It is one thing calling for scientists to turbocharge the development of a coronavirus vaccine but quite another to get the population to have the vaccine. The anti-vaxxers are organising rapidly and have started circulating content with false information to achieve their aims. The movie plandemic is one example and is covered in a very good article in the New York Times today. The primary...
Are we in danger of dropping the ball? I am enjoying doing general medicine again but the majority of the patients under my care on an acute medical ward have social problems. Social problems that either got them into the hospital in the first place and/or social problems that are now preventing them from being discharged. My brief sojourn into general medicine highlights why the social...
Johns Hopkins (see below) have helpfully provided a world map of Coronavirus COVID-19 cases real-time () – join the dots… Despite the UN refusing to call it a PANDEMIC (defined as an epidemic occurring worldwide), scientists and health professionals agree it is just this. This concept of pandemic pandemonium caused by viruses is not new; in fact the record for the most number of...
Each generation is built on trends. Different in it’s uniqueness, like a manifesto set apart from the one before. Popular trends only need to be mentioned once or twice before the herd mentality takes over. Like fashion, cars and the financial world, the scientific world is also susceptible to the whims of trends. So here is a piece of research announcing how trends have influenced FDA (US...
Barts-MS rose-tinted-odometer N/A Yesterday’s PMSA meeting was very interesting. It is clear the field of MS is at a cross-roads and that Pharma needs the wider MS community to help them change the game. If we don’t I suspect we won’t see the next generation of treatments being developed to target the ‘real MS’ or ‘smouldering disease’. It was clear...
We have been beating the combination-therapy drum for so long now we have become bored with the concept. Every time we apply for grants to test the concept, be it with pharma or via other traditional funding routes, we get pushback. Either our targets are questioned or the concept of combination therapies is challenged based on the scientific principles underlying the combination being proposed...
How close are we to offering some people with MS a cure? I am speaking at the Imperial College Neuroscience Society this morning on ‘how close we are to curing MS’. I think we are very close; in fact some of the longterm follow-up data of IRT (immune reconstitution therapies), in particular, alemtuzumab, non-myeloablative HSCT and myeloablative HSCT looks very promising. I suspect...
Firstly, this is not about money (I say this without a tell as my accountant taps away at their calculator nonchalantly). Really, this concept of cost-effectiveness is only obtrusive if you dislike politicking in any form or kind, or you’re British. The easiest way to understand cost-effectiveness models in healthcare in my view is to understand the principles of bartering. In bartering...
Barts-MS rose-tinted-odometer ★★★★★ I am en route to a ‘Pathways to Cures’ meeting in Washington DC hosted by the National MS Society. The aim of the meeting is to refine the ‘Stop, Restore, and End Pathways’ for MS and to develop an international consensus on what an MS cure looks like. I am honoured to be invited to participate in this meeting and would like to thank the NMSS for inviting me. ...
Barts-MS rose-tinted-odometer ★★★★★ It is a no-brainer. A healthy lifestyle is one of the most effective preventive health interventions available. The study below shows that you can increase your chances, by a factor of over 20, of a life expectancy free of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer at age 50 by making ensuring you maintain 4 or 5 low-risk lifestyle factors; i.e. not...