Author: Mitch Belkin

I am a radiology resident at University of Maryland Medical Center. Outside of medicine, I am excited about Brazilian Jiujitsu, meditation, and podcasts on financial independence.

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31. Saloni Dattani: Peer Review, Division of Labor in Science, and the Genetics of Psychiatric Disorders

Saloni Dattani

In this conversation, Daniel Belkin and Mitch Belkin interview Saloni Dattani about the genetics of psychiatric disorders and how to improve science. They discuss the lack of division of labor in academia, the history of peer review, ways to improve peer review, human challenge trials, and much more.

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Who is Saloni Dattani?

Saloni Dattani is a PhD student at King’s College London. She is the founding editor of the online magazine Works in Progress. She is also an editor at Stripe Press and a researcher at Our World in Data. 

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30. Polly Matzinger, PhD: Dangerous Ideas in Immunology

Polly Matzinger

In this conversation, Daniel Belkin and Mitch Belkin interview Polly Matzinger, PhD, about her model of immunology, which she calls ‘The Danger Model’. They discuss how The Danger Model helps explain aspects of immunology ignored by the self/non-self model, including why mothers don’t reject their fetuses, autoimmune diseases, organ transplant rejection, cancer surveillance, allergy and more.

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Who is Polly Matzinger?

Polly Matzinger received her PhD in Biology from UCSD before completing a postdoc at Cambridge. She then worked at the Basel Institute for Immunology before moving to the NIH, where she was a section head at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the so-called “Ghost Lab”. She is the creator of the Danger Model (1994), which argues the immune system discriminates between dangerous and safe by recognition of pathogens or alarm signals from injured or stressed cells and tissues. 

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29. Derek Lowe, PhD: A Medicinal Chemist’s Thoughts on Drug Discovery and the Future of Pharma

Derek Lowe

In this conversation, Daniel Belkin and Mitch Belkin interview Derek Lowe, PhD, about drug discovery, clinical trials, drug patents, Alzheimer’s disease, the FDA, and his blog “In The Pipeline”. They discuss the potential role for machine learning in pharmaceutical development, whether Big Pharma spends excessively on marketing, and much much more. 

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Who is Derek Lowe?

Derek Lowe, PhD, is a medicinal chemist who works in preclinical drug discovery. He received a PhD in organic chemistry from Duke University and completed a Humboldt Fellowship in Germany for his post-doc. His blog about the pharmaceutical industry “In The Pipeline” has been continuously operating since 2002. 

References:

Derek Lowe’s Blog 

Twitter @DerekLowe

Can a biologist fix a radio?

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28. Jean Hébert, PhD: Aging, Brain Plasticity, and Replacing the Neocortex

Jean Hebert

In this conversation, Daniel Belkin and Mitch Belkin interview Jean Hébert, PhD about aging, brain plasticity, and progressive neocortical replacement. They discuss one hallmark of aging—extracellular matrix damage—as well as how tissue replacement is a possible solution to aging. In addition, they explore the practicalities of progressive neocortex replacement, dopaminergic neuron transplants in Parkinson’s patients, and Professor Hébert’s work on stroke.

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Who is Jean Hébert?

Jean Hebert, PhD, is a Professor of Neuroscience and Genetics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he focuses on age-related brain degeneration in the adult neocortex. He is one of the world’s leading researchers on brain cell and tissue replacement. He is the author of the book Replacing Aging.

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27. Paul Offit, MD: The Cost of Medical Innovation, DDT and Malaria, and Bivalent Covid-19 Boosters

Paul Offit

In this conversation, Daniel Belkin and Mitch Belkin interview Paul Offit, MD about his book You Bet Your Life, how banning DDT caused increased deaths from malaria, and the data regarding the bivalent booster as of October 2022. They discuss the human price paid for medical advances, sins of commission versus sins of omission, which populations should get bivalent boosters, short versus long incubation period viruses, vaccine-related myocarditis, and much more.

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Who is Paul Offit?

Dr. Offit is the Director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending in the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He is on the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. In addition, he was the co-inventor of the RotaTeq vaccine for rotavirus, has published over 130 papers in medical and scientific journals, and is the author of many books on vaccines, antibiotics, medical overuse, and medical history, including You Bet Your Life.

If you didn’t see our initial episode with Dr. Paul Offit, check it out.

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