jpedmd2025-11-23T11:50:42-05:00November 23rd, 2025|

Maxwell Kennedy writes evocatively about his father Bobby Kennedy’s legacy in the Boston Globe.  I was 14 and remember being absolutely devastated when RFK was assassinated.  Reading this essay reminds me of how incredibly far the quality of our leadership has plummeted.

jpedmd2025-11-10T17:27:13-05:00November 10th, 2025|

From Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

“Today, former U.S. district judge Mark L. Wolf, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts by President Ronald Reagan, explained that he resigned on Friday because he wanted the freedom to do “everything in my power to combat today’s existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.” Wolf called out Trump’s use of the Department of Justice to hurt his political opponents, his firing of inspectors general, the administration’s pay-to-play policies in which wealthy donors get government favors, the corruption of cryptocurrency, unconstitutional executive orders, and the threats against judges as Trump attacks the rule of law.”

Kudos to Judge Wolf.  His Atlantic essay Why I am Resigning is here.

• Are mRNA Covid-19 vaccines safe?  More strong evidence that the answer is YES:

From: Semenzato L, Le Vu S, Botton J, et al. COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality Among Adults Aged 18 to 59 Years in France. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(12):e2546822. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.46822

“Design, Setting, and Participants  This cohort study used data from the French National Health Data System for all individuals in the French population aged 18 to 59 years who were alive on November 1, 2021. Data analysis was conducted from June 2024 to September 2025.

Exposure  Exposure was defined as receiving a first mRNA dose between May 1 and October 31, 2021. Individuals who were unvaccinated by November 1, 2021, were assigned a random index date based on vaccinated individuals’ vaccination dates.

Results  A total of 22 767 546 vaccinated and 5 932 443 unvaccinated individuals were followed up for a median (IQR) of 45 (44-46) months. Vaccinated individuals were older than unvaccinated individuals (mean [SD] age, 38.0 [11.8] years vs 37.1 [11.4] years), more frequently women (11 688 603 [51.3%] vs 2 876 039 [48.5%]) and had more cardiometabolic comorbidities (2 126 250 [9.3%] vs 464 596 [7.8%]). During follow-up, 98 429 (0.4%) and 32 662 (0.6%) all-cause deaths occurred in the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, respectively. Vaccinated individuals had a 74% lower risk of death from severe COVID-19 (weighted hazard ratio [wHR], 0.26 [95% CI, 0.22-0.30]) and a 25% lower risk of all-cause mortality (wHR, 0.75 [95% CI, 0.75-0.76]), with a similar association observed when excluding severe COVID-19 death. Sensitivity analysis revealed that vaccinated individuals consistently had a lower risk of death, regardless of the cause. Mortality was 29% lower within 6 months following COVID-19 vaccination (relative incidence, 0.71 [95% CI, 0.69-0.73]).

Conclusions and Relevance  In this national cohort study of 28 million individuals, the results found no increased risk of 4-year all-cause mortality in individuals aged 18 to 59 years vaccinated against COVID-19, further supporting the safety of the mRNA vaccines that are widely used worldwide.”

• Katelyn Jetelina writes (with Hayden Rooke-Ley) in her Your Local Epidemiologist blog on the wildly disproportionate cost/delivery ratio of health care in the United States; read  “5 ways our health care system has become utterly insane” to get a summary of that sad story.  One tidbit – wages may have kept pace with inflation over the last 15 years, but they have decidedly NOT kept pace with health insurance costs.  And then there’s this:

“One in three Americans has medical debt, and more than half worry they’ll fall into debt any time they use the health care system. That fear changes behavior: people delay appointments, skip medications, or avoid care altogether…Medical debt is now the most common form of debt in collections ahead of credit cards, utilities, or personal loans. Nearly 60% of those in medical debt have insurance.”

• Brian Lee PhD, one of the authors of the 2024 JAMA sibling study suggesting that there is no causal relationship between acetaminophen use in pregnancy and neurodevelopment disorders talks about this study in this free interview in JAMA.

He mentions a more recent 2025 Japanese study that came to the same conclusions:

“A nationwide Japanese study with about 200 000 persons looked at this exact same question and also did a sibling analysis. The use of acetaminophen in this population was roughly 40%. And they found the exact same thing that our Swedish study did, where there’s an apparent statistical association initially, but it completely disappears when you do the sibling control analysis. And so, the evidence is pointing a certain way that is going to be challenging for other studies to try and overcome.”