The First Cohort
Medical research, with the receipts
Sunday, July 26, 2026 · Evidence-led medical research news
Today, 26 July
JUL 26 ONLY
A Gene-Editing Trial Killed a 6-Year-Old. Nature Published the Science and Left Her Out of the Record.
Her parents paid $860,000 to base-edit their daughter's brain. She died of an immune reaction within a week, and the published paper never says so.
$860,000 paid to edit her genome
Orforglipron Reaches Deep Into the Brain's Reward Circuit and Turns the Dopamine Down
Pepsi Paid $1.95 Billion for Poppi, in a Category That Averages as Much Sugar as Fiber
Earlier This Week
JUL 21–25
The Evolutionary Fix for Drug Resistance Works Best on a Tumor Too Small to Find
The Fruit Juice Sold to Parents as the Healthy Choice Tracks With Higher Blood Pressure 25 Years Later
The FDA Revoked Two Petroleum Dyes That Industry Abandoned Before Most Americans Were Born
A Chinese Bark Compound Reached the Black-Box Arthritis Drugs' Pathway From Upstream, in Rats
The GLP-1s That Barely Move the Scale Don't Cause Hair Loss, and That's the Clue Everyone Missed
The Sweeteners Sold to Diabetics as the Safe Swap Tracked With Faster Brain Aging
In the Lab, Coffee Flipped an Anti-Aging Switch. The Caffeine Barely Did.
Anti-Tau Alzheimer's Drugs Keep Hitting Their Target and Missing the Disease
The Mice Ate More and Got Leaner. The Switch Was One Amino Acid, Turned Down.
Still Worth Reading
NEJM Retracted the Study That Approved Amgen's Vasculitis Drug. It Had Never Done That in 200 Years.
The FDA says the drug's superiority result came from re-scoring nine patients after the trial was unblinded.
9 patients re-scored
Five Years After COVID, Japan Is Still Dying at Pandemic Rates, and Confirmed COVID Explains Only a Tenth
Japan's excess deaths peaked at 7.55 percent in 2022 and still ran at 5.76 percent through 2023.
7.55% peak excess deaths
David Ho's Lab Built an Antibody to Neutralize Nearly Every Strain of HIV. Its First Test in People With the Virus Held for Two Weeks.
Fifty-four volunteers, nine with HIV, and just three with virus still in their blood. The engineered antibody drove viral load down as much as ninetyfold.
90x lower viral loadThe Archive
35stories
Primary documents, named names, and what the record actually shows.
Browse all →28stories
Approvals, recalls, and the regulatory record industry would rather you not read.
Browse all →17stories
Resistance, remission, and the biology oncology is still arguing about.
Browse all →21stories
Outbreaks, vaccines, and the surveillance data agencies release late, if at all.
Browse all →9stories
Flares, triggers, and the immune system's civil wars.
Browse all →Newsletter
The Sunday Cohort
One weekly dispatch. The stories that held up.