The Science Rant

I Want My Client to Win its Case: preventing the cuts to medical research funding at the NIH and NSF

2026-10-13T10:48:34.521-04:00

I do not like the Trump administration's attempts to destroy and cut NIH research funding in the United States. Why? Because without it, advances like this in medicine do not happen. At least they will not happen in the United States. Direct gene editing used to save a baby in PA from a metabolic condition that shortens the lives of any infant who has it. The condition lacks an enzyme to help control the buildup of ammonia from protein in the diet. Without some protein, we also perish. When I came to this country as a scientist, I took on my biggest client, the United States of America, the number one research driver in the world. I want to see my client win its case. It is simple.

Read about the first patient, a baby, treated with personalized CRISPR gene editing therapy at CHOP. This study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health Somatic Cell Genome Editing Program (U01TR005355, U19NS132301), as well as additional National Institutes of Health grants (R35HL145203, U19NS132303, DP2CA281401, P01HL142494). In-kind contributions were made by Acuitas Therapeutics, Integrated DNA Technologies, Aldevron, and Danaher Corporation. Additional funding was provided by the CHOP Research Institute’s Gene Therapy for Inherited Metabolic Disorders Frontier Program.

The paper in the New England Journal of Medicine is here: Musunuru et al, “Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease.” N Engl J Med. Online May 15, 2025.

Evidence Based Medicine is Less than 50 years old: born in Hamilton Ontario from an American doctor who made Canada home.

2026-09-23T13:27:03.447-04:00

This is an update of an article I first published in 2019, inspired in 2025 and 2026 by attempts of the current federal administration of my country to ignore Evidence Based Medicine. In 2026, several American medical associations have stepped in to provide science-based vaccination guidance to families as the secretary of HHS and the White House itself are announcing changes to guidance that are not founded in biomedical research data. This is a enough problem for American's medical health that six former Surgeons General of the United States actually published an editorial in the Washington Post (October 2025) warning Americans of the danger this poses to their future health. (See Six Surgeons General: It's our duty to warn the nation about JFK Jr., October 7, 2025). Every Fall, I teach premedical, medical and graduate students about EBM, short for Evidence Based Medicine. How long have we been using Evidence Based Medicine across medical training in the United States and Canada? You may or may not be surprised about the answer, but we benefit from EBM, a concept that was helped along by a humble and now famous American physician and educator, Dr. David Sackett MD.

When Medical Doctors (MDs) become Snake Oil Salesmen, the Public will Suffer

2026-07-31T08:36:03.671-04:00

Canadians are lucky in that they have universal health insurance, which simply means that everyone living in a Province is in the insurance plan. Canadian male and female life expectancy is also well over 80 years old while Americans on average have life expectancies lower than 80 years old.

CBC Market Place has an interesting article this week on how some Canadian doctors are using a loop hole to practice medicine without evidence (that is not evidence based medicine) to get themselves richer by prescribing peptides to patients who generally grow up trusting the medical profession.

I predict this will over time slowly erode the trust Canadians have for MDs, which will be unfortunate.

Read about the Peptide Snake Oil here. At CBC.

KPM

Nothing Comes Free: Wegovy and Ozempic can damage your vision

2026-04-24T10:20:00.005-04:00

Nothing comes free.

This new class of diet drugs have generated adverse reports of ischemic optic neuropathy. Exercise and eating healthier foods is my recommendation for your longer term health. Read my summary for more information.

Let's Dance with the Moon: follow the Artemis II mission with Flight Day updates.

2026-04-11T02:30:00.005-04:00

April 11, 2026 update

In 1969 as a young boy, I was lucky to have watched, along with the entire world, Apollo 11 launch and land on the Moon and return safely to the Earth. A mission started by the leadership of President John F. Kennedy. Now my children will, in a few more years, also see humans land and walk on the Moon. April 1 was the first launch window, of about 2 hours in duration, for a chance to launch Artemis-II into Earth orbit with four NASA astronauts, three Americans and one Canadian. Mother Nature cooperated, and so did the rocket, launching at 6:35 PM EST.

The Orion spacecraft has just over 355,000 parts, built by NASA and prime contractor Lockheed Martin. The spacecraft injected itself into a flight into deep space on April 2, headed around the moon to return to Earth. We all watched for 10 earth-flight days the successful test of the space craft as four of human kind travelled farther from Earth than anyone in human history. Over 3/4 of all persons on Earth were born after Apollo 17, the last time human walked on the Moon. I am one of the 1/4 persons who were born before Apollo and got to see all of the Apollo astronauts walk on the Moon.

Crew assembling seating and stowing cargo, preparation for reentry on Flight Day 10

APOLLO 11 TRACKER: the Pandemic Lockdown Edition for NASA Lovers like me.

