Having just devoted an entire Doc Gumshoe piece to the notorious coronavirus (COVID 19), I’m going to make those coronavirus updates brief – it looks to me as though the news media is devoting a major part of its capacity to covering most aspects of this pandemic – and, yes, it now certainly looks like […]
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
February 19, 2020
Coronavirus Update – February 2020
Don’t look to Doc Gumshoe to keep you up to the minute on the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. The figures I’m quoting below are as of mid-day today, February 18th. These will have changed by the time you see this piece, and they may be unreliable in the first place. But, […]
January 30, 2020
Warm Bits for a Cold Month
Please indulge Doc Gumshoe while he presents his musings on what’s going on in general in the health-care arena, and in particular, which new drugs are getting the FDA blessing and why, as well as which ones are getting the short straw. My impressions and conclusions are in some cases only loosely based on […]
The answer to that foolish question is certainly going to be “both.” But the finger pointing at the guilty party has wobbled around a good deal in the past few years, and just before Christmas, the American Heart Association came out with a set of dietary recommendations once again apparently putting at least some blame […]
December 19, 2019
Update on Antibiotic Resistance: December 2019
The headline that snagged my attention was this: ‘Thirty-five Thousand Americans Die of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections Each Year” This was based on the Centers for Disease Control’s Antibiotic Resistance Threats in the United States, 2019, which led off with the statement that more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections occur in the US every year, and more […]
December 5, 2019
A Look at the Promise of Gene Editing
“CRISPR” is the word in the headline that signals that the piece is going to be about gene editing. Doc Gumshoe did not want to put that word – actually, it’s not really a word, but an acronym – in the title of this piece because gene editing is a whole lot more than […]
October 23, 2019
Recent Comments: Responses and Reflections
The many welcome comments to the Alzheimer’s piece that posted a couple of weeks ago prompt me to supply answers (if I am able to do that), but also set my mind to wandering on the fringes of a number of issues that may be of interest to the Gumshoe constituency. Anavex 2-73 At the […]
October 2, 2019
Alzheimer’s Disease: 2019 Refresher and Updates
From where I sit, it seems to me that the entire landscape of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has changed, and changed quite significantly. The litany of announcements from pharmaceutical companies big and small revealing the unfortunate news that yet another promising agent for the treatment of AD has failed to meet its objectives in a […]
September 2, 2019
Doc Gumshoe – Short & Easy Bits
This particular bit of news leaves your friend Doc Gumshoe shaking his head in puzzlement. To wit, in the US it is expected that there will be a substantial shortage of physicians in the upcoming years. The American Association of Medical Colleges predicts that this shortage may reach about 122,000 physicians by the year […]
August 14, 2019
Combating Cancer: The Current Battle Plan
When we’re trying to fight against an adversary that is as strong and full of tricks as cancer, what we need to do is look for points of vulnerability – Achilles heels. We all remember, of course, that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Styx when he was a tiny boy, […]
August 6, 2019
Cancer: the Changing Landscape in 2019
The publicity material for M. D. Anderson in Houston, Texas, which is perhaps the leading cancer treatment center in the United States, frequently includes a statement to the effect that they are committed to “ending cancer.” That statement puts me in mind of maps dating from the first century AD, in which large unexplored areas […]
June 12, 2019
Why We Take the Bait
One would think that it would take a person of normal intelligence about half a minute to conclude that lures such as the ones below could not possibly be on the up and up. Here’s one. It starts out with a note from Christine O’Brien. “The Sovereign Investor Daily A brand new, ‘Alzheimer’s vaccine’ […]
May 15, 2019
In Defense of the Egg
Doc Gumshoe is not in the habit of contradicting the conclusions, backed by research, that are stated in papers published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, commonly referred to as JAMA. JAMA is, after all, one of a handful of the most prestigious medical journals on the planet, along with the New […]
Way back in April 2018, the World Health Organization issued its Thirteenth General Programme of Work, which attracted a certain amount of notice at the time, but was certainly not treated as front-page news. The GPW 13, as WHO called it, was centered on three ambitious targets – worthy, but in the view of […]
March 7, 2019
Short Bits for a Short Month
“For such a beastly month as February, 28 days as a rule are plenty,” said the Pirate King. But you would be surprised at the number of interesting snippets of news in the health-care realm that landed in my inbox during this short month. I’ll lead off with one that gave me a particular kick. […]
What set me off on this rant was the very first comment on the piece that posted on January 31st, “Looking Backward – And a Peek in the Other Direction.” Here’s the comment: “Thanks, Doc. Hope you will comment on the news out of Israel this week: https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/A-cure-for-cancer-Israeli-scientists-say-they-think-they-found-one-578939” Naturally, I looked, and what I found […]
January 31, 2019
Looking Backward – And a Peek in the Other Direction
Chances are not many of us observed New Year’s Eve with celebratory toasts to the glorious year gone by. Rather, we bid goodbye to 2018 and hoped 2019 would be a better year – for ourselves, our near and dear, our country, and our planet. However, as I wade through the volumes of healthcare-related stuff […]
January 21, 2019
Ketamine: Menace or Miracle?
