Making Sense of Medical Science (MSMS)

A medical scientist explains medical news for lay people

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Steve Clark, PhD is a retired university professor with a PhD in immunology and a past Special Fellow of the Leukemia Society of America. Clark has published dozens of papers based on his research and holds two drug patents. He taught medical and graduate students about cancer biology and genetics, and about research ethics. He also directed an NIH-funded PhD Graduate Program and chaired several executive-level faculty committees. Clark served on the University Chancellor’s Speaker’s Bureau. While retired, Clark has been blogging on the COVID pandemic, which is the subject of his next book.

Category: clinical trials

  • COVID And Kids

    • About 1 in 5 children hospitalized with COVID were admitted to the intensive care unit. • Significantly, >90 percent of these children who were hospitalized or died from COVID weren’t vaccinated.

  • Vaccinating Pregnant Women And Kids Against COVID: Suspicion vs Science

    The announcement in May on X by Health Secretary RFK, Jr. that the CDC will no longer recommend COVID vaccinations for children over 6 months and pregnant women took the entire CDC by surprise. Kennedy’s decree represents a profound policy shift as well as a major assault on science-based medicine. It completely abandons established procedures…

  • COVID On The Heart

    Other studies showed that people who are vaccinated are roughly 40 to 60 percent less likely to have a heart attack or stroke following a COVID infection than those who are unvaccinated.

  • NIH Launches First Trial Of Nasal COVID Vaccine

    Wouldn’t it be nice if a vaccine could be developed to nip the infection in the bud at the site of entry so it could not set up shop at all? That is an idea behind a mucosal vaccine that I described earlier. This summer, NIH launched the initial Phase 1 trial to begin testing…

  • Paxlovid: Just Follow The Settled Science

    Thus, the makers of the drug now have two studies with diametrically opposite results on the effects of Paxlovid on COVID patients. The first showed “eye popping” effects sufficient to get NIH to move all other drug investigations to a lower priority. The second showed that Paxlovid was no better than a placebo. Both results…

  • Vaccine Disinformation Moves To Congress

    This was not a meeting called by a regular committee but an ad hoc gathering of some anti-vaccine rogues. It was held in a tiny back room in the Capitol and was poorly attended, poorly staffed, and poorly equipped. It was described as a meeting of the “shadow Congress;” accurately named as it dabbled in…

  • Harry Became Severely Disabled After The Vaccine

    Harry developed his debilitating conditions shortly after his third shot and attributed his woes to the vaccine. That is a temporal correlation—the debilitation happened shortly after the vaccine. But, is there anything that proves the vaccine caused Harry’s debilitation? 

  • Don’t Forget The Drugs: An Update

    I mentioned an experimental drug, molnupiravir that was being developed by Merck and Ridgeback Therapeutics. Well, they just posted an encouraging update. It continues to show success at preventing serious disease when given to high-risk people early after infection.

  • Long Term Side Effects Of COVID Vaccines

    There are no “long term safety issues” with these or any other vaccine. If you don’t have a side effect 2-8 weeks after the injection, you will not have any further vaccine-related problems down the road. I challenge anyone to name any vaccine that has had side effects more than a couple of weeks following…

  • Evidence That Facemasks Prevent COVID-19

    Very few of these close contacts caught the virus and they all wore masks. In other words, in schools with mask mandates, there were no outbreaks. And schools are ripe for creating a super-spreader outbreak.