Reading: Immunological sin: how a person’s earliest flu infections dictate life-long immunity, Nature, 17 December 2025. The term OAS [original antigenic sin] comes from researchers who, in the 1950s, recognized that most of the flu-binding antibodies circulating in people’s blood match whichever influenza strains were...

Reading: "Dr. Bot: Why Doctors Can Fail Us—and How AI Could Save Lives", Charlotte Blease.  It's a book looking at the patient-doctor relationship: where it works, where it lets us down, and where AI might fit in.   One section I want to remember describes how Iora Health in the US (now part of One Medical) uses...

Listening to: Eric Topol on the Changing Face of Medicine and Aging, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape podcast, 5 May 2025. I like Eric Topol’s writing, and I’ve pre-ordered his latest book, which is on ageing. So somewhat spoiling it for myself, I listened to this book-tour podcast. These notes are the bits I found most...

Reading: A Ground Truth on Alcohol Intake, Eric Topol, 26 April 2025. A review and summary three recent reports regarding alcohol and the effect on health. I wanted to convert a diagram in that post to be in terms of UK units. But first a noteworthy warning on all this research: I need to emphasize that all of these...

The Medicine Balls column in Private Eye pointed me to the Nuffield Trust’s analysis of NHS spend (for 2022/23). There’s detail in the full report, including changes over time and the role of outsourcing. The summary from MD: “Clearly the NHS doesn't prioritise prevention; it waits until people are sick and then spends...

Reading: Ara Darzi on why antibiotic resistance could be deadlier than cancer, The Economist, 23 September 2024. Antibiotics cost pennies, tests costs tens of pounds, and now we find ourselves here: Today untreatable infections, for which there is no antibiotic, cause more than 1m deaths a year worldwide, a toll...

Reading: A Free Heath Service, chapter 5 of In Place of Fear, Aneurin Bevan’s 1952 book.I went back to learn about the reasoning behind some of the decisions made in the formation of the NHS. So much remains relevant.Various funding alternatives (means testing, insurance, etc) are considered and dismissed. One...

There are 600 or 700 statisticians in Brighton at the moment for the Royal Statistical Society international conference. Someone likely has a better estimate.Cafe Sci grabbed one last night, Prof Jennifer Visser-Rogers, to talk on: Living is a Risky Business. One of the topics was adjustments, where you take something...

Triggered by reading: Does going private hurt the NHS?, Financial Times, May 2024. “In February 2024, 10.6 per cent of all NHS elective care was delivered by private sector providers”. The majority of private ops are hip and knee. This makes a lot of sense to me, because if your mobility is impaired, potentially waiting...

Reading: Full-body scans to look for hidden disease are a bad idea – here’s why, Adam Taylor, The Conversation, 27 August 2024. If I had the money to spend on one of these, I’d spend it on a holiday, which would be far better for my health. They: produce false positives, sometimes of low resolution, which then need...

Reading: Promising lung cancer vaccine trial begins in UK, BBC News, 23 August 2024. This is like science fiction. Cancer? “Just pop this mRNA vaccine and monoclonal antibody we whipped up in the lab” (if it works). A 67-year-old man has become the first person in the UK to try what doctors hope will be a revolutionary...

Reading: Readability and Information Quality in Cancer Information From a Free vs Paid Chatbot, Musheyev et al. (2024), JAMA Network Open. An interesting question: for those who can afford it, do you get better health information from paid vs free ChatGPT? If you prompt the LLM, the answer is no: These findings suggest...

Reading: Scary-sounding new virus in the news? Here are the questions you should ask, Ed Hutchinson, 17 June 2024, The Conversation.A reminder that emerging science is fraught with uncertainty: The honest answer is that how any virologist really feels about a story depends on a lot of things, including our...

As we were in Blaenau Gwent we stopped by the Aneurin Bevan Memorial Stones. I was not expecting much, but it is a special place.  I challenge you to not feel something as you approach the stones. Reverential. Grateful. Something. There’s no big fanfare; the stone says: It was here Aneurin Bevan spoke to the people of...

Reading How overcoming negative attitudes to ageing can make you live longer, New Scientist, 15 May 2024. Negative thoughts of ageing impact health in three ways: Psychology: "Once internalised, old-age stereotyping ends up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, shaping our thoughts about what we are capable of doing and...