"Eighteen suspected Ebola patients escape after treatment tent is set on fire for a second time in Congo"

"The angry residents had arrived at the clinic in the town of Mongbwalu on Friday night and set fire to a tent set up for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases by the Doctors Without Borders humanitarian group"

Two children of an American Ebola patient look through a window at their father in the isolation ward at the Charite hospital in Berlin, Germany https://t.co/WqXUS2wkcY 📸 Charite Hospital pic.twitter.com/koLFgEAFDx

— Reuters Pictures (@reuterspictures) May 22, 2026

Meanwhile:

A 12th hantavirus case is confirmed after a crew member aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship, which arrived in the Netherlands last week for disinfection, tested positive, the WHO says. https://t.co/Fy0dGRSynx

— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 22, 2026

"Residents burn an Ebola treatment center in DR Congo as anger grows over the outbreak"

@dailymail

Police fired warning shots and tear gas in the Congolese town of Rwampara after protesters stormed an Ebola treatment centre and set fire to medical tents during clashes over the burial of a suspected victim. Witnesses said tensions escalated after relatives disputed the cause of death and demanded the body be returned to the family. The unrest comes as health officials race to contain a growing Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, with suspected cases and deaths continuing to rise. #ebola #news #congo #health

♬ original sound - Daily Mail

@aljazeeraenglish

An Ebola victim has been buried by health workers in hazmat suits amid tensions between families and local authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over funeral restrictions.

♬ original sound - Al Jazeera English

("The arson attack in Rwampara reflects the challenges of health workers trying to curb a rare Ebola virus by using stringent measures that might clash with local customs, such as burial rites...The center in Rwampara was burned by local youths who became angry while trying to retrieve the body of a friend who had apparently died of Ebola")

WHO says Ebola outbreak is up to 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths. apnews.com/article/cong...

[image or embed]

— Carl Zimmer (@carlzimmer.com) May 22, 2026 at 6:31 AM

("The U.S. has pledged $23 million in funding to bolster the response in Congo and Uganda, and said it would also fund the establishment of up to 50 Ebola treatment clinics in the affected regions.”)

Brady's "wellness coordinator" allegedly "purports to possess significant organizational power" with the Raiders

NYT:

Like many players and coaches, [Maxx] Crosby was frustrated by the presence of Alex Guerrero, a staunch Brady ally whose official title is wellness coordinator.

Guerrero, who regularly attends practices and meetings, purports to possess significant organizational power, informing players of impending transactions and even indicating to staff members who don’t follow his instructions that their jobs may be at risk.

Guerrero is perceived to have a direct pipeline to Brady, who lives in Florida and serves as Fox’s lead NFL analyst, limiting his in-person presence. 

A 2015 article if you're not familiar, or have forgotten Supreme Greens and NeuroSafe.

"Why Were 100,000 Pregnant Women’s Blood Samples Smuggled Out of China?"

Here's the setup, can you guess why the blood was being smuggled?

The case was part of a major operation by Guangzhou’s anti-smuggling authorities following a year-long investigation and the mobilization of 265 officers. As part of the operation, two professional criminal groups specializing in the smuggling of pregnant women’s blood samples were dismantled, and a total of 26 people were arrested.

The groups earned a staggering 30 million yuan (US$4.2 million) from their blood-smuggling activities.

So far, the story reads almost like a vampire novel, especially with Chinese media detailing how the blood was smuggled: smugglers reportedly strapped tubes of blood to their bodies to cross the border. Others hid them in specially modified suitcases with concealed compartments.

The Epic Systems campus in Wisconsin features the emerald city, wizard's campus, and other fantasy-themed locations

Tours are available:

We have six unique campuses for you to explore: the Prairie, Central Park, Farm, Learning, Wizards Academy, and Storybook campuses. Each tour takes about an hour. To get to the Farm campus, you’ll also get to enjoy the Prairie campus. For the Storybook and Wizards Academy campuses, you’ll start with the Central Park campus or take an expedited route to where those tours begin. 

