Marcus Chen
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The Last Time Moderna's Stock Soared on Vaccine News, Insiders Sold $400 Million. It's Happening Again.
Moderna's stock has run up 137 percent in a month on a melanoma-vaccine trial that has not released its detailed data or reported overall survival. As retail chased the rally, the CEO sold $28.7 million in shares two weeks before the readout, and the rest of the C-suite cashed out after the stock tr
Drugs & FDATwenty Years, Four Botanical Drugs: The FDA Wants to Know What's Blocking the Rest
Four botanical drugs in two decades, under a framework built for single molecules. Now, inside RFK Jr.'s HHS, the agency that wrote those rules is asking what blocked the rest, and whether it means it.
Drugs & FDAA Fatal Brain Disease in Children Finally Has a Drug, and It Lists at $1.14 Million a Year
Ionis's zilganersen is the first therapy ever approved for Alexander disease, and it lists near $1.14 million a year. The same FDA approval handed Ionis a rare pediatric disease voucher, the transferable coupon that has resold for as much as $350 million.
Metabolic & WeightThe Heart Scan Sold to Everyone Barely Beats a Free Calculator, Except for the Patients Insurers Won't Cover
The scan barely moved the needle over a free calculator for most adults, but inside the muddy middle of risk, calcium separated a 1.9 percent ten-year danger from a 14.3 percent one.
Drugs & FDASickle Cell Finally Has a Cure. It Costs $2.2 Million and Has Reached 64 People.
Casgevy has kept Victoria Gray crisis-free for seven years. Getting it still means wiping out a patient's bone marrow with a chemo tied to infertility and malignancy warnings and paying about $3 million all in, and two years after approval only 64 people have been infused.
Infectious DiseaseThe FDA Is Fighting a Flesh-Eating Parasite We Eradicated in 1966 With a Flea Pill From 2000
Nitenpyram was approved in 2000 to kill fleas. It is now the emergency tool against a parasite the United States wiped out in 1966, after the sterile-fly barrier that kept the screwworm out was breached in 2023.
Nutrition & FoodSprouts Have Poisoned Thousands for a Quarter Century. The Wellness World Still Eats Them Raw.
Salmonella from Idaho broccoli sprouts has sickened 22 across four states, one more entry in a tally that logged 53 sprout outbreaks in two decades. The raw-is-best dogma is what keeps them coming.
InvestigationsThe Startup Selling 'Optimized' Babies Just Paid to Gene-Edit Human Embryos
Columbia scientists rewrote cholesterol and sickle-cell genes in human embryos, reaching 100 percent in embryos edited before their first division. The funder sells parents 'optimized' babies, and a germline edit like this could be inherited by every generation that follows.
Infectious DiseaseA 2014 Trial Warned That Correcting Vaccine Fears Backfires on the Hesitant. Public Health Corrected Harder.
A randomized trial found that correcting MMR-autism fears left the most hesitant parents less likely to vaccinate. A decade later, a panel of credentialed doctors in Sydney shows the trust cost of correcting harder anyway.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Has Approved 4 Plant Drugs Since 2004. Now It's Asking the Public Why So Few Made It.
A request for public input is not reform. After two decades of a pathway that produced four approvals, the question is whether the agency wants plant medicine or just wants to talk about it.
Infectious DiseaseIn 1999, Fifteen Reports Suspended a Vaccine Within Weeks. The Spike Signal Has Waited Years for a Study.
Spike protein has turned up in the vessel-lining cells of vasculitic skin lesions 18 months after the shot, and adverse-event reports keep stacking up. The agencies that suspended a vaccine over fifteen reports in 1999 now call thousands a coincidence.
Drugs & FDAIonis Priced the First Alexander Disease Drug at $1.14 Million a Year, and Got a Federal Voucher It Can Resell for More Than $100 Million
Zilganersen is the first drug for Alexander disease, an antisense therapy designed to lower the toxic protein that drives a fatal brain disease. It also carries a $1.14 million annual price and a pediatric voucher Ionis can resell for more than $100 million.
