DC sandwich thrower not guilty. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025... The Dept of "Justice" couldn't get a grand jury felony indictment, so went to a misdemeanor charge also in federal ct but not needing an indictment. Lost that in a jury trial. Every prosecutors' first duty is to justice. Remember?

Brain organoids are getting better at mimicking brains in a dish. But how good is too good? I take a look at the latest developments in my story today in the Times. Gift link: nyti.ms/496PPnC

Dr Patrick Foong (Senior Law Lecturer at Western Sydney University) reflects upon the US #SupremeCourt decision to decline a hearing of an appeal brought by stem cell clinics Read in BioNews: www.progress.org.uk/unproven-ste... #StemCells #StemCellTreatment #Law #USA #FDA @hankgreely.bsky.social

Just published! Pasca & Greely (1st, last, & corresponding authors) The Need for a Global Effort To Attend To Human Neural Organoid & Assembloid Research, SCIENCE 390(6773):574-577 (Nov. 6, 2025) We think it's a big deal! Other authors on next post-too many to fit. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Stanford men's soccer wins its first round ACC tournament match. Fell behind Boston College 0-2 in the first 20 minutes. But then one in the 38th, one in the 6th, one in the 46th, one in the 54th, one in the 88th. 4-2. More "proof" that 2-0 is the most dangerous lead in soccer. (Can't be true, but)

REMINDER: Tonight at 7pm PST, tune into a Distinctive Voices talk on weather whiplash. 🌪️ Climate scientist Daniel Swain (@weatherwest.bsky.social) will illuminate the impacts of dramatic swings between extreme weather such as droughts, floods & wildfires. Register: www.eventbrite.com/e/climate-ch...

Paul Ratcliffe, Stanford women’s soccer coach, wins conference coach of the year award. Again. Well, first time in ACC to go with his NINE PAC 12 awards. (And three national coach of the year awards.) Well deserved!!

Fascinating. Colossal (think "Dire-ish" wolves) bought Viagen (think pet, and livestock) cloning. www.usatoday.com/story/news/n... Not sure what I think about it, tho I can see that Colossal might benefit from Viagen's technology and experience.

A 3rd (?) germline editing co announced @antonioregalado.bsky.social in @technologyreview.com, www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/31/1... I mainly share Fyodor's reaction, quoted in story—"In his email, Urnov said the launch of still another venture into the area made him want to “howl with pain.”

Cool! Nice story about the effort to figure out whether asteroid 2024 YR4 would hit Earth in 2032. (Spoiler: no.) BUT 4.3% chance it will hit the Moon that year. And that would be spectacular! www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/08/1...

Important new analysis from @matthewherper.bsky.social and @lizzylawrence.bsky.social about the ongoing situation at FDA. This quote from an agency staffer sums up the potential concerns. www.statnews.com/2025/11/04/f...

New study of 800K+ genomes from gnomAD reveals most “pathogenic” variants in healthy people aren’t truly disease-tolerant. They are explained by annotation errors, mosaicism, or compensatory variants. 🧬 A big step for precision medicine! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Experts worry FDA’s credibility is being shredded by scandal and ‘soap opera’ www.statnews.com/2025/11/04/f...

"What’s happening at the top of the FDA is embarrassing,” said 1 portfolio manager at a large biotech fund. “How am I supposed to convince people, other investors, that this sector is doing important work wh/the leaders of the FDA are acting this way.” www.statnews.com/2025/11/04/f... Great question

There was a huge fierce patient advocacy push for the first drug that shortly thereafter spurned the first drug in favor of the second. None of it makes sense. Seems like the logic is "A is fatal & refractory to treatment *therefore* ... anything goes.

It has been a great day at @stemcellnetwork.ca's #TMM2025! And I'm looking forward to more tomorrow, including joining @jsnyder.bsky.social, @lr-bg.bsky.social, & @deanshamess.ca first thing, for a discussion on public trust in science and policy decisions.

Somebody needs to sue the hell of everyone involved. And if some of the various immunities are asserted to block suits against anyone, an example like this might prompt at least some justices to reconsider their various immunity holdings. (Well, "might.")

"[A]s for stops of those individuals who are legally in the country, the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear ... that they are US citizens or otherwise legally in the United States" 🙄 #KavanaughStop

Sarepta's 2 Duchenne muscular dystrophy drugs fail confirmatory trials; firm says it will seek FDA final approval anyway. endpoints.news/duchenne-con... Since at least 2017 the favorable treatment of these drugs, w/only very weak evidence they work, has been controversial. But the beat goes on...

"Cobb is reliably excellent in maintaining the narrative momentum of a life in science that was anything but mundane. His gripping and accessible account is generous while calling out flaws as he sees them." Spot on from Georgina.

Oocyte-like mouse cells made from stem cells even without the guiding signals from ovarian cells. Another step towards in vitro gametes. www.cell.com/developmenta...

Report that Tidmarsh has now resigned, 2 days after being put on leave. news.bloomberglaw.com/product/blaw... "People come and go so quickly here." But was he a good witch or a bad witch? And who steered the house that fell on him? FDA was a great agency; past tense seems increasingly & sadly right

Did not expect one of the best paragraphs I’d read about baseball would come from an Irish newspaper www.irishexaminer.com/sport-column...

Couldn’t love this more.

Trump wants another war? “If the Nigerian Govt continues to allow the killing of Christians, the USA will immediately stop all aid & assistance to Nigeria, & may very well go into that now disgraced country, ‘guns-a-blazing,’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists who are committing these

New Patently-O post with Jonathan Masur on why the Federal Circuit should explicitly clarify that private sales—ones that don't lead to public use or other prior art—are prior art against the seller but not third parties: patentlyo.com/patent/2025/...