CNBC from September:

on the outside of its fantasy campus, medical professionals and their patients have very real-world needs from this massive technology vendor. And there are plenty of very real critics.

Epic has for years been accused of dragging its feet around interoperability efforts that would help streamline the exchange of patient information between vendors.

Health-care data in the U.S. has historically been siloed and difficult to move around, as clinics, hospitals and health systems can store their information in a variety of formats across dozens of different vendors. The data is also protected by federal laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA.

Oracle, which is now Epic’s chief rival, says Epic is fiercely protective over its turf. 

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The UK’s liver transplant matching algorithm discriminated against young people

Here's how a 2003 BBC article starts:

The system for allocating most liver transplants on the NHS is causing younger patients to wait longer for surgery, figures show.

There is a shortage of liver donors, so a computer algorithm decides who to prioritise on the waiting list.

Younger people are currently waiting 156 days longer on average for a transplant than patients over 60.

But NHS Blood and Transplant (NHS BT) says difficult decisions have to be made and the system is saving lives. 

The AI Snake Oil blog discusses the algorithm (and other algorithms) in depth:

In November 2023, the Financial Times published a bombshell investigation about bias in the algorithm. It centers on a 31 year old patient, Sarah Meredith, with multiple genetic conditions including cystic fibrosis. It describes her accidental discovery that the Transplant Benefit Score algorithm even existed and would decide her fate; her struggle to understand how it worked; her liver doctors’ lack of even basic knowledge about the algorithm; and her realization that there was no physician override to the TBS score and no appeals process.

When she reached out to the National Health Service to ask for explanations, Meredith was repeatedly told she wouldn’t understand. It seems that the paternalism of health systems combined with the myth of the inscrutability of algorithms is a particularly toxic mix.

Meredith eventually landed on a web app that calculates the TBS, built by Professor Ewen Harrison and his team. He is a surgeon and data scientist who has studied the TBS, and is a co-author of a study of some of the failures of the algorithm. It is through this app that Meredith realized how biased the algorithm is. It also shows why the inscrutability of algorithmic decision making is a myth: even without understanding the internals, it is easy to understand the behavior of the system, especially given that a particular patient only cares about how the system behaves in one specific instance.

But this isn’t just one patient’s experience. From the Financial Times piece:

“If you’re below 45 years, no matter how ill, it is impossible for you to score high enough to be given priority scores on the list,” said Palak Trivedi, a consultant hepatologist at the University of Birmingham, which has one of the country’s largest liver transplant centres.

Finally, a 2024 study in The Lancet has confirmed that the algorithm has a severe bias against younger patients.

Cory Doctorow talks about his cancer diagnosis and navigating Kaiser's treatment

(Prognosis is very good) He describes in detail how he had to advocate for the treatment he needed:

this is a complex, multi-stage process. It began with a physician appointment, then a radiologist, then a pathology report, then surgery, then another pathology report, then an oncologist, then a scan, then another radiologist, and finally, the oncologist again.

It's increasingly common in Los Angeles to ask friends if they have a general practitioner they like and be told the doctor's great, but switching to concierge service.

A plant in North Carolina "makes about 60 percent of the United States’ supply of fluids used in IVs, for in-home dialysis and for people who rely on IV nutrition"

Yes, it's closed after being flooded during Hurricane Helene:

U.S. officials approved airlifts of IV fluids from overseas manufacturing plants on Wednesday to ease shortages caused by Hurricane Helene that have forced hospitals to begin postponing surgeries as a way to ration supplies for the most fragile patients.

...

The situation could become even more dire now that Hurricane Milton is hitting Florida. On Tuesday, workers at B. Braun, makers of a fourth of the nation’s IV fluids, loaded trucks at the company’s plant in Daytona Beach with the medical bags and drove them north through the night to what they hoped would be a safer location.