2026-04-03T10:30:00.000-04:00

Come with me in 2019, and follow in real-time (50 years ago) what is/was going on with the Apollo 11 Mission to the Moon. You can get these reference books today if you are a NASA fan like me. I also have my Buzz Aldrin NASA Ball Cap on. These books were news reference books published by NASA. They were in the hands of Walter Cronkite and his coworkers and they are great for nerds like me.

Updated April 3, 2026, my Apollo 11 blog in real-time, first posted in July 2019 recapturing the mission of Apollo 11 on it's 50th anniversary. I also reposted this for anyone stuck at home during our COVID19 pandemic stay-at-home activities (2020) for its 51st anniversary. I am old enough to have watched Apollo missions on TV, CBS News, with Walter Cronkite the voice who guided us through each mission live. It is quite true that scientists and engineers of my age were young children who discovered our love of science and technology from the NASA Apollo program, and some of us from Mr. Spock on Star Trek (original series). All on a black and white TV and newspaper clippings from the Toronto Star, NYTimes and Washington Post. Now my children in 2026 will soon see humans reach the Moon and walk on the Moon once again. My tracking post on the Artemis-II mission of April 2026 is here in The Science Rant: Artemis-II if you would like to compare Apollo to Artemis.

mRNA Vaccines: what the 1st Trump administration did correct and is now putting in jeopardy in 2025.

2025-09-04T14:00:00.000-04:00

Updated 9-4-2025

As a biochemistry professional, I have followed the science of COVID-19 before most people had heard about it, before it was reported outside of China. Along the way from the pandemic start, through vaccine development, the overwhelming of hospitals, and the arrival of the first COVID-19 vaccines, I have read and listened to politicians and some scientists argue that natural immunity would be good enough. The idea is that you should just let the disease spread and natural immunity will build up. Well, yes that is true, if you survive a viral infection you will most likely have some immunity for some time. The problem with their suggestion however is the survival part and the cost of herd natural immunity. That cost is permanent damage and increased personal risk of future death from MACE. Fortunately, the first Trump administration decided to go with the strategy of "Warp Speed" to get vaccines developed faster than at any time in history. Read on for some explanation about this and learn how MACE can kill you.

Walking the DOGE? They may leave a mess for you: a government purse with no watchdogs and lack of medical research.

2025-09-04T12:19:00.014-04:00

Back in February I wrote this post and have updated it today as we start the Fall term and I just taught the first class of Science of Vision to a collection of our young future bioscience colleagues. Both undergraduate and graduate students. In February, you were told that government workers are criminals and frauds, and that biomedical scientists like me are ripping us off. Despite that rhetoric, after 6 months there has not been any evidence presented at all to show where the fraud is or what the fraud is. Why? Because its really hard to cheat with government funds without getting caught and stopped. At least it used to be before all the Inspector Generals of the US Government were closed down. Now the US House is considering slashing the NIH budget by 40%. As I am a scientist, I am writing this to tell you all about the science of how federal research grants work in the United States, and why activities like potential new medical treatment development will simply stop if we chop away the indirect cost components of grants and slash the NIH budget. Here explained with examples:

Human Guinea Pigs, the people paid to safety test potential new drugs are not really volunteers without pressure.

2024-09-25T08:11:00.009-04:00

The first testing of a drug to be approved in Canada, or in the US by the FDA, or for the EU's drug agency, requires giving the drug at various doses to healthy persons. We often are taught that these are very much volunteers, who participate for only good reasons.

If there are bad side effects or even dangerous consequences to new drugs, then these factors must be known or clinical trials on sick persons might cause great harm. Yet, we seem to experience the removal of some drugs from the market long after their approved use causes some severe adverse effects. The adverse effects signal tends to take a couple of years or more before it becomes apparent that the drug should never have been approved because of its severe side effects. How can this be missed in Phase-I? This is how.

Solar Eclipse Safely, from a Vision Scientist.

2024-04-10T11:55:00.003-04:00

Now we are post-eclipse. If you or anyone you know is noticing a new difficulty reading with their central vision today (Wednesday, two days after the eclipse), and they spent some time watching the solar eclipse without solar safety glasses, then it's time to visit an optometrist or ophthalmologist for a retinal exam.

You can learn about how and why the light from the Sun can burn or damage the very important photoreceptor cells in your retina here where I was interviewed by Rachelle Graham of CBS News Detroit.

What does a Sun burned retina look like?

The picture below is from an article you can read from The Foundation, American Society of Retinal Specialists on eclipse damage to retinas.

As you can see (left) , the top panel is a view of the patient's retina as observed directly from looking into the front of the eye. The lower panel is a an OCT image that shows the layers of the neural retina in cross section. OCT stands for Optical Coherence Tomography, and it is a way to use back-scattered light to see the layers of the retina. Obviously a very useful imaging system for your eye doctor. The green line on the top panel shows the location of the OCT scan.

