"[D]octors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot."

"And, to the researchers’ surprise, ChatGPT alone outperformed the doctors....  The chatbot, from the company OpenAI, scored an average of 90 percent when diagnosing a medical condition from a case report and explaining its reasoning. Doctors randomly assigned to use the chatbot got an average score of 76 percent. Those randomly assigned not to use it had an average score of 74 percent. The study showed more than just the chatbot’s superior performance. It unveiled doctors’ sometimes unwavering belief in a diagnosis they made, even when a chatbot potentially suggests a better one. And the study illustrated that while doctors are being exposed to the tools of artificial intelligence for their work, few know how to exploit the abilities of chatbots. As a result, they failed to take advantage of A.I. systems’ ability to solve complex diagnostic problems and offer explanations for their diagnoses...."

Writes Gina Kolata, in "A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness/A small study found ChatGPT outdid human physicians when assessing medical case histories, even when those doctors were using a chatbot" (NYT).

It seems that there are systematic problems with the thought processes of doctors. I wonder how A.I. would have addressed the myriad problems of the covid pandemic — that is, A.I. without the interference of experts. Will studies like this result in doctors questioning their own thinking patterns?

"Many people with obesity... have fat deposits in the tongue and in the back of the throat. The neck gets larger with fat that narrows the airway..."

"... and the tongue gets larger in all directions, 'like blowing up a balloon'... During sleep, the tongue obstructs the flow of oxygen, repeatedly waking the person repeatedly.”

Writes Gina Kolata, in "Sleep Apnea Reduced in People Who Took Weight-Loss Drug, Eli Lilly Reports/The company reported results of clinical trials involving Zepbound, an obesity drug in the same class as Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy" (NYT).

That's good news, and I hope this drug helps with sleep apnea, which must be a terrible problem, but I'm blogging this because I was cheered up by the phrase "repeatedly waking the person repeatedly."

"Every treatment so far shown to help coronavirus patients... is intended only for seriously ill hospitalized patients. Those with mild to moderate disease have had to wait and hope for the best."

But now: "A single infusion of an experimental drug has markedly reduced blood levels of the coronavirus in newly infected patients and lowered the chances that they would need hospitalization, the drug’s maker announced on Wednesday."

Writes Gina Kolata in "An Experimental Drug Protects Covid-19 Patients, Eli Lilly Claims/A so-called monoclonal antibody lowered blood levels of the coronavirus and prevented hospitalizations. The research has not yet been vetted by independent experts" (NYT).

I was trying to figure out why the headline is written to heighten skepticism and imagined that enthusiasm about a new drug is considered Trumpish.

Dr. Myron Cohen, director of the Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he was impressed. “It’s exciting,” said Dr. Cohen, who was not involved in the study. The clinical trial appears to be rigorous, and the results are “really compelling.” Other companies, too, are developing monoclonal antibodies to combat the coronavirus, he noted: “This is the opening of a door.”...

In six months, Eli Lilly isolated an antibody from one of the first Covid-19 survivors, turned it into a drug and began a study, enrolling the first patients on June 17. “It was an all-out effort,” said Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, the company’s chief scientific officer. The goal was to enroll patients as soon as they were infected, but that meant accelerating the usual selection process. Trial sites administered rapid diagnostic tests and moved quickly to enroll eligible patients....

The investigators expected that their drug might produce a reduction in the amount of virus in patients’ blood. They did not anticipate a sharp reduction in patients who needed hospitalization. “This is the first time we have ever seen anything of this magnitude,” Dr. Skovronsky said....

The article ends with this quote from Dr. Cohen:  “For my wife and I, who are older and fatter — we are waiting for drugs like this so we can see our grandchildren.” I know there are bigger problems in this world, but: 1. Don't call your wife fat in the New York Times, and 2. Come on, you're a doctor, get the grammar right. (It's "for my wife and me," not "for my wife and I.")

Also from Eli Lilly: "Anti-inflammatory drug may shorten Covid-19 recovery time/Eli Lilly said it planned to discuss with regulators the possible emergency use of baricitinib for hospitalized Covid-19 patients" (Politico).

"... a Reese’s peanut butter cup gave her such a rush that it was... 'like an orgasm of pleasure in my brain.' Now... 'It’s just peanut butter and chocolate. What’s the big deal?'"

A bariatric surgeon tells us about one of his patients, in a NYT article (by Gina Kolata) that takes the position that the weight loss after the surgery is not due simply to the reduction in the size of the stomach. We're told that "scientists have discovered that it actually causes profound changes in patients’ physiology, altering the activity of thousands of genes in the human body as well as the complex hormonal signaling from the gut to the brain."

I can't help feeling skeptical. "Scientists" — what scientists? There's a huge financial interest in performing all this surgery, and there's a lot of pressure to reduce medical spending. Doesn't that skew the research?

It's a long article, but the actual science part is minimized. Here's the most technical part addressing my skepticism:

Why are store tomatoes so bad?

Maybe it's the redness.

The unexpected culprit is a gene mutation that occurred by chance and that was discovered by tomato breeders. It was deliberately bred into almost all tomatoes because it conferred an advantage: It made them a uniform luscious scarlet when ripe.

Now, in a paper published in the journal Science, researchers report that the very gene that was inactivated by that mutation plays an important role in producing the sugar and aromas that are the essence of a fragrant, flavorful tomato.

Swine flu in New York City.

It's not just for Mexico anymore. Look out.

But don't worry, "Obama's health fine after trip to Mexico."

***

I've made a "flu" tag. I hope I won't need to use it too much.

Here's an excellent book: "Flu : The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic."

"It was a plague so deadly that if a similar virus were to strike today, it would kill more people in a single year than heart disease, cancers, strokes, chronic pulmonary disease, AIDS and Alzheimer's disease combined." Between 20 million and 100 million people worldwide died in the 1918 flu pandemic, but for years afterward this deadliest plague in history was almost completely forgotten. Histories and even medical texts rarely mentioned it. This disconnect between the flu's devastation and its obscurity is the starting point for [Gine] Kolata's incisive history. She explains how the plague spread, covers the various speculations about its causes and origins and gives an account of the search to retrieve a specimen of the virus strain once genetic science had advanced enough to unravel the virus's mysteries. Tissue samples from an obese woman buried in the permafrost of Alaska and from two soldiers who died in army camps preserved by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in thumb-sized bits of paraffin prove to be the last remaining sources of the 1918 strain... Could such a deadly flu appear again?