Words about science and hiking
A better (I think) question is “should we play the anthem at sporting events?”. After all what does kicking or hitting a ball or throwing it through a hoop have to do with love of country? Not to mention smacking one’s fellow citizens around and scrambling their brains. The only remotely plausible answer is that Read More …
There is an abundance of terrible science journalism out there. It usually takes the form of credulous hype that hails incremental advances as game-changing breakthroughs. Articles that are just plain misleading are more rare. And they are especially rare in quality outlets like the New York Times. But rare is not the same as nonexistent. Read More …
When I was in grad school (the 80s), fungal viruses were thought to be exceedingly rare. This was a problem for aspiring yeast molecular biologists, because viral transduction [1] was still the predominant form of genetic engineering of bacteria, and the yeast folks wanted to get in the game. But it turns out that fungal viruses – mycoviruses – Read More …
To quote from a recent study of the belly button microbiome: the frequent, abundant phylotypes encountered were dominated by well-known skin bacteria, specifically Staphylococci, Corynebacteria, and several genera of Actinobacteria (e.g., Micrococcus) and Clostridiales (e.g., Anaerococcus, Finegoldia, Peptidophilus), Bacilli, as well, to a lesser extent, Gammaproteobacteria (e.g., Acinetobacter). This composition corresponds to the previously reported Read More …
Published in Apple News Only in the US could such a question be asked. And only in the US is it impossible to answer. Transparency – symmetry of information – is essential for proper functioning of a free market system. It enables buyers to compare the costs and benefits of different options and choose accordingly. Read More …
A lot of important medicines entered clinical use within a couple of years of their initial discovery: Anti-sera for diphtheria, developed 1890, implemented 1892 [1] Salvarsan for syphilis, discovered 1909, introduced 1910 [2] Blood types discovered 1900, first successful transfusions 1907 [3] Insulin discovered 1921, diabetics treated 1922 [4] HIV confirmed to be the cause of AIDS 1984, Read More …
Price caps would impact revenue for sure, and profits probably. The real question is whether we should care. Pharma is consistently among the most profitable industries, regularly scoring 15–20% profit margins each year: From Drug Industry: Profits, Research and Development Spending, and Merger and Acquisition Deals Total industry revenues for 2015 were $775B, while R&D (mostly D) Read More …
Clinical research on phage therapy is somewhere between comatose and dead. A search through ClinicalTrials.gov reveals only a few sporadic attempts at bringing PT to the clinic. Many of these are Phase 1 safety/dosing trials which have no apparent follow-up: A 2008 P1 trial of PT for venous leg ulcers found no adverse events, but no difference in outcomes Read More …
This is perhaps the most counterproductive approach imaginable to controlling drug costs. At its essence, it is a return to the concept of a “just price” [1] , the idea that there is a fair price for every good and service, one that can be ascertained a priori. This was a dominant economic philosophy of the European Read More …
The portion that will benefit is low and not likely to get high. Precision medicine is not a scam – it does benefit patients – but it is overhyped. Vinay Prasad, a prominent skeptic, just published a study estimating that about 8% of cancer patients are eligible for genome-targeted therapy [1] . That’s not much. Worse, Read More …