I have added the red arrow, pointing to the OCT image cross-section at the fovea from this patient with a fovea burn. This area is the part of the retina that you are reading this with now, your central, high-detailed, vision. That white stalk of burn damage should not be there. A normal undamaged human fovea does not have that burn feature, as seen in this normal retinal OCT scan below.

OCT image of a normal fovea from "The ABCs of OCT" in the Review of Optometry.

So I hope that you were able to watch the Solar Eclipse of April 8th 2024 in a safe manner. My best advice for your vision health at any time is get an eye check-up at least every two years when younger and over 30 years of age it is best to get an eye exam once per year. If you have diabetes or heart disease then you want an eye exam every year regardless of your age. The reality is that most damage to your retina occurs without any sensation or pain, so many conditions affecting your retinas will be detected by your eye exam and catching retinal conditions early is important for possible treatment. Once photoreceptor cells have died, there is nothing currently that modern medicine can do to fix that.

Ken Mitton

How to Watch the Solar Eclipse Safely, from a Vision Scientist.

2024-03-26T17:13:00.001-04:00

I wrote about this during the last eclipse in 2017, now its time to update for this April 2024. How can you watch the solar eclipse without harming your eyes? What is so scary about a solar eclipse? Are there some special rays of light that only occur during the eclipse that make the Sun dangerous to our retinas? Actually, the answer to the last question is, no. So why is it dangerous to look at the eclipse with the naked eye? Read on for the answers.

The Science Rant's Most Read Post of the last 12 months is from 2018: Hockey Pucks and Locks for Classroom Doors

2024-02-20T12:17:00.006-05:00

By far, the most-read post in The Science Rant over the last several months into 2024, and over the entire existence of this blog, continues to be from 2018:

"Run, Hide, Fight: Is Your Kid's University Campus Unprepared for a Campus Shooter?"

This was a post I wrote during the moment when my university, Oakland University, decided to address the installation of door locks that could be activated from inside the classroom by professors and students during an active shooter situation. This post continues to be the most read over the last year and the last few months and I think interest renews every time we have another shooting on an American campus.

While there are no guarantees for absolute safety when a killer has a gun, the inability to lock doors was sadly brought to the public's attention last year at Michigan State University. At that moment anyone who might have thought that students and faculty at Oakland University lobbying publically for interior classroom door locks was excessive learned that OU made a wise decision in 2018. The administration listened to its community and they made one essential step for trying to protect our community.

The sad situation is that while most grade schools and high schools in this country have interior lockable classroom doors and active shooter practice drills for all staff and students, that is not the case when your children arrive at most colleges.

So ask your college-attending kids this week if the doors of all their classrooms are lockable from the inside.

You can check out the popular 2018 post here and read about the famous Hockey Puck campaign of 2018: Run Hide Fight

COVID-19 Vaccine has performed well against recent variants so far this season.

2024-02-16T14:10:00.003-05:00

The CDC reports that the current updated COVID-19 vaccine has performed well against strains of the virus so far this Fall and Winter (2023/2024). That includes the JN.1 variant.

CDC Vaccine Performance Update

Show this to your Parents: Scientific Truth about WHY Your TUITION is so Expensive?

2023-08-29T17:33:00.003-04:00

I may be a university professor now, but I was an undergraduate student in college in the 1980s. The education cost in 1980 was about $4,500 per student. Most States provided about 70% of that to the university and the remainder, called tuition, was the student's share of the cost. It was about $1,200 a year then, which paid for an entire year (September to April) of a full-time student course load. Not $1,200 per course, $1,200 total. To put that in perspective, we could get a full-time summer job, make $500 per month, and save our next year's tuition after 2-1/2 months of work. Then the rest of the Summer was money we could use for other things. So how do we get to $15,000 plus per year in 2023? Its is very simple when you compare the education cost and the tuition between the 80's and now.

Rare Disease Day 2023 - the last day of February each year.

2023-02-22T17:01:00.008-05:00

It has been 40 years since the Orphan Drug Act was passed by the United States Congress to incentivize the development of treatments for "orphan", meaning rare, diseases. In 2022 Congress also passed the Rare Diseases Act to amend the Public Health Service to form an Office for Rare Diseases within the National Institutes of Health. One of the research areas within my laboratory targets orphan inherited pediatric retinal diseases. Diseases rarer than Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) which is itself considered rare. These conditions include FEVR (Familial Exudative Vitreo-Retinopathy), Norrie Disease, Persistent Fetal Vascular Syndrom, and Retinoschisis. The first three conditions cause incomplete development of the blood supply for the neural retina within our eyes, causing blindness. The latter condition results in a very delicate neural retina where the layers of the retina can separate and become filled with liquid. This condition also causes blindness. All of these orphan diseases affect infants and children of all ages. Our lab at Oakland University, in the Eye Research Institute, carries out research DNA-sequencing for Families with these conditions who present at Associated Retinal Consultants here in Michigan. Families are from all over the country and also outside of the United States. Funding is difficult to find for rare disease research, but we seek support from a few private foundations so that no Family pays for the research DNA sequencing that we do. OU science students and OUWB medical students take part and learn about applied human genetics.

