A Requiem for the Ostriches The flock is no more, but there are still more fat pads to render

The cull should have ended this for good, but H5N1 is still everywhere in birds, Facebook Live still exists, & the medical freedom Maple MAGAs are still grifting towards fascism.

Last ostrich post (???—I hope but not much of that in these dark times)

open.substack.com/pub/rasmusse...

Dozens of AI disease-prediction models were trained on dubious data The models are designed to predict someone’s risk of diabetes or stroke. A few might already have been used on patients.

In a new preprint, the authors identify 124 peer-reviewed papers which used provenance-unknown Kaggle data to train AI for stroke and diabetes risk. Some sets show impossible patterns, yet models of the models are already hitting clinics.
#MedSky #MedAI

A multi-modal foundation model for brain disease diagnosis and medical imaging Accurate diagnosis of brain disorders requires combining medical images with clinical knowledge. Brainfound is a large multi-modal AI model trained on millions of brain CT and MRI images paired with…

Specialized AI for neuroimaging is catching up to experts. Brainfound, trained on 10M slices, matches physician accuracy on MCQs (0.785) and cuts analysis time in half.
#MedSky 🧠

Call for Papers: Applying Artificial Intelligence in Clinical Decision Support Systems

Special topic with emphasis on clinical application & measurable outcomes (NOT theoretical or purely technical contributions)

Deadline: Oct. 31, 2026

Instructions for Authors: lp.thieme.de/open-access-...

Towards a physics informed digital twin to predict cerebral blood flow and cerebral vascular regulation - npj Digital Medicine npj Digital Medicine - Towards a physics informed digital twin to predict cerebral blood flow and cerebral vascular regulation

Physics-informed digital twins can out-predict standard ML for brain blood flow. The CereBRLSIM model forecasted hemodynamics in TBI patients more accurately than neuralODEs. Since brain damage can happen in <5 mins, having this kind of interpretable, real-time foresight is a massive win.
#MedSky 🧠

The multitude of ways that jack up American healthcare costs (without improving outcomes)

gift link wsj.com/health/healt...

Amazing!

Astronaut Jeremy Hansen is taking Indigenous culture past the Moon: his mission patch was designed by Henry Guimond, an Anishinaabe artist, incorporating one Indigenous perspective about the seven sacred laws, which are represented by animals.
🧪 #ArtemisII

"In early 2024... the average NBA player made about $12 million... The average WNBA player made $118,000—less than one cent on the dollar...

It isn’t just the biggest pay increase in U.S. league history. It is, as far as Goldin is aware, the biggest increase any union anywhere has ever negotiated."

We are conducting an anonymous survey to better understand how AI tools are currently being used in pharmacy practice, and to identify the support and governance required to help pharmacists use them safely.

We are keen to hear your views:
https://ow.ly/JqQB50YyEzK

📣 Jobseekers!

👩🏽‍🏫 @ontariotechu.bsky.social is hiring an Assistant Professor - #AI and #DigitalHealth

🔗 ontariotechu.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

#MedSky #AImedicine #AI #HealthAI #AIinHealthcare #MedTech

Five Reasons Why It Still Wasn't a Lab Leak Time for some of that civil disagreement that the NIH Director can't get enough of

Maybe you heard somewhere that the COVID-19 pandemic started with a lab leak? NO! That is NOT what the evidence shows. It was not a goddamn lab leak.
I’ve had enough. Here is what the evidence shows: it was zoonotic spillover at the market

rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/five-reaso...

Un fantôme de la guerre froide à Chibougamau Des passionnés tentent de préserver les souvenirs de ce chapitre de l'histoire de la municipalité.

Les vestiges d'une ancienne station radar datant de la guerre froide sont encore visibles à Chibougamau. Des passionnés d’histoire tentent de préserver les souvenirs de ce chapitre oublié de la municipalité du Nord-du-Québec.

ici.radio-canada.ca/reportage-ph...

NIH grant terminations affected women scientists more than men, study finds A new paper shows that women, particularly those early in their careers, have been disproportionately affected by NIH grant terminations.

According to a new study, NIH grant terminations affected women scientists more than men www.statnews.com/2026/03/23/n...

Absurd AI-Powered Lawsuits Are Causing Chaos in Courts, Attorneys Say, "Clogging the System" and Driving Up Costs Self-represented litigants using chatbots are filing endless "AI slop" lawsuits, bogging down courts and sending costs skyrocketing.

NEW: AI use is supercharging ill-advised lawsuits as people representing themselves turn to chatbots to file oceans of documents in support of flawed or groundless claims -- intensifying the impact of flimsy cases and wreaking havoc on slow-moving courts.

futurism.com/artificial-i...

