Words about science and hiking
A truism among early-stage investors is that “you don’t invest in technologies, you invest in people”. The idea is that a smart, resourceful team will find a way to succeed, even if their technology crashes hard on the rocks of reality. Great leaders, the thinking goes, will always find a way forward. That’s not a Read More …
I watched the HBO documentary on the Theranos disaster last night. Well, I watched the first half before I fell asleep. That’s not a criticism of the movie; the information transfer rate of movies (and podcasts) is just much, much slower than reading and the visuals weren’t sufficiently arresting to compensate for the slow rate Read More …
I read Bad Blood, John Carreyou’s account of the Theranos fiasco over Christmas and must say it changed my conception of what went down there. I’d written a fair amount about Theranos over at Quora (see here), and was clearly much too sanguine as to what was going on. I thought they were just at Read More …
Liquid biopsy is all the rage now for cancer screening. But screening – testing apparently healthy people for a disease – is the Great White Whale of cancer diagnostics. I predict it will lose more venture capitalists more money over the next decade than every other Dx play combined. But that’s OK—redistributing money from wealthy Read More …
Disclosure up front: I helped found SomaLogic and was its first R&D director. I left the company in 2004, but exercised my options and still hold its stock. I am definitely not neutral about the value of proteomics as a diagnostic and prognostic platform. Last Sunday’s NYT magazine had a pretty good article about the Read More …
Maryn McKenna – one of the better science journalists out there – is the culprit this time. One might argue in her defense that she is simply relaying the views of a top expert, in this case Kevin Outterson of CARB-X who said “…every antibiotic we count on now will be destroyed…antibiotics will be crushed.” Read More …
I’ve ragged on various phage groups for what I perceive as their shortcomings in moving phage therapy from proof of principle to an actual product that can be used to treat patients reliably. There are plenty of anecdotal reports and case studies of patients helped by PT, and I’m sure that many of them are Read More …
I’m not much of a believer in “Great Man” theories, especially in science. There are a lot of smart, hardworking scientists out there. Someone has to be first to make a discovery, but they rarely finish the race more than a step or two ahead of their competitors. If not Newton, then Liebniz. If not Read More …
The development of newer and better biosensing technologies will have almost no impact on health care. Why? Because detection of biomolecules is rarely the limiting factor in making a diagnosis or prognosis. What’s missing is not the ability to generate information, but the ability to interpret it. Most single biomarkers fall in the range of Read More …
Humans and bacteria are in a constant process of mutual accommodation. The discovery of antibiotics encouraged the conceit that we had reached the end of history with our microbial adversaries. We won, they lost, end of story. It wasn’t quite that neat and simple, was it? We ignored the reality that antibiotics have been around Read More …