Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by Tim F| 17 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology, General Stupidity
As a scientist, you can win a Nobel prize in three basic ways. Some discoveries fall into a researcher’s lap, unexpectedly, when they think they’re working on something else. To cite a classic example, in 1928 Alexander Fleming discovered pennicillin when a mysterious fungus killed off bacteria that he was using for influenza research. Sometimes …
The Amazing Rise And Fall Of A Stem Cell KingPost + Comments (17)
by John Cole| 57 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Politics, Science & Technology
I know you lefties hate Charles Krauthammer, but I continue to think he is one of the better columnists out there, and he has am eminently reasonable piece on the stem cell issue today: It is a good idea to expand federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. It is a bad idea to do …
This post is in: Open Threads, Science & Technology, World's Best Healthcare (If You Can Afford It)
The FDA has just approved two drugs that could change for the better millions of lives. Both address sickle cell anemia. Casgevy is the first CRISPR-Cas based drug to get the nod for its gene editing approach to enabling a sickle cell patient’s body to produce the type of hemoglobin needed to carry oxygen through …
This post is in: COVID-19, Foreign Affairs
Breaking News: The FDA is expected to authorize a third shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines as soon as Thursday for certain people with weakened immune systems, an effort to better protect them as the highly contagious Delta variant sweeps the U.S. https://t.co/yBMbLkGDid — The New York Times (@nytimes) August 12, 2021
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Wednesday / Thursday, Aug. 11-12Post + Comments (126)
This post is in: COVID-19, Foreign Affairs
Click on the graph for full animation of COVID-19’s rise: Insane graphic about coronavirus that deserves to go viralhttps://t.co/CX3tlt1zlF — Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) June 14, 2020 Meanwhile: Trump on the number of coronavirus cases, per pool: “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.” — Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) June 15, …
COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Monday-Tuesday, June 15-16Post + Comments (37)
by David Anderson| 12 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Free Markets Solve Everything
CAR-T therapies are a type of innovative cancer therapy that tweaks a patient’s immune system cells to attack cancer. The National Cancer Institute explains: A type of treatment in which a patient’s T cells (a type of immune system cell) are changed in the laboratory so they will attack cancer cells. T cells are taken …
by David Anderson| 15 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance
CAR-T cancer therapies look to be super-promising. They also look to be super expensive. They also are tough to administer with significant credentialling and training needed to safely use the therapies. Yescarta is a CAR-T therapy for non-Hodgkins Lymphona which promises intriguing results and has a significant caveat: In the single-arm ZUMA-1 study, Yescarta demonstrated …