Devi Sridhar on weight loss drugs: another class in careful thinking

If one thing has captured the zeitgeist this year , it’s weight loss drugs. You know the ones like semaglutide which mimic the effects of the hormone GLP-1. Everyone’s talking about them, half of everyone’s thinking of trying them, everyone knows someone who has started a course. Certainly an up-to-the minute, contemporary cutting edge (that’s enough adjectival phrases-ed) blog like LSS cannot afford to ignore them. But what to think? Who has the wisdom, the learning, the cool balanced judgement to advise, consult and warn?

The answer of course is Professor Devi Sridhar, whose sagacious thoughts we have channelled here before (LSS 3 4 25;23 8 24) on matters as diverse as antibiotics and how to read things you find on the Interweb. Writing in the Guardian[1] she presents not only a balanced view of the pros and cons, she acknowledges the complexity of the subject. In this she echoes the methods of another writer we have admired here. Simon Kuper (LSS 28 5 25)

And so she notes the advantages and disadvantages of these new drugs- what happens when you stop taking them? -is one caveat among many which she offers us . She smiles at The incipient war between the pharmaceutical companies who want to flog you these things, and the vast food and catering industries who want to flog you things which will make you fat. And above all the awful dilemma faced by decent rational people such as the World Health Organisation. Who know the real problem of obesity is rooted in poverty, ignorance, conspicuous consumption and other cultural tropes which reveal such unflattering truths about humanity. But who nevertheless have come to feel, reluctantly, that the new drugs offer the only practicable solution to the epidemic of obesity that threatens public health world wide. Amd perhaps this is the clearest cognitive lesson of all which she offers. For it echoes the doctrine of the great John Maynard Keynes who stated: “when the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do sir?”

A worthy doctrine for Whigs, rationalists and progressives of all shades, everywhere.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/31/world-health-organization-anti-obesity-jabs-2025?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[2]https://uk.news.yahoo.com/weight-loss-jabs-conditionally-backed-135200252.html

#obesity #public health #weight loss #poverty #lifestyle

Two New Year Cocktails from 2020: we can’t improve on them

December 31 2020: it seems such a long time ago! It was the year Joe Biden had defeated Donald Trump to win the Presidency of the United States. The year a COVID-19 ravaged world was waiting for the first vaccines. And our already-growing pool of loyal readers was was waiting in addition for our advice about what to do for cocktails on what was going to be a rather restricted New Years Eve festival. And here is what we wrote in a piece titled Two Champagne Cocktails for New Year-Even if You’re Staying In:

Well, New Years Eve has always been a traditional time for fun and japes and conga lines-and lots and lots of champagne. Sadly, old Mr Covid-19 is going to crimp that this year, and by more than a little! But, do not despair, good reader. We at LSS have a couple of delicious champagne cocktail recipes for you to try as the big countdown to the glorious hour begins.

French ’75

Supposedly named after a powerful piece of Gallic field artillery, this is a fun sharpener with quite a slug of our favourite spirit-gin. The lemon and caster will give it the feel of a sparkling version of that old LSS favourite Between the Sheets. So, adapted from from Hamlyn‘s The Ultimate Cocktail Book:

Half fill a tall glass with cracked ice. Add 1 measure of good dry gin, the juice of half a fresh lemon, one teaspoon of caster sugar, and chilled champagne. These days Bollinger or Veuve Clicquot are perfectly acceptable, unless you live in somewhere like Monaco. You can decorate this one well with orange, lemon or lime slices to give that real party feel.

The Bellini

Most readers of LSS will be more than familiar with Renaissance Art, and the works of Giovani Bellini in particular. We know this from our focus groups. So it may come as no surprise that this one was named after the eponymous author of such works as St Jerome in the Desert, Christ Blessing and St Francis in Ecstasy. We are a bit unsure about that last one; surely a small tipple before evensong would have been sufficient? Anyway, once St Francis had come back down he, and you, could well have enjoyed the following. Again it is from our immortal Hamlyn, which is to us what Das Kapital is to the followers of Karl Marx.

