Seeing those PET scans after CAR-T 5–10 years ago was transformative but it has now become superfluous. Yes, yes, that was a nice anecdote, can I now please see some data? #ASH24
100% of patients developed grade ≥3 neutropenia. “The safety profile was mild” #ASH24
PCA maps are the new PET scan, only with zero clinical relevancy instead of at least some. Much more subjective, too! #ASH24
Quote of the day is from The Hinternet:
This, then, is the real transformation, of which Jones’s addiction diagnosis is merely a symptom: that absorption, which used to represent a secret inner life, has been sneakily transfigured into a siphon by which our native curiosity is sucked away and sold. Where once we were rapt, now we are gift-wrapped. The text is reading us.
Including this one, if you are reading it on anything other than an RSS client.
For some light weekend reading, may I suggest this Chris Arnade quartet:
The inconsistencies in capitalization are entirely Arnade’s.
United Airlines IAD→SAN flight is full, the person in front of me is talking about sickle cell disease, and I know a good chunk of people on board. I should also be looking at the #ASH24 program instead of writing this but oh well.
Big news for academic medicine yesterday:
Dr. Brian Druker, CEO of the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University and developer of a drug that revolutionized cancer treatment, said he was stepping down in part because OHSU had “forgotten our mission” and is no longer a place to do cutting-edge research.
The problem with academic medicine is that it is still part of American medicine, and an MD’s worth is measured in RVUs they can generate. This is easier to calculate and cross-compare with non-academic docs, so it wins out over any other activity in an MBA’s spreadsheet.
And in even bigger news for clinical medicine:
Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, was shot and killed by a masked man near a Midtown Manhattan hotel early Wednesday, according to police sources.
United Healthcare is, of course, the Big Bad for-profit healthcare hydra gobbling up hospitals all over the country. On an unrelated note, this seems to have been a hired hit.
Faber est suae quisque fortunae.
Quote of the week is from Adam Mastroianni:
For example, the National Institutes of Health don’t like funding anything risky, so a good way to get money from them is to show them some “promising” and “preliminary” results from a project that, secretly, you’ve already completed. When they give you a grant, you can publish the rest of the results and go “wow look it all turned out so well!” when actually you’ve been using the money to try other stuff, hopefully generating “promising” and “preliminary” results for the next grant application. Which is to say, a big part of our scientific progress depends on defrauding the government.
The article is mostly about Paul Feyerabend, author of Against Method and self-proclaimed scientific anarchist. Recommended.
Today I learned that Max canceled Scavengers Reign, a show that was in fact the best thing to come out on TV last year. A pox on HBO/Max and a pox on anyone in the TV industry who doesn’t care about good TV. May YouTubers dance on your graves.