In North America, the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD), is a partner with several similar regional organizations to facilitate awareness and support for rare diseases around the globe. While rare diseases may have fewer affected persons, there are many different rare diseases and together they impact over 300 million people around the world. Do you have a rare disease or know someone with a rare disease? Seeking information? Please visit the NORD website. Please also share this blog post to increase awareness. February 28th is Rare Disease Day in 2023.

Sincerely

Ken Mitton

PS Thanks to the Carls Foundation and Pediatric Retinal Research Foundation of Michigan for making our lab's research DNA-sequencing for Families possible in 2023.

Twitter under Musk has Suspended Core American Reporters from our Free Press, and this Scientist has Suspended Twitter by Quitting it.

2022-12-16T01:31:00.005-05:00

I have decided that my participation in Twitter is now simply helping Twitter under Musk operate as he promotes anti-democratic groups, and racist groups, and has now blocked important access of real American Journalists who make up our Free Press.

So this day, December 15, 2022 is my personal day of infamy when I not only uninstalled the twitter app from my devices but I canceled my twitter account as long-term user of well over a decade. I now have a Mastodon server-based account at https://techhub.social/@kpmitton and am already enjoying the democracy and values of like-minded individuals. No ads, no crap, just people like me who want to make the world a better place, but on a platform were no billionaire crazy autocrat can interfere with our communications.

Check out my previous post here on The Science Rant if you want to know how to get rolling in the Mastodon environment. Most of the journalists that I follow, and scientists, and entertainers have accounts in the Mastodon Fediverse too. I really like the Mastodon App and its functionality. No control forcing things into my feed that I do not follow, no ads. For my chosen Mastodon homebase, techhub.social, many of us who use this node donate a modest few dollars per month to our server manager's Patreon fund and we are ad-free and in control of our own worldwide communication and sharing. It is like supporting public radio. It belongs to us and Musk can simply go sit on it. Twitter will be filing for bankruptcy early in 2023.

Looking forward to 2023. Stay safe out there. Get those vaccinations and take care of each other. Welcome to the Dolphin crowd. Dolphins work together, they even kill sharks who try to hurt them. Swim smart out there.

Ken Mitton

Ok, What is this Mastodon Social Networking Thing and How Do I Move In?

2022-11-20T22:05:00.009-05:00

Mastodon, how do I move in?

So, you are on Twitter and have used the platform for many years like I have. (I was @kpmitton on Twitter for 12 years) Now we have had to deal with conmen, conwomen, narcissistic ex-presidents, white supremacists, liars, Nazis, anti-democratic power mongers, bigots, racists, and Elon Musk banning real free speach. So we all would like a place where the servers are not owned by one company, or one billionaire, and where fake news and misinformation are not permitted. That is where Mastodon servers were born designed to take the best of the earliest forms of networking on the Internet when it was mostly UNIX-based, command-line computers and accounts. Think nodes, think neurons, think decentralized networks, yet think also about being able to follow and be followed by anyone with an account on any of many Mastodon servers. Still able to have followers as you could on Twitter but Elon Musk and Donald Trump have no say at all about the Network nor can they permit hate and lies with the excuse (used wrongly) of freedom of speech. This is how Mastodon works. Imagine following other people and posting your own short thoughts just like twitter but there are NO ads. Imagine that you get to pick and choose all that shows up in your feed. Twitter was like that for its first three years. Where can you find this wonderful twitter replacement. Where do you find it, and how do you join it? It's as easy or as hard as it was when we all joined Twitter. We may fumble around a for a few days until we get the hang of it, but here is how to get there and how it works. It is no more complicated than Twitter, but better moderated by its users. That would be you and me. It does not run on commercial advertising revenue and it is not governed by algorithms that companies can pay to control who and what you see in a 1984 senario. How? Read on.

I will tell you right now that the easiest way to start with Mastodon is to use the App on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. You can make an account from those apps. You can also go to a joining website portal. Before making your account, know this. It is possible to have your own username. On Twitter, I am kpmitton and in the Mastodon universe, I am also kpmitton. There is no one collection of servers run by "Mastodon". You might find you can make accounts with the same user name on different servers in the network, but that would not serve you well because users on any server can follow you and be followed by you from any server you live at.

