Viewing profile — doctoring

I mean, I do? As do most of my friends who are homeowners. We are constantly asking each other for recommendations for people who can do X. Hire a couple of disasters, and you will…

The not so big secret is that we can detect cancer early in a lot of people, but we also would detect a lot of not-cancer. We don't currently know the cost/benefit of that tradeoff…

I think this essay touches on but slightly conflates "younger" with "inexperienced". Younger people are inexperienced at more things in life, sure. But if you write essays about th…

Public service announcement: There are already blood tests for detecting pancreatic cancer and other cancers on the market, and more coming, depending on where you live. So get tes…

I had the same question. From their FAQ ( https://boomsupersonic.com/faq ): > Will Overture use afterburners like Concorde? > No. Overture will fly without the use of afterburners,…

I don't know for other countries, but for the United States, "medical students are no longer choosing it" is very very untrue, and it is trivial to look up as this information is p…

Whole body MRI is fairly available in major metro areas, though not cheap and not very sensitive or specific. The Galleri blood test screens for a range of cancers (sensitivity var…

> "The tests... cover topics such as U.S. audit standards, professional ethics and independence..." Ethics, you say? > "...involved hundreds of professionals, including partners an…

I love rice cookers! Rice cookers (usually) make clever use of 1) alloys whose magnetism depends on temperature and 2) the fact that boiling water occurs at a fixed temperature. Wi…

Very interesting overview of the technological / materials breakthroughs to enable miniaturization. From a physician (specifically radiologist) perspective, I'm a big fan of handhe…

They list it under their "legal documents" page: https://www.nabla.com/docs/business-associate-agreement

The article mentions: "...sequencing DNA from blood samples and tumour biopsies, to look for mutations that are found in the tumour but not in the blood." This is pretty common for…

Wait, but we do have the tools... We can (and do) cure so many cancers. Usually with surgery, +/- chemo/radiation. Sometimes just radiation. It's hard to overstate how curable most…

Your original comment stated: > They won't work for in situ tumors, almost by definition. Which isn't true. The studies from multiple companies' tests demonstrate that they _can_ d…

This isn’t quite right — I think you’re thinking about circulating tumor cells (CTCs). These tests on the other hand detect circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), among other things. It is…

Per the article, Grail’s test is already on the market at $949. Insurance does not cover this —- yet. (That is a big goal of many of these companies). This is not cheap but not als…

I was visiting family in NE Atlanta last fall. These spiders were everywhere -- coating houses, trees, power lines. And yet, they do not seem to come into homes. Even the extermina…

Usually not! PET scans are limited in resolution when you get down to the sub-5 mm or so range due to scanner technology and fundamental limits of the physics of positron/electron …

Rituximab is a monoclonal antibody which targets a B cell surface protein, CD20. Monoclonal antibodies are pretty cool, in that we've figured out how to make a thing that our bodie…

Wow, I am so sorry. Thank you for sharing part of Melanie's story. Your thought about the drugs maybe limiting the effect of the CAR-T is an interesting one and the subject of ongo…

Choosing another target is a good idea! But, as you can imagine, we've been trying a lot of targets and they don't seem to work as well. One issue is that CD19 is the only known ta…

Yes. B-cells (normally) make antibodies, so these patients usually receive regular infusions of antibodies by IV (which come from blood donations) to keep their circulating antibod…

There's a couple of reasons for why a person may relapse after CAR-T therapy, and much is still under investigation. One large category is that the attack on the CD19 target has se…

CAR-T therapy is incredibly complex and incredibly cool. One of the reasons CAR-T therapy has been so successful thus far with certain lymphomas and some leukemias is that there is…

It’s worth noting that a test’s performance (i.e. sensitivity/specificity) is tunable. That is, Grail is making a decision of where to set its threshold for a positive result, in e…