You don’t need certainty to hold a press conference. You need honesty about what you don’t know yet. That step got skipped, and it’s a pattern: officials treating public health as tribal, not as the work. Quoted in this @TribLIVE piece.

Dear Sam, I’ll be frank. Although I said I was ordering the food, inviting guests and making other arrangements, I didn’t actually start doing any of those things. I’ll start doing them now. -Goop

🚨🚨🚨 CARDIO-TTRansform data presented at @escardio #ESCCongress# and simultaneously published in @NEJM. The (very surprising!) topline data was released last month – now we get the full data release. Much to break down – it’s all here in the 🧵 below. (1/25)

Obviously, the news that $BNTX and Roche are stopping their cancer "vaccine" study in adjuvant colorectal cancer is not good. It's also not that big a surprise. This is a reminder that this technology won't work in every cancer and may work best in the areas where medicines like Keytruda are already effective. Keytruda is only used in colorectal cancer when it is driven by defects in DNA repair (MSI-High or mismatch repair deficient cancer). So this was a longer-shot trial. The one to watch for the $BNTX is pancreatic cancer. The biggest market for such treatments -- and the one valuations will swing on -- is non-small cell lung cancer, which is also the big market for Keytruda. This is probably less of a big deal than it seems at first glance. $BNTX $ARCT $MRNA $MRK are all down.

"Trump and RFK Jr. are perpetuating the misunderstanding that cases of autism have been increasing in the population at an alarming rate, whereas what has happened is that diagnoses of autism are increasing in people who, in the past, would have been diagnosed with other conditions or missed altogether. They are now using this misunderstanding to scare people about vaccines, asserting that the artifactual increase in autism rates constitutes evidence of an epidemic produced by the harmful effects of vaccines. The results of this scientific illiteracy could be catastrophic." Why Autism Rates Are Rising—It Isn't the Vaccines

2026-2027 updated COVID vaccines targeting XFG were just approved by the FDA. This includes both Moderna products, the Pfizer vaccine, and the Sanofi-Novavax non-mrna protein based vaccine. Availability should follow in the coming days to weeks.

Turning patients into part-time admins is cruel and inefficient. Endless forms + fragmented billing = missed reimbursements and worse outcomes. Watch this week’s Pain Points ep:

Former Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne releases emails to rebut fraud and cover-up allegations in new book. “It’s been very troubling that, despite having no new evidence, Mr. Baker has recycled and amplified these allegations in his recent book and also his extensive media tour,” Tessier-Lavigne said. “I believe it’s important to set the record straight.” By @JonathanWosen

Anna Marie Wagner, formerly of Ginkgo, and Renee Wegrzyn, ex-ARPA-H director, raised a $25M seed round for their new physical AI startup called Transfyr Covered in the NYT by @carlzimmer in the context of tacit knowledge & science's replication crisis:

Call it the mystery of Moderna’s magic algorithm. The company's therapeutic cancer vaccine, intismeran autogene, would be the first approved medicine whose genetic instructions — that is, the individual letters of its mRNA — is determined by a computer. "I have no idea” what’s in Moderna’s algorithm, one expert says. But we have some clues. Also: What the head of R&D at Merck says about the idea that perhaps the efficacy is not due to the algorithm at all -- but just to the effects of an mRNA lipid nanoparticle. By me, @Jasonmmast and @angRchen $MRNA $MRK