Mastodon is really the communication protocol that people use to set up servers which are called "instances" or "Mastodon Instances". They are really similar to different people having their own websites on their own servers. For social interaction and communication, it is like having many Facebook servers and different people grouped on different ones. This is kind of true about the Facebook platform. Yet everyone can connect with each other in Facebook. You are oblivious to the fact that you and your best friend may have Facebook accounts that are residing on completely different servers. However, Facebook controls it all, they own rights to use your words and videos, and images as you store them there for free. They can also change the name of the game, and the rules of the game at any time and you have no control over it. If Facebook decided to start charging $10 a month for your Facebook account, they could, they are a private company, and fundamentally a business that exists to make a profit. Same for Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp.

In the Mastodon universe, you see and know what server your account resides at. It is like your server is a particular town or city and your username is also linked to that address. Mastodon users with accounts on other servers can find you by searching your user name (kpmitton for me), or they can directly find your account with your full address. My "town" server is called "TechHub.Social" and it was started by a guy named Nic. A programmer.

BEFORE you make an account browse the servers, or instances, available. Servers have been set up in this new social network by persons with various interests, so you may find one that is for journalists, or technology persons like myself (there were no bioscience ones, but biotech is tech too). These servers can often be joined by anyone, even if you are not a techno geek you are welcome to join Techhub.social. Do not rush, servers are not going anywhere. Then pick one and make an account for yourself. Again, you can start from the phone apps for Mastodon (in the Apple Store, or Good Play) and they will let you pick your user name, register your email, and be associated with one of the many servers now set up around the globe. Even some companies and institutions and newspapers are setting up their own Instances (servers) using Mastodon's open-source code. Servers have been set up for different parts of the globe, different work interests, arts, humanities, social connections, disabilities, and different Human Communities. No Nazis though. Not permitted.

If you want to use a website from your laptop, you can join Mastodon at joinmastodon.org . Again, do not be confused by all the server instances. No matter which one you join, you will have access to the entire collaborative community. If you are a photographer or editor, you may want to join a server that was started with your community in mind. A good place to make contacts with others who have your immediate interests. (Currently, 11/20/2022, there is NO mastodon.org. That domain is reserved but not used. Use JoinMastodon.org for web browsers.)

I chose to join TechHub.Social, an instance of Mastodon server set up by a fellow Canadian. (Turns out he is from Quebec. I was born in Quebec as well, but alas, I am an Anglophone Quebequois, not very French. But I bet we both like the Habs? Maybe we both like St. Viature Bagels in Montreal?) The Mastodon Apps are just like the Twitter apps in your hand. You see your posts (Toots I call them, elephants and mastodons toot, right?), and who you follow and who follows you. On my laptop here is the web version of my view right now using the "Light" colored option:

And here is my view when I select the "Dark" colors option:

As you can see I have set up my profile picture from the Edit Profile option and added an Artemis-1 screen capture from NASA's mission tracker. I love NASA and space stuff :). I have started to add people that I follow, and some have started to follow me back. Here I can scroll down, like we do on Twitter, and read the posts in my personal feed from those I follow, or topics and #hashtags that I can set up to watch as well. Note that we can repost other posts too as in Twitter. In Mastodon, this is called boosting.

In addition to seeing posts from those I set up to follow, I can click on Local and quickly see the recent posts from my local group or instance, that is the "TechHub.Social" server in the Mastodon federation. Like the Neural Retina that I study as a scientist, this federation is sort of like creating a whole field of vision from a network of photoreceptors. Vision is decentralized, in that if you lose photoreceptor "instances" in one part of your visual field, you still have the rest of your visual field. To take out your vision, you would have to neutralize the entire eye or take out the entire Internet to break Mastodon communication. Even if the Mastodon server I use was taken away, I would just move my account to a different server of which there will be thousands. All over the world. Servers are set up and communities of users chip in a few bucks to support having our servers up and running and we communicate and can share information. Follow and be followed. No Musks or Trumps or Nazis to cramp our Democracy.

Find me on Mastodon. Look for kpmitton or kpmitton@techhub.social from inside your Mastodon. Think the bird is cute? So are Mastodons, as you can see from the info page of the techhub.social instance, set up by @Nicdex: See https://techhub.social/about

SUMMARY:

1) Use Mastodon App to set up your account, or go to the JoinMastodon.org website.

2) Browse around the different community interest servers (instances) available around the globe. Most let anyone join, but you may find one already started by persons in your career, hobby, or other interest. Some are just for social networking. It's kind of nice to belong to a specific server, yet be fully connected to the full network.

3) Make your account on the Mastodon instance (server) you choose.

4) Just like Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, edit your profile and add some information.

5) Send your friends your user name in Mastodon and invite them to join and find each other.

6) I am @kpmitton@techhub.social (my account is based on the server with the domain name TechHub.Social, and it links and communicates in the greater Mastodon federation).