Take a large, robust wineglass. Add two measures of fresh peach juice. Add four measures of chilled champagne and a dash of grenadine. Hamlyn recommends peach slices to decorate. We say: use your imagination, it’s New Year’s Eve!

You can read the full histories and more about these cocktails below via Wikipedia. But don’t forget, Knowledge and objective learning are now in deep, deep danger. Wikipedia is one of the best guardians of truth that we have. And so we earnestly beg you to think how much you can donate to this marvellous resource. They too must survive another year: details below in the links.

French 75 (cocktail) – Wikipedia

Bellini (cocktail) – Wikipedia

Support Wikipedia – Wikimedia Foundation

The Ultimate Cocktail Book Hamlyn 2004

#french75 #bellini #champagne #newyearseve #cocktails #wikimediafoundation

LSS v The Guardian: Clash of the Titans. And the battleground is antibiotics

Readers of LSS, we present today a true clash of titans: us versus the popular daily newspaper The Guardian. For they have just published a leader article on antibiotics progress which takes an altogether different view to our own sunnily optimistic piece (LSS 18 12 25) about humanity’s general progress in solving the problem of antibiotic resistance. [1]

Avid readers will recall our effort well. Riffing on the work of the guardians very own Kat Lay (brilliant writer) we noted how the new antibiotics Zoliflodacin and Gepotidicin offered startling new horizons in the battle against gonorrhoea and other other unpleasant diseases of-well you know, down there, as they say. We hoped that, as antibiotics for these diseases had been developed, those for other diseases might soon follow. And thanks to Ms. Lay, we discovered the work of the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP) whose work we will now champion for ever more. All in all, everything was in a much better place than when we started this crusade, eleven long years ago, we concluded.

Not so fast, says The Guardian. Humanity may actually be losing the race to develop these new drugs. Since 2017 only 16 new antibiotics have achieved approval, and none of them are very different to the old ones. Which means resistance to them can be expected very soon. Point to them, we concede. They namecheck GARDP again, noting its work as a positive. But that the financial structures designed to encourage pharmaceutical companies to step up to the mark are still rather new. And-more points to the team from York Place- there is a rather incisive survey of where all these new antibiotics are to come from. Old LSS favourites like natural sources and AI modelling are acknowledged. But they are not all-curing magic wands. And what to do with any new antibiotics anyway? Ration them carefully, so that resistance develops more slowly? How do you do that in a world of billions, where people and information flow so freely, and the profits of piracy are so temptingly in reach? Gentle readers, your editors did not think of those ones fully either.

OK, we throw in the towel. Guardian 3 LSS 0 (FT). When it comes to superior knowledge, close reasoning and intellectual power, they have got us beat. But we take consolation gentle readers, When the genetic dice roll, they roll evenly. They got all the brains. We got all the charm and good looks. As the last picture above demonstrates very clearly. And yes- we promise another cocktail recipe before New Year.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/29/the-guardian-view-on-antibiotics-recent-breakthroughs-are-great-news-but-humanity-is-losing-the-bi

#antibiotic resistance #antibiotics #health #medicine #microbiology #epidemiology #GARDP

More startling news on psychiatric disorders-and we think it’s even better than last time

It is our honest opinion, patient readers, that the terrible problem of psychiatric disorder is on the point of being understood. On the same level that is, as illnesses such as measles, salmonella poisoning or scurvy. We think we know why, as we will explain below. But first to the work which gives us this hope, following as it does on our recent blog Psychiatric Disorders: is this a game changing moment? (LSS 18 12 2025)

Writing for the Guardian, David Shariatmadari reviews The Divided Mind by Edward Bullmore, a profoundly learned man who has devoted his life to investigating and alleviating the sufferings of those afflicted by mental disorders. It is a sweeping book, magisterially covering the disputes between the warring schools of thought and the decades of honest but often misguided attempts to effect cures and diagnoses. Too much to cover here, but we implore you to read the review, if not the book itself [1] [2] But, in a nutshell, it was this passage that truly excited us

