February 27, 2025
(MedPage Today) – A meeting of FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) that selects strains to include in fall influenza vaccines was abruptly canceled, surprising and angering many on the panel. Paul Offit, MD, a VRBPAC member … Read More
February 26, 2025
(New York Times) – Dr. Bryant Lin, who teaches medicine at Stanford University, was given a terminal diagnosis. He wanted his students to understand the humanity at the core of medicine. Just 50 years old and a nonsmoker, he had … Read More
February 26, 2025
(ABC News) – Audience disinterest has characterized many, though not all, of the films about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the output has pretty much dried up over the years. “My Dead Friend Zoe” feels like it was made … Read More
February 26, 2025
(The Guardian) – GenBioPro seeks to defend access to mifepristone in suit brought by attorneys general of Idaho, Missouri and Kansas The manufacturer of the generic version of a major abortion pill has asked to join a federal lawsuit over … Read More
February 26, 2025
(UPI) – Eli Lilly announced plans for four new pharmaceutical manufacturing sites to produce domestic medicine production in the United States and make the nation the world’s leader in pharmaceutical production. The pharmaceutical firm would invest $27 billion to build … Read More
February 26, 2025
(Ars Technica) – Imagine heading out for a run on a cold winter day clad in athletic gear with sensors and microelectronics woven into the very fiber to constantly monitor your vital signs, even running the occasional app. MIT scientists … Read More
February 26, 2025
(Associated Press) – A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious respiratory disease since 2015. The school-aged child had been hospitalized and … Read More
February 26, 2025
(NPR) – “I think it helped,” says her husband, Ken Bell. “But I’m not sure.” That sort of uncertainty is common when it comes to Leqembi and Kisunla, two new Alzheimer’s drugs approved since 2023. Both drugs clear the brain … Read More
February 26, 2025
(New York Times) – The Food and Drug Administration has taken a crucial step toward expanding access to the antipsychotic medication clozapine, the only drug approved for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, among the most devastating of mental illnesses. The agency announced on … Read More
February 26, 2025
(Science) – Barred from the country, researchers try to monitor death and destruction from afar The lab, part of Yale’s School of Public Health, is one of several groups gauging the devastation caused by the brutal civil war in Sudan. … Read More
February 26, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – Research into psilocybin led by the biotech company Compass Pathways has been slowed in part by the complexity of the trials, but the data already shows promise for the psychedelic compound within so-called magic mushrooms. Eventually, … Read More
February 26, 2025
Journal of Medical Humanities (vol. 46, no 1, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
February 25, 2025
(Gizmodo) – New research out this month showcases the ever-present danger posed by coronaviruses, the family of viruses that gave rise to the covid-19 pandemic. Scientists in China have reportedly found a new coronavirus in bats that may be capable … Read More
February 25, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – This discrepancy between the relative ease of teaching a machine abstract thinking and the difficulty of teaching it basic sensory, social, and motor skills is what’s known as Moravec’s paradox. Named after an observation the roboticist … Read More
February 25, 2025
(New York Times) – Chatbots posing as therapists may encourage users to commit harmful acts, the nation’s largest psychological organization warned federal regulators. The nation’s largest association of psychologists this month warned federal regulators that A.I. chatbots “masquerading” as therapists, … Read More
February 25, 2025
(STAT News) – Two U.S. government agencies that are key players in the World Health Organization-led process to select the flu viruses for next winter’s influenza vaccines are participating in a meeting to discuss the issue, despite the Trump administration’s … Read More
February 25, 2025
(Associated Press) – An unknown illness first discovered in three children who ate a bat has rapidly killed more than 50 people in northwestern Congo over the past five weeks, health experts say. The interval between the onset of symptoms … Read More
February 25, 2025
(Axios) – The Food and Drug Administration on Monday granted its first approval for a pacemaker-like device for the brain to ease symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, which affects nearly 1 million people in the United States. Why it matters: Medtronic, … Read More
February 25, 2025
(Wired) – Claude 3.7, the latest model from Anthropic, can be instructed to engage in a specific amount of reasoning to solve hard problems. Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company founded by exiles from OpenAI, has introduced the first AI model … Read More
February 25, 2025
(BBC) – A law to give terminally ill adults on the Isle of Man the right to end their own lives is entering its final stages, making it potentially the first jurisdiction in the British Isles to legalise assisted dying. … Read More
February 25, 2025
(Nature) – Armed with an influx of cash and public enthusiasm, researchers are looking to improve how ageing is measured. Mixed feelings of enthusiasm and apprehension were common among researchers who spoke to Nature about efforts to develop tests that … Read More
February 25, 2025
(Gizmodo) – Health officials in Wisconsin and Minnesota have documented a rare case of donor-derived ehrlichiosis. A person’s precious organ donation came with an unexpected visitor. In a new paper out this month, scientists have documented an unconventional way of … Read More
February 25, 2025
The New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 392, no. 4, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
February 24, 2025
(New York Times) – The Food and Drug Administration has reinstated dozens of specialized employees involved in food safety, review of medical devices and other areas who were laid off last week, according to more than a dozen workers who … Read More
February 24, 2025
(The Atlantic) – In truth, scientists were both right and wrong about the speed at which SARS-CoV-2 mutates. The rate of mutations as this virus jumps from person to person is indeed unimpressive. But scientists were not aware of a … Read More
