitics in Ghana did not replicate Western models but emerged as a provincialized and context-dependent form of power shaped by infrastructural constraints, informal economies, and postcolonial state formation. Pandemic governance was, therefore, adaptive and improvisational, requiring negotiation between epidemiological control and socioeconomic survival. By bringing biopolitics into dialogue with postcolonial theory and necropolitics, the paper conceptualizes pandemic governance as a hybrid regime in which life-preserving and life-abandoning logics coexist. It thus challenges universalist assumptions and repositions the Global South as central to rethinking the governance of life.

Research on psychology and foreign policy offers compelling evidence that leaders’ predispositions to aggression influence their decisions to initiate military conflicts. However, most indicators of leader proclivities are limited both spatially and temporally, reducing their generalizability. To mitigate these issues, this study employs the facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR), a measure of aggression drawn from theories of evolutionary psychology, and available for most leaders in the post-World War II era. FWHR not only provides broad coverage but it also taps into a dimension of leader characteristics overlooked in most international conflict research. Empirical analysis of over 1,700 leaders across 174 countries during 1947–2010 reveals that higher-FWHR leaders are significantly more likely than their lower-FWHR counterparts to initiate conflict. The results are particularly strong early in a leader’s tenure.