(shariatmadari notes the remarkable process in understanding diseases like TB),then :

Schizophrenia may finally be on the cusp of that transformation – something truly momentous, given the puzzle this strange and brutal disease has posed for so long. As Bullmore carefully explains, advances in scanning, maths, genomics and immunology have piled up to give us a clearer understanding of the illness. It is probably caused by the abnormal development of brain networks in childhood and adolescence; this, the evidence suggests, happens under the influence of immune dysfunction, and the cause of that is variation in a broad range of genes, interacting in particular ways with the environment. Triggers can include infections, abuse, social stress or drug use.

And now for why we are so hopeful. We genuinely think that the work of Bullmore, and the scholars covered in the last blog, suggest that at last a new paradigm has formed. It has only been possible because of advances in disciplines like Immunology, complexity theory, genetics and catastrophe theory, and the technologies to support the vast data sets which this new learning requires. And with them should come the key concepts of robust diagnosis, risk factor, causal mechanism and, please, God-lasting ameliorations. We stress again that we do not belittle the heroic efforts of past investigators, who did not have the tools now available. New paradigms never make the old ones wrong. But they suddenly solve the problems the last one could not, and open the way to new lines of discovery which the old one could never have predicted. Einstein did not refute Newton, he simply went beyond. And it was the same for thinkers like Darwin, Kepler and Planck. It is our honest opinion that another such paradigm shift has arrived, gentle readers, We hope it will make the life of the world better too,

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/17/the-divided-mind-by-edward-bullmore-review-do-we-now-know-what-causes-schizophrenia?CMP=Share_iOSAp

[2]The Divided Mind: A New Way of Thinking About Mental Health by Edward Bullmore is published by New River (£20). To support the Guardian buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

#psychiatric disorder #health #immunology #genetics #complexity #disease #medicine

Tyred of recycling stories? Ifedolapo Runsewe isn’t

It’s nice to report a good news story for a change. And the work of Nigerian entrepreneur Ifedolapo Runsewe is certainly good news. Not for what she is currently achieving, remarkable though that is. But because her company Free Recycle, based in Ibadan, points the way to solving a whole bundle of problems; a genuine ray of hope at a dark time.. So let’s unbundle things one by one, as there is so much to like here.

The Links We always ask you to look at the sources, gentle readers and today our researchers have come up with two. [1] is this rather good vid. from Business Insider via You Tube which actually walks you round her plant, introducing us not only to Ms Runsewe but also to some of her busy employees [2] is an article by Zaniel Dada for How We made it in Africa-a clever title if ever there was one

The Method Basically they take as many used vehicle tyres as they can get their hands on, strip out all the metal bits, chop up the rubber and turn it into all kinds of things including paving slabs and footwear to walk upon them in. How’s that for a neat bit of ergonomics?

The African connection. Yes some countries like the US have been quite good at tyre recycling for years. But there are billions and billions of old tyres in the world, and far too many get dumped in poorer countries where they can cause no end of unpleasant health problems. Here is a viable business model to turn a problem into a genuine new resource. We have covered other small companies with pioneering ideas here before (LSS passim) but never one from Africa. Thanks to all concerned! And, we wonder-if you can recycle used tyres, why not lots of other things too?

The Bigger Picture For most people, immigration is the biggest issue of our time. We have always believed that it is best addressed as an economic phenomenon as human capital moves from areas of low demand to areas of high demand. From poor places to rich ones, just like charged ions in an electronic field. Raise the quality of life in poorer countries, and migration will slow. Stop, even. Who is doing more to raise life in Africa than Ifedolapo Runsewe, with a thriving business providing regular jobs and structure?

We think we will hear more from Ifedolapo Runsewe in years to come. We think we will here more good news from Nigeria too. As one year closes and another soon opens, we wish them both continued success.

Disclaimer As with all our new company and start up stories LSS has no financial nor any other known connection to the businesses concerned. Except-we do own some car tyres!