A reminder that the original Hallowe'en jack o' lanterns date back to 18th century Ireland if not earlier, were based on a shady boozy blacksmith called Stingy Jack who cheated the devil & was trapped between 2 worlds, were carved from turnips and looked like this:

Really stunning that the British Royal Family — just about the most insulated institution in the free world! — has managed to enact stronger consequences for an Epstein friend than anything the US has managed at all.

Legal historian and constitutional law scholar Bernie Meyler cautions that the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard threatens the “presumption of regularity” that underpins the rule of law in the latest episode of Stanford Legal: law.stanford.edu/stanford-leg...

Good News that sounds like bad news: The District of Hawaii just found the FDA's 2023 mifepristone REMS modification unlawful and arbitrary & capricious! It's good news b/c the case was brought by medical orgs & docs arguing that FDA failed to justify why it kept strict & unnecessary REMS elements.

The collateral benefits of the Covid pandemic response was a marked decrease in airborne and aerosol-transmitted infections via masking and non-pharmaceutical interventions @science.org www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Female doctors are making decisions about where to work based on egg-freezing policies. It's a misnomer that most women choose to freeze because of work, but anecdotally, when I DO hear that reason from people, they are often doctors. www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcover...

Love this story about the new analysis of an important Nanotyrannus fossil and resulting conclusions. Why am I never surprised when a long debate in paleontology is ultimately settled by just letting researchers study a fossil that has been hidden from them? arstechnica.com/science/2025...

More than annoying. VA makes it harder for male breast cancer veterans to get covered. www.propublica.org/article/vete... Apparently bec/VA extended near automatic coverage to this as a "reproductive cancer" when male breasts aren't "reproductive" organs. But close to identical to female breasts.

Jonathan Masur and @patentscholar.bsky.social unravel patent law’s “disclosure puzzles”—the doctrines that demand inventors reveal enough to teach the public while still preserving the value of their inventions.

Thank you @prmalone.bsky.social, Nina Srejovic & fantastic @law.stanford.edu Juelsgaard Clinic students Jina Zhou and Yiran (Isabella) Yang for filing this amicus brief on Jonathan Masur's & my behalf, explaining why a private third-party sale isn't prior art against an unrelated inventor:

This might be my favorite JWST image from the nearby Universe so far. You’re seeing the late stages of evolution of a star like the Sun, after it’s exhausted its nuclear fuel. This is a transient phase where it’s ejected its outer gas layers, which are then irradiated by the hot stellar remnant.

👇👇 Now in @jama.com: @greerdonley.bsky.social, Lewis Grossman & I explain that these preemption cases, while specifically about mifepristone, have implications for FDA and state drug regulation, biomedical innovation, and patient access more generally. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

May be a big deal. The 9th Circuit agrees to rehear "en banc" the decision staying the decision banning Trump from sending troops to Portland. So 11 judges from the Court will hear, and potentially change, the decision of the 3 judge panel. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025... Meanwhile, ban remains.

Pig kidney removed after 9 working mo www.science.org/content/arti... BUT I never knew about a 61 yr old record! "The xenotransplant record Andrews had been about to pass belonged to Edyth Parker, a 23-yr-old Louisiana school teacher. On 13 January 1964, Parker received a transplant of a chimpanzee

Indeed, the 4th Circuit will be deciding another preemption case (Bryant v. Stein) soon, which challenges North Carolina's medication abortion laws. We argue that the preemption arguments in this case are stronger & the case may come out differently. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Curious what the 4th Circuit's opinion in GenBioPro v. Raynes means for state mifepristone regulation? Check out my new piece with @pzettler.bsky.social & Lewis Grossman in JAMA. We argue that preemption arguments are not dead, even though the court upheld WVA's abortion ban. 1/2

I was going to say a Cubs/White Sox World Series would be a sure sign of the Apocalypse, but...there actually was 1. No one alive now was alive then. Wikipedia: "The White Sox won their 1st World Series, the 1906 World Series against the Cubs, w/a defense-oriented team dubbed "the Hitless Wonders"

there's an old joke about somebody's work being "both original and good, but the parts that were good were not original, and the parts that were original were not good"

Mirror mirror on the wall. What happens when Ai manipulates us all? open.substack.com/pub/nitafara...

"Bringing back Neanderthals." Quotes me, but, to be clear, I'd be against it even if we knew a) it was possible and b) it was safe (for the babies and gestational mothers). The track record of H sapiens in dealing w/"different" people is UGLY. www.livescience.com/archaeology/...

My op-ed on the chaos Trump has brought to the Patent and Trademark Office, including but not limited to their all-out war on IPRs news.bloomberglaw.com/legal-exchan...

It is intriguing how disasters often increase GDP while decreasing the stock of wealth, public and private. It might be useful to subtract disaster recovery spending (if we could define it well) from GDP figures. We don't have anything as commonly cited as GDP for the built up wealth of a place.

20th century: FA 21st century: FO "The US economy has grown by $20 trillion since 2000. About $7.7 trillion of that — or 36% of all the growth in GDP — is spending related to recovering from or preparing for disasters" www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Good news: gene therapy preserved immune function in 59 of 62 kids w/ADA-SCID (bubble boy disease). www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.... and newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/gen... Bad news: nobody has figured out how to get this to the regular market by making money on it. Not news: bad health care system!