Tag Archives: Healthcare

Joel Eissenberg, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Associate Dean for Research at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.  In Our Image: The Ethics of CRISPR Genome Editing , Joel C. Eissenberg, De Gruyter | 2021 Humanity has been busily modifying plant and animal genomes for centuries. It has long been a dream to speed up and target that process. Additionally, the promise of molecular cloning included the hope of curing...

We made many mistakes in our response to the coronavirus over the past year.  One of the most critical was our failure to massively expand our capacity to produce coronavirus tests and masks and other PPE.  As many economists including Paul Romer noted last spring, mass testing and wide distribution of high quality masks would probably have allowed us to crush the virus and return to something close to normal life even in the absence of a vaccine. ...

Before Science, treating the symptoms of an illness was all we had. Along our way, using trial and error, we found a few things that worked. The big breakthroughs came when we started to look for the causes of an illness. The association of an illness with toxins was deducible. Then, as we knew more and could see farther, we found that most of our physical illnesses were caused by such other things as bacteria, and viruses. Still and yet, we see...

House Bill Markup Details Updated Democrats are updating the ACA and detailing the $1.9 Tn bill to meet the Covid Pandemic and the resulting unemployment. The aid goes well beyond the direct payment of an additional $1400/person. The assumption is the released House COVID Relief Bill ends up passing as part of the final American Rescue Plan as currently written.  It would include major expansion and enhancements to ACA subsidies....

House Bill Markup Details Updated Democrats are updating the ACA and detailing the $1.9 Tn bill to meet the Covid Pandemic and the resulting unemployment. The aid goes well beyond the direct payment of an additional $1400/person. The assumption is the released House COVID Relief Bill ends up passing as part of the final American Rescue Plan as currently written.  It would include major expansion and enhancements to ACA subsidies....

Coronavirus dashboard: Groundhog Day Today is Groundhog Day, America’s version of the midwinter festival, where people can at least begin to look ahead to the coming of spring in the near future. That’s a good analogy for where we are in the COVID pandemic. Let me start with the ghastly news.First, there have been over 26 MILLION confirmed cases. Since many unsymptomatic cases have gone undiagnosed, it is very likely that over 33 million, or 1 in...

Coronavirus dashboard: Groundhog Day Today is Groundhog Day, America’s version of the midwinter festival, where people can at least begin to look ahead to the coming of spring in the near future. That’s a good analogy for where we are in the COVID pandemic. Let me start with the ghastly news.First, there have been over 26 MILLION confirmed cases. Since many unsymptomatic cases have gone undiagnosed, it is very likely that over 33 million, or 1 in...

Turns out that the best weapon against the COVID-19 virus was, and still is, the N95 face mask. If this wasn’t known from the start, it should have been. We, the greatest nation on earth, the greatest nation that has ever been, were, and still are, dependent on China, and South Korea, for N95 masks. Couldn’t even get enough N95s in those early days of the pandemic for our front-line healthcare workers. During those early weeks, doubling 1,000 new...

Turns out that the best weapon against the COVID-19 virus was, and still is, the N95 face mask. If this wasn’t known from the start, it should have been. We, the greatest nation on earth, the greatest nation that has ever been, were, and still are, dependent on China, and South Korea, for N95 masks. Couldn’t even get enough N95s in those early days of the pandemic for our front-line healthcare workers. During those early weeks, doubling 1,000 new...

I didn’t expect this to be a series of posts, but there is news since I wrote post number III. There is a partial change of subject, because the news concerns the Oxford/AstraZeneca adenovirus based vaccine and not the mRNA based vaccines which I discussed before. In the UK they decided to delay the second dose for 3 months in order to get a first dose in as many people as possible as quickly as possible. This is roughly what I proposed in...