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djCfm89pqG8

[2]https://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/nigeria-entrepreneur-turns-trash-into-cash-with-rubber-recycling-business/170321/

#Ifedolapo Runsewe #nigeria #africa #development #recycle #commerce #business #enterprise #pollution

On another year of blogging…….

As 2025 draws to a close we thought we’d look back over our posts and general contributions to the zeitgeist in what has been a white knuckle ride of a year for just about everyone one on the planet. After all we do believe in recycling, don’t we?

Antibiotics and the potential shortages thereof, has been a constant theme, and we think we’ve covered a story or two every month. Sources like Nature Briefing, The Guardian, El Pais The Mail and many others have been invaluable here and our most sincere thanks go to their journalists who are keeping this vital story at front and centre of public consciousness. In fact, If we see a journalist write a good story in this trope, we write to thank them: and beg you to do the same.

We are proud to cover other serious threats as we see them. None more so than Global Warming, which gets covered every month or so. It’s odd to recall that the fires that tore through Los Angeles in California happened nearly a year ago now (LSS 9 1 25) But they were prescient: every subsequent we made this year, to France, to Portugal, to Spain, wherever, the TV news has been dominated by ferocious fires. It was sad to discover how much of this might have been avoided(LSS 11 7 25) . As for the denialists-we thought the strange legend of The Fisher King might go some way to explaining why they feel as they do(LSS 27 10 25)

We tried to cover some more hopeful science stories as well. The progress in genetic editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas-9 and Base Pair Editing hold out the hope for unlimited progress (LSS 19 5 25 was a working summary) and have also tried to track progress in technologies such as nuclear fusion, artificial intelligences as well as more recondite topics as evolution(LSS 19 3 25) Our usual series like Heroes of Learning and Friday Night fun have covered subjects as diverse as Fibonacci and Fish and Chips. We thought would like the new series on World Government (LSS 8 1 25 et seq) and Taxes(LSS 17 11 25 et seq) and the Best time to have been Alive (23 7 25 et seq) which by starting in China should avoid all accusations of Eurocentric bias

Of everything we covered the biggest stand out for us was the new discoveries in genetic mapping which may shed real light on the origins of psychiatric disorders(LSS 18 12 25) But for our readers it was the highly speculative Is Donald Trump a Socialist? ( LSS 7 4 25) in which we stated that, although he and his followers would recoil in horror from that label, he is acting like a socialist, however unintentionally. That one has almost never ceased to be read and commented upon. We are not sure why.

Once again thanks to all of you for your suggestions comments and ideas. It is a pleasure to read some of your blogs and postings which now cover the whole world. We in the educated community, the progressive community if you will, are few in number. But our influence is always outsize to our numbers, as it has been throughout History. You gentle reader are the hope of the world. Whatever your belief, enjoy the festivities.

#antibiotics research #microbiology #global warming #psychiatic disorders #health #medicine #environment #dona;d trump #china

Quick cocktails for Christmas morning guests

One thing about Christmas morning-it’s going to be busy. Those crucial hours between eleven o’clock and one o’clock when half the street drops in, yet you dare not forget the relatives who are staying, or the steadily building drumbeat of the Christmas Dinner preps, can be frantic. You need to entertain them, you need to shut them all up. Above all you need to do it quickly and painlessly so you can concentrate on higher matters like Yorkshire Puddings and Brandy butter.

As there will be no miracle worker present who will to turn your water in wine, here is our guide to three boozy, plus one virtuous, easy-make cocktails.. Above all they’re simple: Each requires but one or two ingredients: a little ice , the right glasses and a few eco friendly straws, and you become the perfect hostess/host. And just to make it even easier, we have stripped out all those pesky shakers, strainers and other complicated mixing equipment which will only complicate matters and generate further washing up, Our making times assume you have all the ingredients ready to go: a safe assumption, as LSS readers are known for their wise foresight.

