My previous posting on Alzheimer’s focused on ways to avoid the most dire consequences of the disease in the absence of proven pharmaceutical interventions. The common assumption about disease management is that treatment begins when we develop symptoms. Then we go to the doctor, who most likely prescribes a course of treatment which probably includes […]
Author Bio
I have been a medical writer for about 25 years; before that I was a documentary film maker, and some of my films were about medical subjects. I am not a physician, but I have a pretty good scientific background. I wouldn’t dream of recommending any kind of treatment to anyone, and I cannot give medical advice. However, I understand the medical literature and the data and evidence behind it, and I have an inquiring and skeptical turn of mind.
I scrutinize and question and, sometimes, challenge the positions of some of the established health-care organizations as well as the marketers of health information. Eternal vigilance is a small price to pay for health. — Michael Jorrin (aka DocGumshoe)
Michael Jorrin is a paid contributor to Stock Gumshoe, he has agreed to our trading restrictions but he chooses his own topics and his words and opinions are his own.
Author Archives
The last time Doc Gumshoe surveyed the Alzheimer’s landscape, the most prominent feature was the FDA’s approval – misguided, I thought – of Biogen’s Aduhelm (aducanumab) and the consequences this would have for everybody’s Medicare B premium. Sure enough, on November 12, 2021, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) confirmed the prediction that […]
April 12, 2022
Medical Devices: An Eye on Safety
In past times, what surgeons did was basically removing infected body parts and things that didn’t belong in our bodies, like tumors and foreign bodies. For most of the history of the practice of medicine, surgeons were admired for their manual dexterity rather than for their skill and intelligence in diagnosing and treating disease. The […]
March 29, 2022
March 2022 Bulletins — Brief, but Relevant
On balance, these bits tend more to the positive than the negative, including a few positive items about COVID-19. (But then, it seems that most of the news about COVID-19 is on the positive side these days.) We’ll get to COVID at the end of this piece, but first I will report on a recent […]
March 3, 2022
Vaccines – Past, Present, and Future
This is not going to be a sermon in which Doc Gumshoe once again attempts to convert the vaccine skeptics. Instead, we’ll be considering the evolution of vaccines, dating from the time when they weren’t called vaccines, and what the evolutionary process of vaccines points to, which, in the opinion of many eminent scientists, is […]
February 9, 2022
What Stress Does to Your Heart – Plus Some COVID-19 Catch-Up
What put me on to this scary topic was an excellent piece by Jane Brody in Science Times on January 4th. Jane Brody’s weekly column “Personal Health” appears on the inside back page of Science Times every week. (For the non-NYTimes subscribers, Science Times is a section of the Times published every Tuesday.) Jane writes […]
January 19, 2022
Are Psychedelics Starting to Emerge as Legitimate Therapies?
As an undergraduate, many years ago when I was young and daring, I volunteered to take part in a psychological test. “Volunteered” may not be the correct term, since the deal was that I would get paid ten bucks for about two hours of my time, which was a princely wage when most jobs that […]
December 9, 2021
COVID-19: What Now?
Most of this Doc Gumshoe posting was ready to go a couple of days before Thanksgiving. But then, you know what happened: the new variant (now named Omicron) surfaced in South Africa. So I finished up another Doc Gumshoe epistle that I had been working on and quickly got it to Travis so I could […]
November 30, 2021
Thanksgiving Left-Overs 2021
This edition of the epistles of Doc Gumshoe won’t be entirely about Alzheimer’s, but there are Alzheimer’s-related news items that jump to the top, based on timeliness, if nothing more. When Doc Gumshoe last wrote about what was happening on the Alzheimer’s front, a big chunk of the piece was the FDA’s surprising – and […]
November 4, 2021
Epilepsy: New Management Approaches
I recently came across a couple of interesting threads that suggested the possibility of entirely new techniques in the management of epilepsy. One of these came by way of a suggestion from a very helpful Gumshoe denizen, and the other was incorporated in a compelling story about the potential benefits and also potential hazards of […]
October 5, 2021
COVID Updates and October ’21 Miscellany
A friend of ours on the Maine island where we spent our vacation told us that her husband’s surgery had been cancelled at the last minute because the hospital in Portland was swamped with COVID cases, and all elective surgery was cancelled. This notification came at the last possible minute, as they were getting ready […]
August 24, 2021
Responses to Questions and Comments: August 2021
I was hoping to keep COVID-19 out of this piece, but new things keep flooding in, and I can’t totally ignore them. However, I’ll save them to the end of the story. They are both “good news,” more or less, and I like to leave you with a bit of cheer, when possible. Sleep and […]
August 2, 2021
COVID-19: Keeping Up With the Current State of the Pandemic
This will be the thirteenth Doc Gumshoe pronouncement on the COVID-19 pandemic. Lucky or unlucky, I have no idea, but let’s get on with it. To the question “Where are we now?” the answer depends enormously on exactly where, geographically, we are. The differences in the new case and fatality rates in among the different […]
Which means, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The big change in the Alzheimer’s disease world – which you’ve all heard about, no doubt – is that the FDA granted emergency use authorization to aducanumab, now to be named Aduhelm. That happened on the 6th of June. The FDA’s decision elicited […]
June 30, 2021
Understanding Pain
What started me down this path was a promotional piece for a new drug that was purported to suppress pain through a novel mechanism that prevented the nerve signal that conveyed to the brain a sensation that would usually be experienced as painful from actually being painful. In other words, while mincing an onion, you […]
June 7, 2021
Responses to Questions and Selected News Items
Before I launch into the topics of the day, I am going to share with you an opinion piece about the recent CDC guidelines. I find myself in complete concurrence with this piece, which was posted a few weeks ago on MedPage Today, a medical website that is a very helpful source of information for […]
May 6, 2021
May Miscellany – Some Covid-19, Some Otherwise
I’m happy to report that despite the huge quantity of COVID-related news items that flood my in-box (as well as all news media), the tsunami has not drowned other health and medicine-related releases. Now, with the pandemic retreating – and, yes, it really is retreating – let’s use this as an opportunity to bring a […]
April 5, 2021
What’s New on the CRISPR Front?
