A paper in Vaccines: IgG4 Antibodies Induced by Repeated Vaccination May Generate Immune Tolerance to the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein examines the possibility that repeated doses of the mRNA vaccine administered to prevent COVID 19 infection may cause autoimmune disease in susceptible patients. The abstract is below. I have underlined a key part of it. Less…
The Journal of the American Medical Association already on a woke high of intergalactic dimensions has published Standards of Care for Transgender and Gender Diverse People – its full text is below. The document’s contents would until a short time ago have been considered delusional. I don’t wish to discuss the subject beyond saying that…
Heather Mac Donald’s latest book is subtitled: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. It is such a tale of horrors that a number of alternate subtitles come to mind. Animal Farm Redux, How I Came to Love Big Brother, A Litany of Lunacy, 40 Years Before the Mast, Gone…
The US Preventive Services Task Force has issued a new draft recommending biennial screening mammography for women ages 40 to 74 years. This recommendation has received widespread notice in the lay press. Workers in the field along with breast cancer advocates want even more (annual) screening. Everybody commenting on this recommendation seems to support it…
The two subjects of the above title seem to have little in common. But they are both examples of action unmoored from knowledge. If the scientific foundation of medicine is compared to that of economics, specifically the actions of the world’s central banks, the practitioners of the former are certainly closer to the dictates of…
President Biden just received his annual physical exam. Like everything else in today’s world the result was engulfed in political controversy. I do not want to do anything but state a few simple facts about the exam and its reception. The President is 80 years old, young by comparison to this author. Virtually all American…
Rethinking next-generation vaccines for coronaviruses, influenzaviruses, and other respiratory viruses is a paper by Anthony Fauci and two colleagues. It examines the reasons that vaccines against flu and COVID don’t work very well. This is a startling statement after all the public and repeated admonitions from Dr Fauci that everyone be vaccinated repeatedly. The summary…
In a world where reason has been suspended in favor of lunatic fads, the use of cannabis has gained more traction than a football field sized stretch of flypaper. It has been used for a variety of medical conditions such as nausea, as an appetite stimulus for patients with AIDS, and for pain relief. Twenty…
The Cochrane Library just published an analysis of the effect of wearing mask, using N95 respirators, and hand washing on the spread of respiratory viruses like flu and COVID. Cochrane has long set the standard for data analysis. Their lay summary is below. The complete analysis can be viewed here. The response to the COVID…
At the start of every year the American Cancer Society issues the latest cancer statistics. This year the data were released in two publications, both of which are found at the end of this article. Some of the salient features of the data are discussed below. I’ll start with prostate cancer which seems to eternally…