Gin Sling (see left above) Put 4-5 ice cubes into a hurricane glass , add one measure of cherry brandy and three of gin. Stir and top up with cold sparkling water .Decorate with one cherry, add 1 straw. Estimated preparation time : 25 seconds

Champagne cocktail (see centre) To a classic champagne flute add 1 brown sugar cube and cover with one measure brandy. Add a tiny dash of angostura, and top up with champagne. Decorate with a cherry and serve. Tip: Have a tissue nearby in case the wine bubbles over Estimated preparation time : 40 seconds

Harvey Wallbanger (see right above) Put plenty of ice in a tall glass and add 1 measure of vodka. and a half measure of Galliano. Top up with fresh orange juice and stir. A slice of orange will decorate, You will need a two straws. Estimated preparation time : one minute

And our Non alcoholic for the drivers: A delicious fruit punch. We are nothing here if not responsible, and know that good people never drive with alcohol in their system. What’s more there’s almost no preparation time with this one, as you can buy/prepare most of the ingredients the day before. All you do is add 750 ml of fresh orange juice, 750 ml cranberry juice, 400 ml of pineapple juice to a large punchbowl. Keep it in the fridge for an hour or two before serving. When ready to go, add lots of ice sparkling water and slices of colourful fruits like oranges. lemons and pineapples. You can adjust the amounts to serve as many or few people as you like. We know it’s tasty, because we have experienced more than one non sober guest ask for their own serving of this stuff, just adding a little gin or vodka to get the right Christmas spirit.

We hope the day goes well.

#christmas day #holidays #parties #cocktails

Our recipes inspired by one of our most treasured possessions: The Ultimate Cocktail Book, published by Paul Hamlyn in 2003, and which we still use today!

Why Taxes are good for you #7: but why you still won’t want to pay them

It’s time to wrap up our counter-intuitive series Why Taxes are good for you. We started it as a slightly cheeky riposte to the massively funded and relentlessly intolerant opposition who insist that taxes must be, always and everywhere, a despicable evil. In the first part we met the industrious but not very knowledgeable Dave Watford who expounded upon the best of their arguments from his post at the bar of the Dog and Duck. We went on to learn the rather chilling truths about life in a low tax nirvana, where their are no laws, roads nor health services and violent death lies around every corner. Part three considered the little known but incredibly well documented story of 18th Century China whose low taxes led it to be conquered by the tax- funded armies of ruthlessly hypocritical western nations. Whatever else they are for, taxes are good for your health as we showed in part 4. We felt that part 5, despite being a historical argument, was crucial. No taxes equals no economy. And if you really do want to get rich, the best chance of doing it is by starting from a well-taxed society, as our part six concluded. We provided lots of links and books and that sort of thing for you to read in order to draw your own conclusions. And so we said ” Quod erat demonstrandum“

Except it wasn’t. Isn’t. And probably never will be. Because we forgot one thing. The benefits of taxes are long term, and require an immediate short term loss. Think how Dave Watford sees it. Money taken from his pocket to pay for armies, nurses, roads is not there now. Indeed, some of those hospitals, schools and museums may not even have been built yet. But Dave feels that loss of money very personally. Money which he could spend here, and now on, any number of Bright Shiny Things. And it is no good telling him “Dave-most of these Bright Shiny Things, that you covet so desperately, will have no value in the long term. Remember how you longed for an Austin Healey, a record by the Bay City Rollers, Watneys Red Barrel, a bottle of Hirondelle, a quadrophonic stereo? All good in their day, no doubt-but are they quite what they were, have not other things come along to take their places?

But Dave knows things that we do not. Has studied authors that we have never heard of. Like Thorstein Veblen who as long ago as 1899 showed that people buy Bright Shiny Things not because those things are useful, but to signal the wealth, status and sophistication of the buyer. To consume conspicuously, ostentatiously, vainly, and emptily. To doom themselves thereby to domination by rich men, and to conquest by foreign ones. Oh well. We tried to warn.

Veblen, T: The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (1899).