He won a prize this year for showing that most claims about extreme aging are nonsense

From an interview:

 I’ve tracked down 80% of the people aged over 110 in the world (the other 20% are from countries you can’t meaningfully analyse). Of those, almost none have a birth certificate. In the US there are over 500 of these people; seven have a birth certificate. Even worse, only about 10% have a death certificate.

The epitome of this is blue zones, which are regions where people supposedly reach age 100 at a remarkable rate. For almost 20 years, they have been marketed to the public. They’re the subject of tons of scientific work, a popular Netflix documentary, tons of cookbooks about things like the Mediterranean diet, and so on.

Okinawa in Japan is one of these zones. There was a Japanese government review in 2010, which found that 82% of the people aged over 100 in Japan turned out to be dead. The secret to living to 110 was, don’t register your death.

The Japanese government has run one of the largest nutritional surveys in the world, dating back to 1975. From then until now, Okinawa has had the worst health in Japan. They’ve eaten the least vegetables; they’ve been extremely heavy drinkers.

(He goes on to discuss other locations and the factor most likely tied to longevity.) Here's a list of the 2024 winners.

"How a Leading Chain of Psychiatric Hospitals Traps Patients"

The real-life version of the next season of AMC's The Terror:

[One of America’s largest chains of psychiatric hospitals], which charges $2,200 a day for some patients, at times deploys an array of strategies to persuade insurers to cover longer stays, employees said. [The hospital chain] has exaggerated patients’ symptoms. It has tweaked medication dosages, then claimed patients needed to stay longer because of the adjustment. And it has argued that patients are not well enough to leave because they did not finish a meal.

Unless the patients or their families hire lawyers, [the hospital] often holds them until their insurance runs out.

Chinese company accused of stealing thousands of bodies to use the bones for dental grafts

What's on Weibo:

Due to the high demand for bone implant materials and limited supply, it is an incredibly lucrative industry.

,,,

The case has allegedly been transferred to the Taiyuan Procuratorate for review and potential prosecution

...

On Friday, the news topic on Chinese social media was tightly controlled

The Q-Collar is worn around an athlete's neck to hopefully protect against brain "slosh"

Fox last year:

If you are hit in the head or body, you may suffer a traumatic brain injury, known as a TBI. ...

During one of these incidents, your brain will typically move in the skull unrestrained, the FDA explains. This is known as a “slosh.”

... the Q-Collar compresses against the jugular veins in the athlete’s neck, increasing the volume of blood in their skull’s blood vessels. The increased blood then creates “a tighter fit of the brain inside the skull,” which could reduce the “slosh.”

The article goes on to note doubts as to the effectiveness of the device. 

One of the players for Puerto Rico (also plays for Angel City) was wearing one in tonight's game against the USA:

This week saw a break from PLL action, but key milestones for athletes wearing the Q-Collar. Rocky Rodriguez scored her first for Angel City and Emily Menges accomplished something only 8 others have in their NWSL careers. 👇👇https://t.co/DBFxFIH4ah #QCollar #CollarUp

— Q-Collar (@QCollarOfficial) June 24, 2024

Three Baylor heart surgeons allegedly billed multiple surgeries at a time by letting residents conduct some of the surgeries

Houston Chronicle:

[The three surgeons] allegedly left medical residents and fellows in operating rooms, “alone” and without patients’ knowledge, during critical moments of complex heart surgeries from 2013 to 2020 at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, according to a federal whistleblower lawsuit unsealed Monday. The practice allowed them to perform two and sometimes three heart procedures at the same time, then fraudulently bill the government for all the operations, according to the lawsuit, which was filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Texas. 

Their hospital and its academic affiliate, Baylor College of Medicine, were aware of the practice and supported them

...

An internal review of patient deaths found that at least four patients died under [one of the doctor]’s care during scheduled overlapping surgeries, according to the lawsuit. Officials were aware of broader problems, the lawsuit said. With each physician rushing from one surgery to the next, patients were under anesthesia for longer and suffered excessive internal bleeding that required re-opening their chest, the lawsuit said. Heart valve sutures came loose, the lawsuit said, and surgeries needed to be redone. 

