Words about science and hiking
I admit to doing a spit-take when I saw the title of this article: Aptamers as Therapeutic Agents: Has the Initial Euphoria Subsided?. At this stage in the game, with only one aptamer therapeutic cleared and it having perennially weak sales, that question mark in the title seems more than a bit out of date. Read More …
From Quora: “Excessive” is loaded term. Worse, it’s subjective and difficult to define. Let’s see if we can put it into some kind of context or framework that permits a useful discussion. Congress, always sensitive to public resentment over drug prices, had the GAO do a study on drug company profitability. The 1-page summary, which you should definitely Read More …
Innovations created in developed economies do not deprive less-developed economies of anything. More to the point, less-developed economies eventually get access to these innovations, and get them at prices that are cheaper than the prevailing prices in developed economies. Drugs are a good example of this dynamic. Many of us consider new drug prices to Read More …
Phage therapy isn’t ever going to be the cure-all envisioned by overly-enthusiastic science writers. But it doesn’t have to be. Curing some patients of some indications is a noble and worthy goal in and of itself. And maybe when we learn to use phage therapy in limited applications, we can start thinking about tackling sepsis Read More …
By now you’ve no doubt read that cancer death rates (age-adjusted) are down 27% since 1991. The better sort of news articles point out that this is a bit of cherry-picking, as cancer death rates peaked in 1991, and current progress has brought us back to the rates that prevailed in the 1940s. This graph Read More …
The prevailing narrative on drug prices, especially in the US, is that they are getting ridiculously expensive and unaffordable. That makes a story that’s easy to write – villainous drug companies vs desperate patients unable to afford life-saving medicine. But it’s almost completely wrong. Not the expensive part – the life-saving part. Most drugs – Read More …
The FDA today cleared a new drug for treating influenza, the first in 20 years. Xofluza (baloxovir) appears to have about the same efficacy as oseltamivir in reducing symptoms of patients with uncomplicated influenza infections. Maybe a little better: From Baloxavir Marboxil for Uncomplicated Influenza in Adults and Adolescents Baloxavir attacks a different target (RNA replication) Read More …
I tend to be pretty dismissive of predictions of the superbug apocalypse. Yes, antibiotic resistance is a real problem and causes real deaths now and will cause even more later. But it is a pretty slow-moving sort of apocalypse and there are lots of changes and adaptations that we can make to slow it down. Read More …
Published on Forbes and Apple News There’s little question that we have been suckered into taking far more medicine than we actually require. But let’s face it – we want to be suckered. We ask for it, we demand it, and we get it. Pharma companies are enablers, but they are not all-powerful overlords forcing us to Read More …
A hundred years of phage therapy has produced many claims for its utility. Almost none of these claims are backed up by compelling evidence. By “compelling” I mean randomized controlled trials, rather than anecdotes or case studies. The problem with case studies in infectious diseases is that most patients get well on their own, even Read More …