#economics #taxes # finance #history #veblen #consumer society #production #marketing

Psychiatric Disorders: Is this discovery a game-changing moment?

Why can we not do more to address psychiatric disorders? We have always regretted the lack of a robust model which links biological cause to behaviour (LSS 11 5 22;14 9 24 et al) Without this treatment can never achieve the same efficacy as it has for thousands of “physical” disorders such as infectious diseases, cancers or deficiency diseases.

Today It is our earnest hope that all this may be about to change. Read this Hidden links between psychiatric condition from Nature Briefing

DNA data from more than one million people suggests that the genetic risk factors linked to many psychiatric conditions fall into five clusters that cut across current diagnostic boundaries. For example, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism, which are classified as separate conditions, both fall into the neurodevelopmental category. The findings hint that the fact that people tend to be diagnosed with multiple disorders at once is a reflection of shared underlying biology, and could help to create a more biologically based way of understanding psychiatric conditions.

Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Nature paper

If this work can be confirmed and extended, then it offers a tantalising possibility: this particular observable gene cluster is associated with this set of behaviours. And not another set of behaviours, which turn have their own identifiable gene cluster. Simple. Robust. Falsifiable. Empirical. What’s more, the clusters seem to make a curious rule-of-thumb sense. One for neurodevelopmental disorders such as ASD and ADHD. The second for internalising disorders such as anxiety, depression and so on. A third for compulsive ones like OCD and anorexia. A fourth for psychotic ones such as bipolar and schizophrenia And a fifth for substance abuse disorders. Simply put , each cluster may have particular underlying neurological architecture. In which case the underlying mechanism may be discerned; and treatment found.

Now for the caveats. First of all, it’s early days and we need to see how the work holds up against existing diagnostic frameworks. Secondly, only a fool would rule out epigenetic and environmental contributions to psychiatric malfunction. As for the thought of any treatments based on the new findings-well, they have to be decades away if possible at all,.

And yet….to end on a personal note. Nothing is sadder, nothing so moves us as seeing yet another lost soul, another hopeless cry for help, in the face of a victim pf psychiatric disorder. And to know the terrible sufferings imposed upon themselves, their families, carers and the professionals who come up against them, which includes anyone from emergency service workers to housing professionals. And to know that nothing can be done, despite the whole of modern science and learning. But now, just maybe, we have a real game changer on our hands, There is something to pray for this Christmas.

#psychiatric disorders #mental health #medicine #neurology #health #society

New antibiotic for gonorrhoea: more good news for antibiotic resistance fans everywhere

Once more we feel that things are moving in our direction. And just in time for Christmas too! Thanks to a story by the redoubtable Kat Lay of the Guardian, we bring you news of not one, but two new antibiotics, gentle readers. Both Zoliflodacin and Gepotidacin have passed major trials and have been approved this very month by the US Food and Drug Administration. Always a major step in their progress to world-wide use.[1]

We will keep our bit short today. Kat’s excellent story is a lucid and succinct presentation of all you need to know-infection rates, strains, statistics and the marvellous groups of educated, open minded people who have worked so hard to get humanity to this stage. Suffice it to say you might wish to learn more about Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP) who seem to be just the sort of people we have been hoping to have around in this crisis (thanks for that, Kat) So, go on-click.

Hardened fans of LSS and the antibiotics resistance community in general will be aware of our earlier thoughts on this aspect of the problem(LSS 19 2 24; 12 9 24) It is a genuine pleasure to see advances being made, and not just in STDs, after more than ten years of campaigning. The antibiotics crisis is not over yet; but compared with where we were about 2015, this feels better. So, although we are not going to let up, enough time has been bought to devote a little of it to another of our bêtes noires: the intractable mystery of mental illness and its causes. But this time, we think there’s hope there too. Don’t miss our next amazing blog.

[1https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/dec/16/health-antibiotic-resistance-drugs-superbugs-sexually-transmitted-gonorrhoea

[2]https://gardp.org/

#antibiotic resistance #microbiology #health #medicine #bacteria #STD #GARDP