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If all goes well — which is to say if you are generally healthy — you mostly experience the doctor’s office as an inconvenience, going to primary care appointments that are an hour of waiting for 20 minutes of care. If you’re ill, you fall into a Kafka-esque labyrinth of specialists, waiting rooms, and prior authorizations. You will be held tightly by the medical system, but you are unlikely to feel good. (Hannah Kerman, 4/29)

I’ve been waiting for health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to do something big on oversight of what I call pop peptides, like BPC-157 and GHK-Cu. He had long signaled that he was going to free such peptides from what he saw as a past, misguided FDA that had banned them in 2023. It’s finally happened — and the way it went down shook me up a bit. (Paul Knoepfler, 4/29)

A neuroscientist’s guide to reading the research yourself. (Richard M. Ransohoff, 4/28)

Why does it take a new drug 10 years, on average, to come to market? Part of the reason lies in the dead time in the process. Historically, trials have required tedious tabulations and repeated application submissions between phases, which is why 45% of the time from a Phase 1 trial until final submission is spent without any ongoing clinical trial in progress — idle time in the system. (FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, 4/28)

The email is sitting in my inbox like a countdown clock: $5,000 due to secure my surgery date. Another $7,000 required on the day of the procedure. Before even getting there, I had already paid $800 just for a consultation and thousands more from emergency room visits, trying to manage the pain. (Ella Nocera-DeJulio, 4/28)