Aside from the tiny minority of people who can actually say what each of those initials stand for, we can divide the populace into two groups – those who specifically know that CRISPR is a tool used in gene editing and those who know (or figure) that it’s a highly promising but exceedingly complex technique […]
I am not predicting total doom when I say that the current treatment of infectious diseases is under serious threat due to the increasing prevalence of multi-drug-resistant (MDR) pathogens. But germs that have developed ways to escape antibiotic treatment are unquestionably a growing threat. Both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health […]
March 1, 2021
Where Are We in the COVID-19 Pandemic? – March 2021
This piece was going to be titled “COVID Continued.” Then I thought, “what a depressing title. Nobody wants to read about the continuation of the pandemic. A much more attractive title would be “COVID Terminated.” That’s the headline we want to see. Or, better, that’s the headline we want to believe. How close are we […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on June 22, 2022
Posted on June 22, 2022
Correct! Thanks very nuch.[...]
Posted on June 20, 2022
I had never heard of Zhittya, but from a tiny bit of poking around it seems that their focus is on Parkinson's rather than Alzheimer's. Even though these two diseases have some symptoms in common, the pathogenesis of the two differs a good deal. As far[...]
Posted on June 16, 2022
I should have said a second second opinion. Maybe a third second opinion. Best, MJ[...]
Posted on June 15, 2022
I have noted the questions about specific pharmaceutical outfits & will try to address them in the next post. Thanks for all comments & questions![...]
Posted on June 15, 2022
I have never specifically written about multiple myeloma, although I have certainly discussed multiple myeloma in the context of cancer drugs. Please understand that I am not a physician. I read journal papers about a range of diseases and about clinic[...]
Posted on June 14, 2022
My guess - and it's just a guess - is that men who routinely take Viagra/sildenafil are in better physical condition than the men who don't take it. This second cohort is composed not just of men who don't need Viagra to deal with their erectile dysfunc[...]
Posted on May 11, 2022
Regarding simufilam, blarcamesine, TauRX, AVXL & other such matters, I have talked about these in previous sermons & will try to bring matters up to date in my next piece, which will cover such matters as new strategies to predict who’s at elevated risk [...]
Posted on May 10, 2022
Just yesterday, May 9th, JAMA Neurology posted a paper confirming that eight modifiable risk factors were linked to more than a third of all Alzheimer’s cases. The most prominently associated with AD and dementia were obesity, physical inactivity, and [...]
Posted on April 14, 2022
My blushes! Thanks & be well![...]
Posted on April 14, 2022
Thanks very much for the kind words & information. Good luck and long life![...]
Posted on April 12, 2022
Not my strong suit. I leave that to Travis.[...]
Posted on April 12, 2022
Sounds interesting. My opinions about investing aren't worth much, as I said above. I'm nervous about robotic surgery. But I'll take a look.[...]
Posted on April 12, 2022
Heart muscle cells respond to ions, which are the positively-charge nuclei of atoms minus the electron shells. When a calcium ion enters the muscle cell, the muscle contracts and the heart executes its pumping action. The same mechanism powers the con[...]
Posted on April 11, 2022
It takes more than a nifty device to arrive at a diagnosis. Most MDs don't have the experience necessary to understand what the image is showing. AI helps a little, no question. But the whole proposition looks iffy from where I sit.[...]
Posted on April 1, 2022
Next time I'm in Kent I'll check in! When you sing "When the felon's not engaged in his employment..." do you tinker with the words? As for a quick test to determine whether the cootie is drug-resistant, I'm not holding my breath,[...]
Posted on March 31, 2022
Tell me more![...]
Posted on March 31, 2022
It would be terrific if the doc could quickly determine whether the pathogen infecting the patient was resistant, but my guess is that such a test would require growing out a culture of the pathogen and then challenging it with the drug. There are many p[...]
Posted on March 30, 2022
Thanks - I'll put in on my checklist.[...]
Posted on March 30, 2022
I'll do a quick check on Aviptadil. But I do have an opinion on Frontline Doctors, and it is not favorable. I have discussed their views in several COVID-related pieces.[...]
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More Info
Many recent developments are being touted as "the future of medicine." I don't know of a Nobel committee getting into that. Tell me little more and I may be able to come up with something.[...]