7) Enjoy no ads, and no longer have Elon Musk control what you see or follow. Also enjoy a place where it is not permitted to participate if you post misinformation or promote hate, antivaccine information, and other such harmful activity. LGBTQ community is welcome and attacks on persons or communities are not allowed to participate in the Mastodon network.

8) Follow George Takei, just search for him. Your very first nice person.

Remember. You can be your own scientist. Knowledge is power.

COVID19 Walks Into a Bar.........

2022-11-14T16:28:00.001-05:00

A COVID19 virus walks into a bar and asks the masked bartender for a dark draft beer, hands $5 to him, and watches the game on the TV. COVID finishes his beer and goes to the bathroom, and returns to find $5 beside his glass refilled with beer. Amused, but pleased, COVID enjoys a second draft, and hands the $5 to the bartender again. Soon COVID heads off for another bathroom break and returns to find his beer glass again full and the $5 again. "What, did I win free beer today or something?", he says to the barkeep. No, you are just really popular with those two guys over there in the corner booth and they insisted to pay for all your drinks. COVID turned around, letting eyes adjust to the dimly lit corner booth, and who did COVID see?....

To Mask or Not to Mask, That is the Question?

2022-04-27T13:08:00.009-04:00

As a biomedical scientist, who also blogs, I get many questions from people around me concerning getting vaccinated for COVID19 and now more often about masks. Which mask? Do I need to mask? Where do I need to mask? Do they work? Should I just let myself get COVID19 to gain natural immunity? Is that better than vaccinated immunity?

As far as immunity goes, I have two doses of Pfizer and two doses of Moderna now. Yes, I have the second booster just a few weeks ago, and yes I wear a mask and an N95 one at that when I am in crowded indoor spaces. I will be wearing an N95 mask in airports and on aircraft and in convention centers.

Most importantly, I made the decision to wear an N95 mask because of my own skill and knowledge set as a career scientist and inventor with over 25 years of lab time under my belt. I understand DNA and RNA, how to put RNA into cells (like the RNA vaccines do), and how RNA is used as a template to make protein and all that stuff. That is what I do for a living. I have even designed a genetic test panel that we use to DNA-sequence kids with very rare inherited retinal conditions to determine the changes in their DNA that cause their medical condition.

Let me be clear that I fully understand that currently there are no laws that force me to wear a mask at all here in Michigan, Oakland County (my work), and Macomb County (my residence). I choose to wear an N95, and so far I am one of the 45% or so of people in the United States who have not been infected with COVID19. This last point is the reason I wear an N95.

Most of us know many people who have both survived or died from COVID19. I also know many vaccinated persons who just had the "COVID19 cold", and they certainly fell into the "survived" category because they were vaccinated. However, I also know more persons around me who "just had a bad cold", but about a month later strange problems and long-covid symptoms have cropped up in their lives. Things like headaches, insomnia, foggy brain, constant exhaustion, and transient spells of extremely high blood pressure that leave them unable to walk without assistance for an hour. All of this explains two of my personal decisions for my own health:

1) I chose to get vaccinated to get immunity.

While COVID19 infection and even repeated infections will spark your immune system into action, they are infections and real COVID19 virus still forms in your body and kills and disrupts several cell types of many different organs in the body including lungs, intestinal tract, sinus neurons (smell), and even our brains. I get a better immunity from the vaccines and avoid the dangers of the virus. Its a no brainer for me. I am over 50 and qualified for the 2nd booster, which I have now.

2) I chose to wear an N95 because I do not want a "COVID Cold".

An actual COVID19 infection, even if we have some immunity already, brings to me some risk of developing a new long-term medical condition. As a male who has entered his 60s during this pandemic and who makes a living using his brain to investigate human biology, disease, and design potential new therapeutics, I really need an "unfoggy brain". There are computer scientists, engineers, and medical scientists who have had to take leave from their careers because of neurological symptoms left to them by COVID19. I do not wish to risk being in that situation, even if the risk is tiny. Being told you have a very tiny risk becomes moot if you are one of those who end up in the very tiny "unlucky" group with neurological problems.

So, when will I stop wearing my N95 mask in some higher-risk situations?

When the high risk goes away. I will base that on my risk of getting exposed to the latest strain of COVID19 going around. Currently, that is still a very significant risk. It is currently a higher risk than we have of getting the flu in most years. Once all the unvaccinated people around my part of Michigan eventually get COVID19 and some immunity, the extent of active COVID19 in the community will get low enough that I will consider taking off the N95.

With warmer weather, I am going to favor eating outside at restaurants, and attending outdoor events and festivals. I will still pop my N95 on when I go into Starbucks to pick up my coffee, and I will watch the data available for Michigan from testing. Unfortunately, the extent of active COVID19 is harder to judge now as many states have stopped a lot of their testing efforts. However, there is good data from watching current hospital ER and admission data.

