Category: An Opinion

In trying to teach an introduction to biofluid mechanics for students during the pandemic (BIOMEDE 331, Fall 2020 at the University of Michigan), I tried to teach a little more, scribbling as much as I could into the margins. Though often forgotten, much can be learned from the marginal. This series of vignettes represents those…

Megaconglomerate and borderline-evil corporation, Nestle, seeking to expand its health sciences unit (it has one of those!?), is reported to acquire Aimmune Therapeutics – maker of the first FDA approved treatment for peanut allergy – in an all cash deal whose U.S. dollar amount is equivalent to the total number of seconds a healthy human…

Days before Neuralink – a company claiming to “develop[] ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers” – is set to give a “Progress update“, a special report by Erin Brodwin and Rebecca Robbins of STAT, indicates “years of internal conflict in which rushed timelines have clashed with the slow and incremental pace…

Encompassing both the “LGBTQ(IA,lmnop)+ community” – i.e., those who are hopefully happy with their sexuality, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc. – and the “QRS community” – i.e., those with a QRS-complex, i.e., those with a heartbeat, i.e., “those of us yet living” – the “LGBTQRS community” ought to suffice as a term to describe all of…

An interview conducted by Jolyon Jenkins. Found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000j803. At 13:55 “I call up Dr. Barry Belmont, a specialist in medical devices at the University of Michigan. –There’s something of a gold rush going on, I suppose. People will go rushing for gold and fools will rush in with them. I think there’s very good…

A bullet point summary of a burgeoning biomedical market. In about the 1980s/1990s, America’s healthcare system transited to a single-use interface between patient and medical system. (You don’t want to use the same needles as the last guy.) The technology/innovation lifecycle seems to just get faster and faster and faster. However, a manufacturer certified refurbished…