Author Archives: KLG

Coffee Break: Notes on Pandemic Responses, a Human Pathogen that Eats the Plastic of Medical Devices, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services Speaks Out

Part the First: Retrospective Notes on a Pandemic.  BMJ, formerly known as the British Medical Journal, has recently published two interesting pieces on COVID-19.  The first is an analysis by Anthony Costello, who was previously Director of Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health at the World Heath Organization: UK decision not to suppress covid raises questions […]

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Coffee Break: More on the Disruption of American Science and Good News on Intranasal Viruses to Combat Respiratory Viruses

Part the First. A Few Words in Response to the Excellent Commentariat of Naked Capitalism.  No one knows better than I that funding of science in the United States is hit or miss.  My overall average flirts with the Mendoza Line, which is not so bad.  For most I do not miss the grant treadmill/lottery, […]

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On the Practical Importance of Basic Research for Human Health

I was listening to the journalist Ryan Grim of Drop Site News last week as he talked briefly about his wife’s ongoing cancer treatment.  His short gloss was directly on point, and it motivated me to dig deep in my archives on the history of research on breast cancer and how one never knows what […]

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Coffee Break: The Attack on Scientists and Scientific Research Continues, Plus One Great Result on a Vaccine That Prevents Cancer

Part the First. Convergence and Consensus in Science, or and how to interpret scientific results in context.  From Holden Thorp, the Editor-in-Chief of Science: Kathleen Hall Jamieson believes that scientists need to talk…about convergent evidence.  “Unlike declarations that a consensus exists, a claim that convergent evidence exists honors science’s norms of critique and correction by […]

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Coffee Break: The Current State of Science During Trump v.2.0 Plus One Signal Advance

As someone who has spent most of his working life as a scientific worker and later as an academic scientist, graduate supervisor, teacher, grant reviewer, and administrator, the current devastation being visited upon my colleagues and their institutions is sickening.  I have never thought my work was more useful or more important than anyone else’s.  […]

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Prevagen®: A Most Curious Dietary Supplement for Your Brain

Dietary supplements are a large part of the alternative medicine universe, with annual sales of more than $70B in the United states and much more than that in the rest of the world.  I have followed the supplement business since tryptophan, a canonical amino acid marketed as a sleep aid, caused an outbreak of eosinophilia-myalgia […]

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