InvestigationsAn AI Read 4.4 Million Mother-and-Baby Records and Says It Can Predict Illness. It Has Yet to Meet a Living Patient.
MoChiAgent forecasts maternal and infant disease from hospital records at a scale no clinician could read. A cautionary predecessor, Epic's sepsis tool, caught only a third of the cases it promised to catch.
InvestigationsPennsylvania Announced Two Measles Deaths Its County Coroner Never Recorded
Pennsylvania classified two Lancaster County fatalities as measles-associated, including a newborn the county coroner says he certified as dying from a ruptured spleen and blood loss. The CDC won't add either to the national count until the record shows measles caused or contributed to the deaths.
Infectious DiseaseForty Years of Calling ME/CFS Psychosomatic Taught the Institutions How to Dismiss the Vaccine-Injured
Immune exhaustion ties ME/CFS to long COVID. A Yale preprint finds the same signatures in the vaccine-injured, plus spike protein still circulating 709 days after a COVID shot. The institutions that spent decades dismissing the first are dismissing the rest.
InvestigationsKennedy Reopens the Federal Vaccine Rulebook, Starting With the Words That Decide Which Shots Your Child Gets
HHS is asking whether the three labels that decide which shots your child gets still work, and putting the COVID-era override of its own vaccine advisers on the record as the reason public trust cracked.
Infectious DiseaseFor Sixty Years the Screwworm Was Gone. It's Back in Texas, and the FDA Reached for Its COVID-Era Emergency Powers.
The flesh-eating fly the US wiped out in 1966 has crossed the southern border into Texas, and Washington's answer leans on the same emergency law it used for COVID drugs, this time to slap an emergency label on Zoetis's best-selling dog pill.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Is Building an On-Ramp for Medical AI That Can Hallucinate
The FDA has cleared more than 1,000 AI medical devices and not one large language model. Its new discussion paper starts building the pathway for the ones that can make things up, with faster delivery to market named as an agency priority.
Infectious DiseaseKindergarten Vaccine Exemptions Doubled in Five Years. The Number Is a Verdict on the Agencies, Not the Parents.
Exemptions climbed to a record 4.2 percent of kindergartners while medical exemptions never budged from 0.2 percent. The rise is not a medical event. It is five years of institutional credibility spent, showing up in the one column parents control.
Infectious DiseaseThe Neuroscientist Who Mapped Fear in the Brain Says a Face Can't Reliably Reveal It
People scowl only about a third of the time they are angry. A multibillion-dollar industry sells software that assumes the other two-thirds are legible.
Drugs & FDAThe Screwworm America Eradicated With Sterile Flies Is Back, and This Time Washington Also Reached for an Emergency-Authorized Chemical
Dicyclanil, an Australian sheep-blowfly chemical with mouse liver tumors in its toxicology file, is now cleared for cattle, swine, goats and wildlife under section 564, the same emergency-use power heavily used for pandemic countermeasures.
Infectious DiseaseThe FDA Put an Emergency Label on a Zoetis Dog Pill for a Screwworm America Erased in 1966 Without a Single Drug
The sterile-fly barrier that kept the flesh-eating screwworm out of America for sixty years gave way, and Washington's answer has been a run of emergency drug authorizations, the newest for a Zoetis dog pill whose maker's own release cites no efficacy data against the parasite.
Drugs & FDAThe FDA Approved Moderna's mRNA Flu Shot for Seniors Without Proving It Works in Them
In February the FDA's own vaccine chief refused to even review it. One week later the agency reversed course, and the trial data never changed.
Infectious DiseaseSeven Weeks, 345 People Sick, and Not One Recall Notice With a Lot Code
The FDA said the outbreak jalapeños did not reach grocery stores directly. Two days later the USDA named eighteen grocery products made with them, sold in 23 states. Seven weeks in, not one recall notice carries a lot code.