Gairik Sachdeva

If A.I. Can Diagnose Patients, What Are Doctors For? Large language models are transforming medicine—but the technology comes with side effects.

How good is A.I. at making medical diagnoses? Good enough to help—and to hurt.

For @newyorker.com, I spent months talking to patients, doctors, and researchers about how we can make the most of a powerful new technology and how we can minimize the side effects.

Harnessing Noise Like a Diligent, Discerning Demon

open.substack.com/pub/gairiksa...

Harnessing Noise Like a Diligent, Discerning Demon

open.substack.com/pub/gairiksa...

Harnessing Noise Like a Diligent, Discerning Demon Lessons in the creative process from a 150-year old thought experiment in physics

"For a few months now, I have been on a mission to find the source of this seemingly divine creative power. I’d imagined it to be a portal through which brilliant ideas, insights, and essays might spontaneously flow... Unexpectedly, everything I read and experienced pointed elsewhere"

Harnessing Noise Like a Diligent, Discerning Demon Lessons in the creative process from a 150-year old thought experiment in physics

"For a few months now, I have been on a mission to find the source of this seemingly divine creative power. I’d imagined it to be a portal through which brilliant ideas, insights, and essays might spontaneously flow... Unexpectedly, everything I read and experienced pointed elsewhere"

Here's an idea: Trump's fight with Harvard is a proxy for his fight with elite universities everywhere. He thinks (probably correctly) that if he can beat Harvard into submission then all the rest will fall into line. So Harvard's victory is essential, not just for Harvard but also for /1

A graph showing the price per pound for different vehicles and types of cheese. There are a surprising number of cheeses in the top half, such as Roquefort.

This is the best graph I've seen in a while 📊

‘Most-favored nation’ drug pricing has three significant problems There are many good reasons why the U.S. should pay more for earlier access to new medications than its trading partners.

Back in April, Darius Lakdawalla and Dana P. Goldman of the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics wrote that "most-favored nation" drug pricing "can’t undo the basic economics of the global drug marketplace" www.statnews.com/2025/04/14/m...

The impact of the PEPFAR funding freeze on HIV deaths and infections: a mathematical modelling study of seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa The sudden cessation of PEPFAR funding likely results in tens of thousands of HIV deaths and new infections. These losses of life and health should compel the United States government to rapidly and f...

Projected deaths from cessation of USAID PEPFAR funding
www.thelancet.com/journals/ecl...
a 90-day freeze is expected to result in ~60,000 excess deaths

Harvard "will not negotiate" with Trump, rejects deal to avoid funding cuts "Harvard will not negotiate over its independence or its constitutional rights," university president Alan Garber wrote Monday.

BREAKING: Harvard "will not negotiate" with Trump, rejects deal to avoid funding cuts www.axios.com/2025/04/14/h...

Drugs in the Balance: FDA's Complex Job Safeguarding Health RFK Jr. Misunderstands the agency — Drug regulation is critical and complex (not corrupt)

"When RFK Jr. looks at the FDA’s recommendations and alleges corruption, he is making the very mistake the agency aims to avoid: selectively cherry-picking outliers and anecdotes, without weighing the entirety of evidence in the balance."

open.substack.com/pub/gairiksa...

Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Rescinds Additional Harmful Biden Executive Actions RESTORING COMMON SENSE AND GOOD GOVERNANCE: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order rescinding a second round of harmful executive

Trump has rescinded the Bioeconomy EO, calling it "radical biotech and biomanufacturing initiatives." www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/...

Volatile is the new normal for the biotech workforce Biotech workers can build resilience into a career full of transitions by finding matching niches and evolving skills through diverse experiences.

Volatile is the new normal for the biotech workforce
www.statnews.com/2025/03/07/b...

Volatile is the new normal for the biotech workforce Biotech workers can build resilience into a career full of transitions by finding matching niches and evolving skills through diverse experiences.

Check out an opinion essay I wrote for STAT on how to thrive in the perpetually volatile biotech industry

This article is paywalled, though you can also find my writing at gairiksachdeva.substack.com

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Drugs in the Balance: FDA's Complex Job Safeguarding Health RFK Jr. Misunderstands the agency — Drug regulation is critical and complex (not corrupt)

"When RFK Jr. looks at the FDA’s recommendations and alleges corruption, he is making the very mistake the agency aims to avoid: selectively cherry-picking outliers and anecdotes, without weighing the entirety of evidence in the balance."

open.substack.com/pub/gairiksa...

What RFK Jr. Misunderstands About the FDA Drug Regulation is Critical and Complex (not Corrupt)

What side effects should we accept from a drug that fights a deadly cancer? Should the threshold be different for a psychoactive medicine meant to relax an anxious mind? Finding the balance between the risks and benefits of drugs — conventional or alternative — is tricky but essential.

