Unreported Truths

Mad, sad, or bad. So goes the psychiatric shorthand for three broad categories of severe mental illness. “Mad” stands in for organic psychotic disorders, particularly schizophrenia. “Sad,” naturally, means depression and other mood disorders. And bad: the long stretch of serious personality disorders that ends with outright psychopathy. The definitions are elastic. The illnesses overlap.

Jason Arday is dead. We don’t know yet how he died, but everything about the statements English police and his family have made suggests suicide. Whatever your religious views on the subject, suicide is a tragedy — particularly for a 41-year-old man with two children whose greatest failing seems to have been puffery. The lies Arday told were absurd and childish and obvious (nine marathons on a broken leg!). They are the sure sign of a man desperate to prove he is worthy when he knows he isn’t.

Drug industry reform dies in darkness. Last night, the Food & Drug Administration quietly approved Moderna’s mRNA flu “vaccine.” Moderna put out its press release at 10:15 p.m. Eastern, presumably in an effort to contain the blowback the FDA will face from MAHA and drug industry skeptics over its decision to roll over and approve this jab. Of course, legacy media outlets were ready with stories; no doubt they were tipped in advance and had pieces waiting.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, former chief medical officer of the United States and the scientist who led the American response to Covid, died this morning. Not literally. But in the only way he cares about, in the public eye. In a Senate Homeland Security committee hearing chaired by Rand Paul of Kentucky, Fauci repeatedly refused to answer any questions about his actions during Covid or whether research he had helped fund had caused the pandemic.

(Part 1: The trouble with vaccine trials) Randomized placebo-controlled trials are the heart of medicine. They’re how doctors know new treatments work and have acceptable side effects compared to their benefits. Except for vaccines. Vaccine trials often use a different, lower standard that makes it impossible to tell how serious their side effects are.

(First of two parts) A lot of you have spoken out on the GLP-1 weight-loss/diabetes drugs since I asked about them on Tuesday. First, almost 3,000 UT readers answered the poll. Of the almost 1,000 who had actually taken GLPs, two-thirds had a good experience. Only 1 in 8 said they had not worked. Your comments and emails are even more striking. People who have not taken the drugs express wariness of their side effects and long-term risks. They also pass on secondhand tales of woe.

I’m working on a depressing piece (or pieces) about meningitis “vaccines.” It grows out of Sunday’s article on the gonorrhea vaccine failure (that trial actually tested a repurposed meningitis B vaccine called Bexsero, on the theory that gonorrhea and meningitis bacteria are closely related). Spoiler alert: I cannot believe the meningitis jabs (at least the newer ones) are approved for human use.

Last year, England began offering gay and bisexual (aka gay) men a vaccine for gonorrhea, the sexually transmitted bacterial infection often called “the clap.” Though not fatal, gonorrhea is unpleasant and increases risk for HIV. Like other sexually transmitted diseases, it is far more common in gay men. English authorities offered the vaccine, originally designed for meningitis, after studies showed it cut infections by about 40 percent.

The motto of New York-Presbyterian — the dominant hospital chain in Manhattan — is: Amazing Things Are Happening Here.

How could they have missed this? How could they ALL have missed it? I need to get it out. NOW. I’ve had that thought before. But never for a story about the President of the United States, a man covered by hundreds of news organizations. Saturday, July 6, 2024. I was searching White House visitor logs for potential physician visits to Joe Biden - and finding, to my shock, that a Parkinson’s disease specialist had come to the West Wing repeatedly.