Generative AI in Adolescence—A Developmental Framework When adolescents turn to artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots for emotional support, validation, and companionship,1 they may be meeting genuine needs in new ways. We may be witnessing a societal shift in which developmental work occurring within human relationships is being outsourced to technology.

Nearly 70% of teens using AI companions check in monthly, and 1 in 8 seek mental health advice from bots. Honestly, it's a massive shift. We're trading the messy 'rupture and repair' of human bonds for instant validation, stalling the very resilience kids need to grow.
#MedSky

Defining Technologies of Our Time - Aspen Digital This handbook offers an accessible, easy to use entry point for grappling with the question of how to define AI in a legal context.

🤖 In policy? Thinking about the definition of "AI"?
Led by @aspendigital.bsky.social, a set of us at intersection of AI/ethics/law/policy put together this resource on the lineage of policy "AI" definitions, what they're getting right, what might be improved.
www.aspendigital.org/report/defin...

'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.

I met with AI data labelers in Kenya who are organizing their colleagues to fight the brutal working conditions and horrible pay given to the workers at the "bottom of the AI supply chain." They believe the NDAs they've signed are unenforceable so are speaking out:

www.404media.co/ai-is-africa...

Climate change in the WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations: a qualitative study. Graph shows the evolution of different topics over different articles.

NEW PREPRINT! 🦠⚖️🌡️ The Pandemic Agreement is the first global health treaty to name climate change, and behind the scenes, the UNFCCC was a source of both inspiration and conflict. Cristina Arnés-Sanz and team tracked climate issues through three years of negotiations: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

A.I. Chatbots Want Your Health Records. Tread Carefully. Following rivals like Amazon and OpenAI, Microsoft is upgrading its artificially intelligent assistant to track your health. There are benefits and risks to consider.

Big tech is moving into your medical records. Microsoft’s Copilot Health will soon merge Apple Watch data with clinical histories to "connect the dots" in seconds. It’s an efficiency win, but the privacy stakes are high: HIPAA doesn't apply here, and AI bias hasn't been solved yet.
#MedSky #MedAI

Removing race from kidney function algorithm helped more Black patients access transplants Removing race from the eGFR had a big impact, resulting in 5.3 more kidney transplants per 1000 Black candidates.

A long-used medical test underestimated the severity of kidney disease in Black patients. New study says with the bias removed, transplant rates are up. www.statnews.com/2026/03/10/k...

The "ChatGPT Health Will Kill You" Study LLMs can't triage, for the millionth time.

Don't trust ChatGPT Health – or likely any general health LLM – to give you medical advice in the context of a serious acute illness. Patient triage is clearly outside its functional requirements.
#medsky
www.evidencetriage.com/p/the-chatgp...

Paediatricians’ blood used to make new treatments for RSV and colds Antibodies harvested from the blood of paediatricians are up to 25 times better at protecting against the common respiratory infection RSV than existing antibody therapies, and are now being developed...

Pediatricians are cool to begin with

Now their blood is being used to make new treatments for RSV and colds! 👏🏽👏🏽

www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

Progress!

This is fantastic, and it's something that we've been saying for years.

When companies say that are using "AI for climate change", they are referring to much smaller models used for doing things like climate modeling.

Massive generative AI models are NOT USEFUL for mitigating climate change.

The One Metric That Could Reshape Health Progress Tracking the percentage of people dying before old age provides an honest accounting of a population's health.

The percentage of people dying before age 70 is an honest accounting of whether our health systems are working. For the United States, that number tells us we’re failing nearly one in four people.

The US recorded 160 new measles cases in the past week, 44 fewer cases than recorded the week prior, but still more than any week in 2025. The US has recorded 902 total cases in 2026, after 2,128 cases recorded in 2025.

Updates on measles and more in the Tracking Report: mailchi.mp/messages/pan...

oooh we are posting super bowls?

As a specialist in Islamic ceramics *cracks knuckles* I present this fabulous 11th c. lustre painted bowl from Fatimid Cairo depicting a Coptic priest. Its white glaze imitates Chinese porcelain and the lustre technique was invented in Iraq a century earlier.

Semi abstract painting reflecting light coming over a horizon, possibly water, encased in a blue oval sky

Georgia O’Keeffe, Light Coming on the Plains, III, 1917 #WomensArt

New York City Partners with W.H.O. as U.S. Withdraws From Global Effort City health authorities are joining a network that counters new pathogens and emerging outbreaks.

After the Trump administration formally withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization, the New York City Health Department joined a WHO network aimed at countering new pathogens and emerging outbreaks.