"When RFK Jr. looks at the FDA’s recommendations and alleges corruption, he is making the very mistake the agency aims to avoid: selectively cherry-picking outliers and anecdotes, without weighing the entirety of evidence in the balance."

gairiksachdeva.substack.com/p/what-rfk-j...

What Baby Shark and the Supreme Court Have in Common The universal power of experimentation, selection, and persistence to shape our world

"Everything that one might consider intelligent design is, in fact, mostly shaped by evolution. And I don’t just mean soaring giraffe necks, springy frog legs, and scented cherry blossoms ... Sedans, songs, and systems of government are all subject to similar winnowing from selection."

What Baby Shark and the Supreme Court Have in Common The universal power of experimentation, selection, and persistence to shape our world

"Everything that one might consider intelligent design is, in fact, mostly shaped by evolution. And I don’t just mean soaring giraffe necks, springy frog legs, and scented cherry blossoms ... Sedans, songs, and systems of government are all subject to similar winnowing from selection."

Killing Cancer Patients (Once the Payments Clear)

A terrifying new report by John Carreyrou illustrates why we have those pesky regulations and those irritating clinical trials:

Timeless Beauty Lost to Time: Art of the Glass Flowers Solemn reminder of the fleeting fragility of human creativity.

The Glass Flowers, embodying a unique coincidence of progeniture, period, purpose, and performance, are a celebration of a historic flash of human creativity.

But how did such a breathtaking assortment come into being during only one sliver of human history?

Timeless Beauty Lost to Time: Art of the Glass Flowers Solemn reminder of the fleeting fragility of human creativity.

The Glass Flowers, embodying a unique coincidence of progeniture, period, purpose, and performance, are a celebration of a historic flash of human creativity.

But how did such a breathtaking assortment come into being during only one sliver of human history?

Modernas No More: A Rare Success from the End of an Era for Biotech Complexity is making it unlikely for new Moderna-like biotech companies to emerge; instead, partnerships between specialists are fueling drug development.

“As the era of vertically integrated biotech companies sunsets, drug development in the future will likely be distributed across specialized platform companies, transient early-stage biotech companies, and a smaller number of big pharmas with the marketing muscle.”

Perhaps a biotech hot take: "A vanishingly small number of companies founded in the last 20 years have access to the path that led Genentech and Moderna to the growth they achieved."

Full piece here: gairiksachdeva.substack.com/p/modernas-n...

Do you agree? What else may be going on?

Perhaps a biotech hot take: "A vanishingly small number of companies founded in the last 20 years have access to the path that led Genentech and Moderna to the growth they achieved."

Full piece here: gairiksachdeva.substack.com/p/modernas-n...

Do you agree? What else may be going on?

What if Hare and Tortoise were running a half marathon, not a 5k, and Hare woke up well before Tortoise was halfway?

Thinking about the limitations of slow and steady today. How about rush, rest, and repeat?

Although folks sometime minimize the value of "biobucks," they are a critical tool in biopharma partnering negotiations because they allow for clear path to "we win if you win." It's important that trust in that mechanism is preserved (partnering is gaining importance in the biopharma ecosystem).

The Gilded Age of Medicine Is Here Health insurers and hospitals increasingly treat patients less as humans in need of care than consumers who generate profit.

“An approach that can only be described as gamification…UnitedHealth had set up dashboards for practices to compete on how many conditions they could diagnose in patients. Doctors who completed the most appointments with seniors in Medicare Advantage were eligible for ten-thousand-dollar bonuses”

Chroma, Nvelop merge to form nChroma Bio, raising $75M to enter the clinic Chroma Medicine and Nvelop Therapeutics announced their merger to form nChroma Bio, resulting from a September dinner between CEOs Jeff Walsh and Catherine Stehman-Breen. The new company secured $75 m...

NEW: The consolidation trend continues for the genetic medicines field.

Epigenetic editing Chroma and delivery specialist Nvelop merged into nChroma Bio.

Follows Orna-ReNAgade merger, Tome's flameout, Resonance shutting down.

More on the latest for a volatile space:
endpts.com/genetic-medi...

Roche said it didn’t want to buy Poseida last year: A look at how the $1.5B buyout came to be After receiving an unsolicited acquisition proposal from an unnamed Big Pharma in 2023, Poseida reached out to inform partner Roche of the offer, at which point the

Poseida masterfully and patiently spiraled an unsolicited lowball offer into a cascade of negotiations with the partner who knew them best, ultimately landing a handsome acquisition by Roche 🧠 #M&A #Biotech #StrategicNegotiation

www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/roch...