The First Cohort
Medical research, with the receipts
Sunday, July 26, 2026 · Evidence-led medical research news
The lead · If you read one thing today
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.
The published record of a base-editing trial that ended in a child's death.
Today
The 3 stories we published on 26 July. That is the whole day.
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
The Evolutionary Fix for Drug Resistance Works Best on a Tumor Too Small to Find
By beat
198 stories, grouped by the condition they are about. Pick your subject.
A Pharma-Funded Nonprofit Is Lobbying the FDA to Kill Seven Peptides It Can't Sell You
NEJM Retracted the Study That Approved Amgen's Vasculitis Drug. It Had Never Done That in 200 Years.
The Sweeteners Sold to Diabetics as the Safe Swap Tracked With Faster Brain Aging
12,772 adults, 8 years followedAnti-Tau Alzheimer's Drugs Keep Hitting Their Target and Missing the Disease
A $440,000 Drug Proved This Obesity Was Never About Willpower
For Years, a Foreign Factory Could Put the Active Ingredient in Your Medicine and Never Tell the FDA
The Fruit Juice Sold to Parents as the Healthy Choice Tracks With Higher Blood Pressure 25 Years Later
20% higher BP riskIn the Lab, Coffee Flipped an Anti-Aging Switch. The Caffeine Barely Did.
Five Years After COVID, Japan Is Still Dying at Pandemic Rates, and Confirmed COVID Explains Only a Tenth
7.55% excess deaths, 2022The Nose-Spray TB Vaccine in Your Feed This Week Has Only Ever Worked in Mice
The GLP-1s That Barely Move the Scale Don't Cause Hair Loss, and That's the Clue Everyone Missed
A Gut Microbe Was Feeding Ammonia to Sick Livers. A Michigan Peptide Cut Off the Supply in Monkeys.
Pregnancy Stations Killer T Cells in the Milk Ducts, and a Decade Later They Haven't Left
Whether a T Cell Keeps Killing Cancer or Quits Is Written in How Its Genome Folds
A Chinese Bark Compound Reached the Black-Box Arthritis Drugs' Pathway From Upstream, in Rats
A Petri Dish of Angry Immune Cells, a Little Ultrasound, and a Very Big Headline
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