I Want My Client to Win its Case: preventing the cuts to medical research funding at the NIH and NSF

I do not like the Trump administration's attempts to destroy and cut NIH research funding in the United States. Why? Because without it, advances like this in medicine do not happen. At least they will not happen in the United States. Direct gene editing used to save a baby in PA from a metabolic condition that shortens the lives of any infant who has it. The condition lacks an enzyme to help control the buildup of ammonia from protein in the diet. Without some protein, we also perish. When I came to this country as a scientist, I took on my biggest client, the United States of America, the number one research driver in the world. I want to see my client win its case. It is simple. 

Read about the first patient, a baby,  treated with personalized CRISPR gene editing therapy at CHOP.  This study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health Somatic Cell Genome Editing Program (U01TR005355, U19NS132301), as well as additional National Institutes of Health grants (R35HL145203, U19NS132303, DP2CA281401, P01HL142494). In-kind contributions were made by Acuitas Therapeutics, Integrated DNA Technologies, Aldevron, and Danaher Corporation. Additional funding was provided by the CHOP Research Institute’s Gene Therapy for Inherited Metabolic Disorders Frontier Program.

The paper in the New England Journal of Medicine is here: Musunuru et al, “Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease.” N Engl J Med. Online May 15, 2025.

Evidence Based Medicine is Less than 50 years old: born in Hamilton Ontario from an American doctor who made Canada home.

This is an update of an article I first published in 2019, inspired in 2025 and 2026 by attempts of the current federal administration of my country to ignore Evidence Based Medicine. In 2026, several American medical associations have stepped in to provide science-based vaccination guidance to families as the secretary of HHS and the White House itself are announcing changes to guidance that are not founded in biomedical research data.  This is a enough problem for American's medical health that six former Surgeons General of the United States actually published an editorial in the Washington Post (October 2025) warning Americans of the danger this poses to their future health. (See Six Surgeons General: It's our duty to warn the nation about JFK Jr., October 7, 2025). Every Fall, I teach premedical, medical and graduate students about EBM, short for Evidence Based Medicine. How long have we been using Evidence Based Medicine across medical training in the United States and Canada? You may or may not be surprised about the answer, but we benefit from EBM, a concept that was helped along by a humble and now famous American physician and educator, Dr. David Sackett MD.

When Medical Doctors (MDs) become Snake Oil Salesmen, the Public will Suffer

 

Canadians are lucky in that they have universal health insurance, which simply means that everyone living in a Province is in the insurance plan. Canadian male and female life expectancy is also well over 80 years old while Americans on average have life expectancies lower than 80 years old. 

CBC Market Place has an interesting article this week on how some Canadian doctors are using a loop hole to practice medicine without evidence (that is not evidence based medicine) to get themselves richer by prescribing peptides to patients who generally grow up trusting the medical profession. 

I predict this will over time slowly erode the trust Canadians have for MDs, which will be unfortunate. 

Read about the Peptide Snake Oil here. At CBC. 

KPM

Nothing Comes Free: Wegovy and Ozempic can damage your vision

 Nothing comes free.

This new class of diet drugs have generated adverse reports of ischemic optic neuropathy. Exercise and eating healthier foods is my recommendation for your longer term health. Read my summary for more information.

Let's Dance with the Moon: follow the Artemis II mission with Flight Day updates.

 

April 11, 2026 update

In 1969 as a young boy, I was lucky to have watched, along with the entire world, Apollo 11 launch and land on the Moon and return safely to the Earth. A mission started by the leadership of President John F. Kennedy. Now my children will, in a few more years, also see humans land and walk on the Moon. April 1 was the first launch window, of about 2 hours in duration, for a chance to launch Artemis-II into Earth orbit with four NASA astronauts, three Americans and one Canadian. Mother Nature cooperated, and so did the rocket, launching at 6:35 PM EST.

The Orion spacecraft has just over 355,000 parts, built by NASA and prime contractor Lockheed Martin. The spacecraft injected itself into a flight into deep space on April 2, headed around the moon to return to Earth. We all watched for 10 earth-flight days the successful test of the space craft as four of human kind travelled farther from Earth than anyone in human history. Over 3/4 of all persons on Earth were born after Apollo 17, the last time human walked on the Moon. I am one of the 1/4 persons who were born before Apollo and got to see all of the Apollo astronauts walk on the Moon.

Crew assembling seating and stowing cargo, preparation for reentry on Flight Day 10

APOLLO 11 TRACKER: the Pandemic Lockdown Edition for NASA Lovers like me.

Come with me in 2019, and follow in real-time (50 years ago) what is/was going on with the Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon. You can get these reference books today if you are a NASA fan like me. I also have my Buzz Aldrin NASA Ball Cap on. These books were news reference books published by NASA. They were in the hands of Walter Cronkite and his coworkers and they are great for nerds like me. 

Updated April 3, 2026, my Apollo 11 blog in real-time, first posted in July 2019 recapturing the mission of Apollo 11 on it's 50th anniversary. I also reposted this for anyone stuck at home during our COVID19 pandemic stay-at-home activities (2020) for its 51st anniversary. I am old enough to have watched Apollo missions on TV, CBS News, with Walter Cronkite the voice who guided us through each mission live. It is quite true that scientists and engineers of my age were young children who discovered our love of science and technology from the NASA Apollo program, and some of us from Mr. Spock on Star Trek (original series). All on a black and white TV and newspaper clippings from the Toronto Star, NYTimes and Washington Post. Now my children in 2026 will soon see humans reach the Moon and walk on the Moon once again. My tracking post on the Artemis-II mission of April 2026 is here in The Science Rant: Artemis-II if you would like to compare Apollo to Artemis.