Two executives of a telehealth company that distributed A.D.H.D. drugs were indicted on charges of health care fraud

NYT:

[They were] arrested and accused of participating in a scheme to distribute Adderall and other stimulants for A.D.H.D. to patients who did not need the medications, and to bill insurers for these drugs

...

[The CEO's social media] posts frequently featured young people “discovering” on camera that they had A.D.H.D. 

...

[The company] one of several telehealth companies that became popular during pandemic lockdowns in 2020, when the government relaxed restrictions around online prescriptions for controlled substances such as Adderall. Those looser regulations meant that clinicians could prescribe medications virtually without first conducting an in-person evaluation

Researchers to retract extensively cited Alzheimer’s paper published in 2006 and found to contain doctored images

Science:

The 2006 paper suggested an amyloid beta (Aβ) protein called Aβ*56 could cause Alzheimer’s.

...

For years researchers had tried to improve Alzheimer’s outcomes by stripping amyloid proteins from the brain, but the experimental drugs all failed. Aβ*56 seemed to offer a more specific and promising therapeutic target, and many embraced the finding. Funding for related work rose sharply.

Funny, disgusting deployment patch for a medical unit

I swung by medical to see what their latest schemes were. I discovered that their deployment patch features the double dragon. Is this medical humor? pic.twitter.com/Ks9P4f2vPx

— Chowdah Hill (@ChowdahHill) May 20, 2024

A look at the anti-vaxxers who fueled Montreal's smallpox epidemic in 1885

MIT:

Vaccination, in Ross’s mind, was poisonous. He wanted everyone to know it too. Besides papering the city of Montreal with antivaccination posters and pamphlets, writing letters to newspapers and professional journals, and founding a magazine called the Anti-Vaccinator, he formed the Canadian Anti-Vaccination League as part of an international antivaccination crusade.

...

Some of the holdouts were surely persuaded by Ross and his English-only propaganda. But most of the unvaccinated population and therefore the bulk of the cases consisted of French Canadians. To convince them of the evils of vaccination, French Canadian physician Joseph Emery Coderre formed the first Canadian antivaccination society in Montreal and published numerous antivaccination pamphlets in French in the 1870s. His ardent antivaccination views fed the fervor of protesters who attacked the city council in 1875, halting efforts to enact mandatory smallpox vaccination in Montreal and leaving the city vulnerable to devastating disease 10 years later. When compulsory vaccination was attempted again in 1885, the riot was even bigger. Shortly thereafter, Coderre and colleagues created an antivaccination journal

(The article features one flyer)

Internet-connected urinal that offers extremely fast medical analysis

Recently Health Checking Urinals have begun popping up in Men's restrooms all over Shanghai.

A private company is offering the urine analysis for RMB 20. Naturally I tried that out.

Here's how that went. pic.twitter.com/1enzII4b7E

— Christian Petersen-Clausen (@chris__pc) April 22, 2024

The whole process is about as easy as one might think. I paid my fee via wechat and before I even made it down the escalator had my results. pic.twitter.com/7CId38RPYI

— Christian Petersen-Clausen (@chris__pc) April 22, 2024

(The thread continues)

TIL the disturbing and suspect way antidepressants are tested on mice

Science:

For the past few decades, scientists studying candidate antidepressant drugs have had a convenient animal test: how long a rodent dropped in water keeps swimming. Invented in 1977, the forced swim test (FST) hinged on the idea that a depressed animal would give up quickly. It seemed to work: Antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy often made the animal try harder. The test remains popular, appearing in about 600 papers per year.

But researchers have recently begun to question the assumption that the test really gauges depression and is a good predictor of human responses to drugs

Ominous placard in an abandoned hospital parking garage

reserved space in an abandoned hospital parking garage pic.twitter.com/Xyq6Bxo0XJ

— Minovsky (@MinovskyArticle) March 15, 2024