jpedmd2026-06-17T16:55:58-05:00June 17th, 2026|

Here are two medicine-relevant papers that I found very interesting.  The first discusses the work being done on the development of a fentanyl vaccine in the hope of decreasing the tragic death toll from its non-medical use.  The second is from Eric Topol’s terrific Ground Truths Substack where he talks about two recent papers, one from Germany and the other from Google in Cal, both looking at the performance of agentic AIs compared against clinicians.  Both were text based (not verbal) interactions, one with an agent presenting real world HPIs and the other with patient actors — and so decidedly not real world scenarios. Nevertheless, in both cases the AI agents outperformed real world physicians.  Read Topol’s post for his excellent summary, cautions, and analysis.

• Schweitzer K. Inside the Push for a Fentanyl Vaccine. JAMA. Published online June 12, 2026. doi:10.1001/jama.2026.6392

• Eric Topol’s Agentic AI Comes to Medicine here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2850522

jpedmd2026-05-20T15:37:47-05:00May 20th, 2026|

From “There Has Never Been an Example of Presidential Corruption Like This” — a May 20, 2026 NY Times editorial:

“Congress and the executive branch built rules and traditions to ensure that federal agencies, especially the Justice Department, operated in the public interest, rather than that of the president. Mr. Trump has tried to break this system. Once he is gone, it will need to be rebuilt, and better than before. He has exposed and exploited its flaws and gaps. Unless they are filled, Mr. Trump’s corruption and perversion of justice risk becoming the norm.

In the meantime, Americans should be cleareyed about what the president is doing. He is taking their money and showering it on criminals.”

Yup.

• This was a fun read from the NYT on how some farmers are integrating machine learning – From Cow-Milking Robots to Weed-Zapping Lasers, Farmers Are Embracing A.I.

• Caveat emptor. From Matt Levine’s excellent Money Stuff, on Polymarket bots:

“Anyway Bloomberg’s Carolyn Silverman, Nathaniel Popper and Marie Patino report:

Over 100,000 accounts lost at least $1,000 on Polymarket, one of the largest prediction markets, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of every wallet active since the beginning of 2025. That is almost twice the number that made at least that much.

Among the winners, a majority of the profits were raked in by a tiny slice of what look to be automated bots, based on the Polymarket trade records compiled by the data firm Dune. Everyone else, in aggregate, lost $131 million. …

While prediction markets have been described as peer-to-peer, the Polymarket records suggest the role of the sportsbook is now largely being played by the sort of automated, high-frequency traders that have long dominated other financial markets. The most active accounts on the site were a small proportion of wallets, but accounted for most of the trading volume.“

• Thomas Edsall has it right in his NYT guest essay: titled “Easily the Worst President in U.S. History”:
“The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp.” Worth the read.