Can States Reinvent U.S. Healthcare? This Expert Thinks So
Trump has sent a wrecking ball through US healthcare. Can states team up to preserve some measure of the old normal?
Read more...Category Archives: Science and the scientific method
Funding the Fundamentals of Biomedical Science: The National Institutes of Health in 2025 and Beyond
In the United States, the aim of the Current Administration is to support something called “gold-standard science.” Their clear implication is that American scientists have been publishing something less than the gold standard – perhaps silver or bronze, or maybe even brass, when gold is the standard of the day (here and here). We have […]
Read more...‘Farming in the Dark’: Brooke Rollins’ Leadership, DOGE’s Grip and the Cost to American Agriculture
In her first six months, Donald Trump’s second agriculture secretary has altered the course of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She says prosperity is ‘just around the corner.’ But staffing cuts and restricted research could have long-lasting impacts.
Read more...Coffee Break: Garden of Healing, Good News on PEPFAR, Life in Biotech, and Our American Israel
Part the First: Pharmacopeia. Who doesn’t love a garden? It sometimes seems that all drugs come from plants, initially. My first biology teachers claimed they were taught that bacteria were plants back when life was either animal or plant. Garden of Healing is a bit long but very interesting. It is also a break from […]
Read more...Hayek’s Bastards and the Rise of Neoliberalism
The Neoliberal turn of late capitalism [1] rules our world. Quinn Slobodian has become the voice of our time in explaining how this has happened and why. In Globalists The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (2020), he described, among other things, how the Liberals of Central Europe who became Neoliberals were most […]
Read more...FEMA’s Flood Maps Often Miss Dangerous Flash Flood Risks, Leaving Homeowners Unprepared
Even where FEMA identifies a flood risk, the overreliance on historical data and political influence leads to maps that don’t fully represent true risk.
Read more...Coffee Break: AI in Healthcare and Science, the Nature of Charisma, and a Cure from a Mouse to a Patient
Part the First: Algorithmic Intelligence in Clinical Medicine. From the article This Ohio health system tested an AI tool to predict sepsis. Here’s how it went. As the subhead notes: Summa Health’s experience highlights the challenges of AI adoption, especially at community health systems: Across emergency departments around Akron, Ohio, physicians were getting overwhelmed. In […]
Read more...Coffee Break: Ancient Food Facts, Cancer Therapy, the Conscious Brain, and Biohacking with Biotech…Plus Thomas Jefferson
On this Independence Day in one country in North America a few notes on life outside current politics, scientific and otherwise. Part the First: The Archaeology of Food Is Fascinating. Having read about Roman eating habits over the years I have wondered about two things, fish sauce and the dormouse. Now we know which fish […]
Read more...Trust in Science, Public Health, and Politics: Lessons from COVID-19
Shortly after COVID-19 was recognized as a worldwide catastrophe, my much better half asked me how long I thought this would this last. Based on my then 45 years of biomedical research experience I replied, “Three years.” I was wrong. That was more than five years ago, when the refrigerated makeshift morgues were parked on […]
Read more...Coffee Break: Funding Medical Education, A Human Ancestor, Tardigrades to the Rescue, Trashing the Earth, Plus MAHA and Measles
Part the First: Financing Professional Education in the United States. College costs too much in the United States. Professional School costs way to much. Up until the present – who knows what will happen next as the broad attacks on American universities continue – graduate education at the PhD level in traditional disciplines in the […]
Read more...A Possible Connection Between Mental Illness and Diet
On the mounting evidence that a ketogenic diet considerably can alleviate some debilitating mental health ailments, such as schizophrenia.
Read more...On the Accelerating Decline in US Medical Training, and With It, Doctor Competence
A warning to US readers on the further degradation in medical training and resulting crapification of care.
Read more...Coffee Break: Healthcare and the State of Science, Plus Baseball and Abundance
Part the First. How Did the United States Get This Healthcare System? I distinctly remember the first time this question occurred to me, because as the child of a union household a visit to the doctor or the Emergency Room (trees were made to fall out of) was never a problem. I was twenty years […]
Read more...What if MAGA Has a Point About Science?
On the fallen legitimacy of science in the US, and what might be done about that.
Read more...Via the False Claims Act, NIH Creates Another Weapon for Ideological Enforcement at Universities
Universities are loath to take NIH funding due to “evil” grant terms that make ideological non-compliance subject to False Claims Act damages
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