I am simply going to err on side of caution so I avoid COVID19 itself if possible. That is good for my health and it also reduces the risk of a family member getting an infection transmitted through me. Just because a very conservative judge decided to block a Federal CDC mandate to require masking on airplanes does not change the science of the situation. A good mask, N95 is best, serves to stop the spread of respiratory diseases like COVID19 and many more that have plagued humans over time. COVID19 will mindlessly, robotically, continue to spread in the very automated ways that all viruses spread and if you do not have an N95 in a crowded venue then you choose a higher risk of infection. So be it. COVID19 cares not about anyone's politics. In general, illnesses and diseases do what they do regardless.

So it's my choice for my health, based on how my science brain thinks, to wear an N95 mask. If you choose to be riskier then I wish you good luck. I really hope for the best for everyone, but you will be rolling a pair of dice that are different than my pair of dice. Your dice will have more than one side with one dot and your chances of rolling "snake eyes" will simply be greater than mine.

Good Luck to us all.

Confused on What to Do Next if Exposed to Someone Who has COVID19? This Calculator Provides Specific Advice.

2022-03-28T17:23:00.004-04:00

Have you been in close contact with persons who have tested positive for COVID19?

Not sure what actions you should take at home or work in this situation?

Do you wear a mask at home, or should you get a test yourself?

All the answers depend on time and if you are vaccinated or if you had COVID19 yourself in the last few months. Simply click your answers into this online calculator and it quickly helps you figure out the best medical advice on what to do next.

CDC COVID Exposure and Response Calculator

Omicron Variant versus Delta Variant: Lessons on What to Expect From Coronavirus Adaptations

2022-01-13T12:25:00.018-05:00

My previous blog post described how Coronavirus strains adapt and benefit from their naturally high error rate when they copy their own RNA as more virus particles are produced in an infected cell. (Click to read that posting here.) If these changes cause a particular strain to spread easier among us humans then these new strains quickly take over the infection race. There is no evil plot, just the random events of statistics and bad luck for us as variants like Omicron spread faster. Delta is still around, but Omicron gets to new unvaccinated persons first, and eventually, more of those requiring admissions to our hospitals will have Omicron and not Delta. That said, both Delta and Omicron are killing people inside our hospital ICUs. Why exactly does Omicron spread faster than Delta?

Trojan Horses, Pandora's Box, and Gambling with the Variants of COVID19.

2021-11-28T20:47:00.001-05:00

(Updated for Omicron variant, November 28, 2021)

Who are the gamblers? Our leaders at many levels, including those managing our workplaces, towns, cities, counties, and states, continue to underestimate the potential outcomes of COVID variant emergence. What many molecular biologists (scientists who work with DNA and RNA) and mathematicians understand is that the very nature of viral replication makes viruses into ever-changing evolution machines. The strain of COVID19 now running rampant through our network of unvaccinated neighbors is far more infective than the ones we dealt with in early 2020. This is the how and why.

Does the COVID19 Vaccine Booster Work? Judge for yourself with your own eyes.

2021-11-20T11:36:00.005-05:00

In my main work as a biomedical research scientist at Oakland University (Oakland.edu) I study mechanisms of how genes are turned on and off in the retina and what causes some diseases to threaten vision in people from infants to adults. I also design the biotechnology production of human proteins in bacteria to make potential future therapeutics (drugs) to repair damaged blood vessels in the retina. Fundamentally, I am first and foremost a biochemist and have been fortunate to have gained experience in most specialities of biochemistry including metabolism, cell physiology, human physiology, DNA, RNA, Proteins, carbohydrates, hormones, cytokines, and some infectious diseases. Even a little past work with aspects of viruses, including HIV. You can do many things over 25-plus years in the lab. When the pandemic shut down non-covid research for some months into summer 2020, statewide, I pivoted, with the help of a few students to start evaluating a mobile fingertip blood test for antibodies to the COVID19 spike protein, from a US company called Epigentek. (Note I do not work for Epigentek, nor own any stock in the company.) As we found that this particular brand of the test was reliable (no false positives) and very specific to detect only antibodies to the COVID19 spike protein, we have used it to get a snapshot of when antibodies are detectable in our community after COVID19 infections (in 2020) and after COVID19 vaccinations in 2021. So, what about vaccination? I knew that even in my own case, before vaccination we cannot detect any antibodies in our blood. What about after vaccination? After

6 months? After a booster shot? Here are my own tests to share with you to show you why I am quite happy with my vaccinations and my booster shot.

Like Old Jedi, Good Antibodies just Fade Away........

2021-10-08T22:30:00.003-04:00

Above is our test of my blood's Covid 19 antibodies (IgG class) at 3 months after my 2nd dose of Pfizer vaccine. Marked with the black dot. The red line to the right is a control line.

Below is my test done today, now about 5.7 months after full vacvination.