I’ll grant that my headline is meant to be catchy and induce you to read this epistle. Some of you will ask what is ketamine anyway, and most of you will know from the get-go that ketamine, whatever the heck it is, will turn out to be neither a menace nor a miracle, but something […]
December 19, 2018
Trying to Make Sense of Puzzling Health-Care News
Let’s lead off with a news item that Doc Gumshoe, despite his widely-acknowledged acumen, could not manage to figure out in the least. It took an Op Ed in the N Y Times to sweep the cobwebs out of his noggin. The news item was this: children born in the month of August […]
November 29, 2018
Two More Miracle Cures: An Honest Assessment, I Hope!
I’m not going to keep you in suspense. The two proposed miracle cures are L-carnitine (an amino acid) and “Delta 8,” which in a previous Doc Gumshoe disquisition was unmasked as Delta 8 tetrahydrocannabinol, or Delta 8 THC (Δ8 THC), which is one of perhaps a hundred cannabinoids found in the cannabis plant, as […]
Recent Author Comments
Posted on March 5, 2020
Posted on February 19, 2020
Italy - 3 cases, zero deaths - may it stay that way![...]
Posted on February 19, 2020
Thanks - I'll check Inovio. There will keep on being new players, both in the antiviral and vaccine spaces. As for the conspiracy theories, they make my head spin![...]
Posted on February 4, 2020
I totally agree with you. People in pain suffer unnecessarily while the addicts look for highs, occasionally overdosing and causing trouble for the community at large.[...]
Posted on February 4, 2020
How can it be a cannabinoid receptor agonist without affecting the brain, which is where the cannabinoid receptors dwell? What particular properties make it non-addictive? My guess is that when the maker says “non-addictive,” what that means is tha[...]
Posted on February 3, 2020
Responses to comments about “Warm Bits…” I’ll say this right at the start: when Gumshoeland Denizens ask me for my views about something, I will follow up somehow. As in, “no, I have no opinion on immunomedics at the moment, but I’ll look in[...]
Posted on January 30, 2020
Apologies!!! My bit on US life expectancy was one day too soon! This AM the 2018 life expectancy data were released, and instead of a fourth consecutive year of decline, there was a tiny uptick - one month only - fueled by a decline in cancer deaths an[...]
Posted on January 17, 2020
Answers to comments: To the tribe member who said it was not a “one-size-fits-all” guideline – precisely my point. The medical organizations believe that they have to put out guidelines, even though they actually realize that “one-size-fits-all[...]
Posted on January 16, 2020
Bravo! Keep doing what you're doing! I wish you many, many years more. Best, MJ aka DG[...]
Posted on December 23, 2019
Pharmaceutical outfits seek FDA approval for new indications for at least a couple of reasons. One, the new indication prompts physicians to prescribe the drug for that indication when they might not have done so otherwise - i.e., it boosts sales. But[...]
Posted on December 20, 2019
Colloidal silver is not in the antibiotic category. It is an anti-infectant, not too disimilar to iodine or alcohol or such. Yes, it can exterminate pathogens, but not without some damage to surrounding tissue.[...]
Posted on December 20, 2019
It would indeed be excellent, but the FDA rule is that once a drug is approved, a physician can prescribe it for anything at all. An antibiotic could be prescribed as a treatment for anything from Addison's disease to Zollinger-Ellison syndrome. Enjoy [...]
Posted on December 18, 2019
Thanks very much for setting me straight on this. I just went back to check my sources particularly on Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, and I now see that my error was mine alone. There keeps on being more and more about gene ediing, and I [...]
Posted on December 10, 2019
It was not Travis that got it wrong, but Yours Truly Doc Gumshoe (Michael Jorrin). I was thinking of purines and pyrimidines when I made that blunder. Thanks for putting me back on course.[...]
Posted on November 6, 2019
All correct, but why should it affect pilots more than other people? By the way, the amyloid plaque hypothesis just got dealt another blow - a woman with an APOE variant that in her immediate family has led to disastrously early AD (in their 40s) was fr[...]
Posted on October 24, 2019
Many thanks! Oxygen depletion could certainly affect cognition, along with other physiologic consequences. Have no clue as to whether the long-term effects could be permanent dementia or Alzheimer's.[...]
Posted on October 24, 2019
Certainly don't mean to shortchange you, but Im not coming to any definite conclusions on Anavex 2-73 in advance of definitive data. I won't deny that there are promising signs, but that has been the case with many other prospective AD drugs which eventu[...]
Posted on October 8, 2019
I haven't checked up on Anavex lately, but will do so. Thanks.[...]
Posted on August 23, 2019
Take the Kweichow Moutai loot & buy some Talisker or perhaps Uigeadail . Best, MJ[...]
Posted on August 20, 2019
Esperion has worked hard to get bempedoic acid & the ezetimibe-bempedoic combo to the point where the FDA green light is likely. But then it will take its place in the running with the statins & other anticholesterol agents, which are cheaper & work fin[...]
Lysol is a disinfectant, not an antimicrobial or antiviral Yes, it will kill viruses on contact & also bacteria. But you don't want it inside your body. The digital examination tells the examiner if there are little knobs of something in the gland, [...]