Who’d want to own a pathogen? Turns out, nation states are very interested in retaining sovereignty over their viruses and bacteria.

But will this attempt to monopolise the vaccine market slow down the global response to pandemics?

The WHO is starting to get very nervous, and so are we!

Also in this episode of The Medical Republic podcast, we examine organ harvesting in China, Robbie Bedbrook discusses better funding for GP nurses and we talk about the ancient practice of using honey-ified corpses to treat broken bones.

Not all seizures are the grand mal kind, and some are barely noticeable.

Subtle seizures can involve people zoning out from the conversation, experiencing unusual sensations, odd emotions, an intense feeling of déjà vu, or just not remember what they were doing and then coming back into the room like nothing has happened.

The seizures may seem innocuous, but they can be quite dangerous if the patient happens to be driving a car, holding a cigarette or making a cup of tea.

Did we make a terrible mistake by stopping the smallpox vaccine? Danish researchers have decades-worth of research that seems to say ‘yes’. But it’s controversial…

One Kazakhstani internet pirate is single-handedly plundering the scientific publishing giants. How long can this last? And will the publishing empire strike back?

Two weeks ago, the Morton National Park fire crossed the Shoalhaven river, destroying four homes in Bundanoon in rural NSW.

The last time the Southern Highlands saw a fire like this was 1965, so no-one was really prepared.

The residents of Bundanoon only got an emergency phone call 30 minutes before the fire hit the town. By that time it was too late to leave.

Why is the war on obesity being waged by skinny people?

Well, until a few weeks ago, there was no organisation that you could join as a person with obesity to publicly advocate for your healthcare rights in Australia.

There are now two groups that are positioning themselves as the go-to representative body for people with obesity, but they have fundamentally different ideas about what their members want.

And the rivalry has already started to turn ugly….

Human language is hard for AI to wrap its circuit boards around at the best of times.

But the typos, abbreviations, spelling mistakes, redundancy and messy structure of clinical notes makes it the worst-case scenario for text mining.

Lots of research teams are trying to solve this problem – but it’s proving much more difficult than anyone expected.

How can prison be improving people’s health when the services are so limited?

GPs who dabble in alternative and complementary medicine are facing greater scrutiny by the Medical Board of Australia. But are we being too hard on integrative docs?

We’re back with another episode of The Medical Republic podcast!

This week we cover a broad-spectrum nanotech treatment for ALL viruses (in mice), AI that can diagnose asthma by the sound of a cough, and friend of the podcast, Dr Brad McKay, shares his hot take on medical cannabis.

People in the freezer business are now claiming that cryotherapies can cure almost any disease, infertility and even death.

In this podcast, we take a look under the freezer lid to see whether these cryo-crazes have any evidence to back them up.

To our loyal listeners, welcome back to Season 3! For everyone else, you’re in for a treat – we’ve got so many interesting ideas for this season, from news to deep-dive clinical stories.

We’ll be looking to bring you analysis and insights on medical politics. We’re going to keep it real by talking directly to GPs about what’s on their minds.

And we’ve also know a lot of GPs want to know more about running a successful business – so we’ll be chasing more experts to come on the show and share their knowledge.

Of course, we’ll throw a few quirky medical facts in there too!

Welcome to a new year, and the start of a new decade!

This week we’re catching up with two of the leaders in macular degeneration treatment in Australia – the CEO of the Macular Disease Foundation Australia Dee Hopkins and a clinical ophthalmologist Professor Paul Mitchell.

They’ve got some important messages about how GPs can help prevent blindness and vision loss in older people.

an American doctor with cerebral palsy shares his experience of practising medicine with a disability.