As you can see the relative concentration of my antibodies to the spike protein of Covid 19 is still easy to detect but is about half of what I had at 3 months.

Now even if my antibodies fade away completely, I will likely have resident immune system clonal cells that are ready to detect and respond more quickly to a Covid 19 infection than I would have prior to being vaccinated. However, in time, the number of those cells will also decrease.

So we should expect that a yearly vaccine shot to Covid19 will be routine medicine just as the flu shot is too. Generally, our human immune system does not remain primed for more than 6 months against corona-type viruses, which is the class of virus that Covid 19 belongs to. Many coronaviruses are actually cold viruses and we already know that it's possible to get a full-blown cold more than once from the same coronavirus strain within a single winter because coronaviruses trigger a shorter lasting immunity.

The viral RNA polymerase that makes copies of the Covid 19 RNA within infected cells has an error rate of 1/10,000, and the genome of Covid19 is about 30,000 bases long. Thus each new virus made in one of our infected cells has an average of 3 mutations. That is three bases different from the virus that infected the cell. That means that almost all 3,000 to 5,000 copies made in one infected airway cell are all mutated, changed, different from the original infecting virus. That is how viruses change, adapt, and evolve. Most of the mutations will not make much difference, some will make the virus less efficient, but some can make the virus replicate faster and also bind faster and stronger to our airway cells.

That is why variants like Delta occur and the virus will have opportunities to become even worst if we have large regions of mostly unvaccinated persons. Mutations have changed the Delta variant's spike protein and just one changed link in that protein makes it bind to and infect cells faster than the virus at the start of the pandemic.

As a molecular biologist with expertise in gene expression, genetic diseases, and RNA and DNA polymerases, I am concerned.

I will get my Covid-19 booster as soon as I am eligible.

Ken Mitton

PS. I got my flu shot last week and have done so every year for over 15 years. I have not had the flu in that time.

Delta: COVID19 Cases and Deaths for Any Country

2021-08-30T02:12:00.003-04:00

Sadly, in August 2021, here I am making an update to this post, which I first added here over a year ago, way back in 2020. Here in the United States, as in several other countries, conservative political leaders have gone almost insane. They have conned so many Americans into walking right into a COVID19 pandemic that is now killing off mostly unvaccinated republican voters in counties with low vaccination rates.

I am a scientist in North America, who has lived and worked on both sides of the US/Canada border, and as a medical research professor, I felt it my duty to use my blog here to provide more awareness with access to numbers that you can trust. This data visualization lets you follow the progress of COVID19 in the USA and other countries, and visualize it over time. I have included some iFrame code to this blog post to give you the ability to change the time frame and even the selection of countries you may be interested in. You can adjust the graph views to suit your need for knowledge.

Currently, in addition to my eye research, I also manage a small local research study in Oakland County, Michigan, to monitor the presence of antibodies to the COVID19 spike protein in persons. My students and I have found that vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer, and J&J, do well at producing antibodies in our test volunteers, including ourselves. We are all vaccinated at this point. So keep wearing a mask, get vaccinated, and think about the people who will not get harmed because you buffer them from this pandemic disease.

The "delta" variant is simple and dangerous.

I can understand why, because I often make proteins and custom modifications to the structure of proteins for medical research. The purpose of my research at Oakland University is to understand how specific proteins work for vision. I engineer human proteins, which are required to develop structures in our retinas, for bacterial factory production as potential therapeutics to repair damaged human retinas. For conditions such as Retinopathy of Prematurity and Diabetic Retinopathy. In the 90s I briefly got to do some research on how the HIV protease can also harm a cell's proteins in addition to simply processing the making the more HIV virus. Since then we have the knowledge of the human genome.

So now I can also tell you that viruses generally replicate their own DNA or RNA sequences with low fidelity. That is the DNA or RNA Polymerases that replicate their DNA/RNA tend to make frequent mistakes, to change their genetic code. This, in turn, changes the components that make up the virus's proteins, including the spike protein you hear about on the news. This "spike protein" is used by the virus to bind to cells that line our sinuses and respiratory tract (lungs). This high error copy rate creates hundreds of variations of the COVID19 spike protein in every person who is infected with COVID19. Most of the errors will result in a less infectious virus but once in while, versions like the delta variant evolve to spread faster and more efficiently. This is the case now in 2021, August. So I am updating and reposting this blog, as we all need to watch how numbers rise again. Numbers of cases and numbers of deaths. As 99.9% of persons entering ICU and 99.9% of those dying from Delta variant in the ICU are unvaccinated, I suggest you get vaccinated ASAP.

Here are graphs that you can adjust to look at different timelines for cases of illness and deaths for any country. I embedded iFrame code in this posting to give you graphs that you can also adjust. Table and MAP views are also available. Book mark this blog posting so you can return here. The data in these graphs will update automatically.