Ian Myles, MD/MPH

Eisenhower

Image of a person coughing as they look up their diagnosis on a pollution emitting computer running AI. Showing the pollution created by "AI doctors" cause the diseases they claim to identify.

For those that attended day 1 of #AAAAI #AAAAI2025 🤣. I made Gemini make fun of itself but still needed photoshop because of course.

Details of a waterfall in the North Georgia Mountains
Day 174/180

#NorthGeorgiaMountains
#ChattahoocheeOconeeNationalForest #Naturephotography #Waterfalls #NorthGeorgia #LandscapePhoto #Photography

Was Thomas Jefferson the only founding father with a p*do history? I sure hope so.

"I'm not going to put synthetic pharmaceuticals in my body like you sheep-ole. I'm using these nicotine patches made by"... *squints*... "GSK and Novartis, like nature intended".

From the university press that brought you numerous books defending eugenics, read our raving review of revisionist history about mass death. Princeton: riding the coat tails of our former greatness since 1850.

The only way he doesn't have to drop out after a week or two is if a billionaire donor keeps him afloat, which would only further doom his chances.

Lastly, as mentioned before - believing one has accounted for "the environment" using a survey with only questions like "how often to you eat dessert?" is insanely insufficient. Would be like saying "we accounted for genetic differences by including HLA type in the analysis".

But when you stratify by a race proxy, then make uncareful claims about genetics and biology you are inviting determinist to 'misrepresent' your work. But providing no good, actionable insights; no one should act on the assumption that a Euro-born person needs a different vaccine.

Just treat humans like a single species & look for important factors. Obviously HLA will matter, and will stratify. Stratifying by *measured* exposure differences would also boost the argument; if you think a person with a given HLA and viral exposure will have a given T-repertoire investigate that.

And you didn't assess exposure differences by sex (or age, but age has a more obvious time element to increase exposure).
Thus, adjusting vaccines for age/sex would be done for different clinical outcomes (ie protective effects), which are cited for IAV but not shown.

My tone reflects interpretation of a paper dominated by genetics and "African" v "European" graph. I agree, you didn't racialize but this feeds into narratives. Intent is secondary.
See @jedidiahcarlson.com or @stairwaytokevin.bsky.social work on the subject.

Why not say "Age and sex" then? Fewer characters than "Demographics".

I dont see time since migration included, not doing so implies nation of origin has a static effect. And still doesn't answer what we do with the racial*IZED* results, even if they are nation of birth.

The finding is epitopes differ between people. But the framing is due to "demographics", even if you partly hypothesize viral strain differences between nations is the cause, that isnt measured. So what would we do with this info? Make differing vaccines? Use different antivirals? I think not.

Ok, I missed alcohol and dietary exposures. But the rest are not akin to evaluating exposures to viruses. You could just as easily have combined all the participants to look for universal influences (fair enough, age for example). But race stratification in genetics context is harmful.

Yup. Of course connecting this to susceptibility would require measuring exposures. IE, requires a real environmental assessment beyond "we pulled their reported SES from a database".

A screenshot of the original announcement which in no way discusses environment when outlining the results.

So the main point of a paper entitled "Demographic and genetic factors shape the epitope specificity...", which measured precisely 1 environmental exposure (smoking; SES is an imperfect surrogate at best), is that it's complicated mix? Your tone seems to have shifted from your announcement, a bit.

Pharmacogenomic responses to vaccines are certainly a viable hypothesis. But you'd match any actions to the alleles, not "demographcis". There is nothing actionable or translatable in this work, but it will advance the idea of racialized differences under the Nature (as always) banner

@michelnivard.bsky.social As I mentioned, you go through all the work of de-confounding genetic data for behavioral disorders but then the non-BG fields churn this seemingly banal stuff out which entrench deterministic conclusions; making it harder for everyone to refute biologic determinism.

If someone where to apply this study design to neurotransmitter markers of schizophrenia (or other behavioral disorders), sex hormone levels, or brain scans = it would be framed akin to the ABCD scandal in NYT. But a racialized study of viral antibodies which doesn't account for virus exposures, 🤷‍♂️

@nccomfort.bsky.social this is what modern race science looks like. Biologizing racial differences, investigated by people outside the marginalized group investigated as if SES and smoking are the only environmental variables needed to make claims about demographics and genetics dictating immunity.

A four panel comic, from left to right: 1960s LIFE IS BASED ON DNA, WHICH USES RNA TO MAKE PROTEINS THAT DO STUFF. 1980s ALSO, THE RNA DOES SOME STUFF ITSELF, WHICH IS WEIRD. 2000s THERE ARE 50 MANY KINDS OF RNA. IT'S DOING SO MUCH STUFF! 2020s LIFE IS A SEETHING MASS OF RNA THAT SOMETIMES USES DNA TO TAKE NOTES. WHAT DO THE PROTEINS DO? ERRANDS FOR RNA.

It’s an RNA world. RNA is posited to be the first genetic material, arising 4 billion years ago. It can store information and act as an enzyme. Eventually, it duplicated its information into a more stable form, DNA.

A photo of a wide waterfall cascading over rocky cliffs with mist rising from the turbulent water below. Bright sunlight illuminates the flowing water and moss-covered rocks, with partly cloudy blue sky overhead.

A stunning waterfall in Iceland's Kolugljúfur Canyon. This one was memorable thanks to the ability to walk right up against the falls and get drenched by the spray all around me! #WaterfallWednesday #Photography

Iceland preservation of nature is amazing. When we visited, the guide said "We want to keep it the way our ancestors saw it". When we noted the lack of gates or ropes, the guide said "You see the cliff edge, right? Why would we need a fence?".
A complete, and awesome, opposite of litigation culture

4-letters, first name of sports analyst who creates word puzzles which include world class trolling:

Admitting historical party realignment would require they admit that Conservatism has been pro-slavery, anti-civil rights, and pro-bigotry for *all* of US history. To be a "proud conservative" while admitting that, requires a level of cognitive dissonance that must be constantly replenished.

IMHO, if a group you draw identify from is seen as the creator of a problem, you might feel obligated to solve it. "But democrats created racism" => Dems have to fix it. Same with the "slavery existed before UK/US" crutch, it means they just inherited the system's problems, so bear no responsibility

Every nation since WWI: since the government has the purchase leverage, the government should negotiate prices directly

USA: we should let people pay super high prices, then refund them part of the fee on only some medicines...but only if their salary is within a specific range, red tape, &red tape

These feel like the perfect graphs to counter the abundance, "follow public polling", political consultant bros. No way any meaningful change in people's life, or their understanding of policy, shifted their sentiment that fast. Policy and rhetoric changed and opinion followed.