1/ Just got this 1star review for charging $6/month (or $30/ year) for an AI cough detection app. Apparently, half a pumpkin spice latte is TOO MUCH to pay for groundbreaking health tech and good reason to "I HATE you".

My watch logs every cough in real time. 🕒🫁
Every. Single. Cough.

24/ 7

Evaluating cough used to be guesswork. Now it's data-driven, to the millisecond: no memory gaps, no assumptions. Just real-time insights into respiratory health.

Check it out. 👇

Happy Thanksgiving BSKY fam. And remember to count your blessings AND your coughs! @coughpro.com

What I am saying is cough medicine is a most fascinating corner of modern medicine in that it is not actually modern at all.

Our understanding of cough has progressed very little since the days when "doctors" would pump morphine and alcohol into children and noting a curious decrease of coughing.

The only thing we know is that most people who take these drugs REPORT that they cough slightly less. But that's the extent of it. The medical euphemism is "the exact mechanism is not fully understood"

To add insult to injury, we don't even know how exactly these compounds work and what is the mechanism through which they suppress cough - such as they do.

In fact we don't even know for sure that they do or don't supress cough (that is a topic for another thread)

Other compounds commonly used in those days included morphine, cocaine, heroine, alcohol and various combinations thereof.

It is mind boggling that the most recent cough medicine we have today - prescribed daily to millions of people - is closer related to heroine than it is to modern drugs.

Incidentally this was also the ONLY time the FDA approved ANY cough medication, ever.

All other drugs we have (Codeine, Noscapine, Clophedianol, Dihydrocodeine) are mostly fancy names for opioids that have been commonly used to "treat" cough since the days before the FDA was created in 1938.

The last time the FDA has approved a cough medication - our most modern cough medicine as it were - was in 1958. This was Dextromethorphan, closely related to morphine.
Not what you'd call a modern drug, side effects can include hallucinations, dissociative effects and a sudden stop in breathing.

A brief history of cough medicine (thread)

The era of one-size-fits-all medicine is waning. AI-powered, precision medicine tailors treatment to your actual biomarkers, lifestyle, and environment.

Meanwhile, Pharma:

Small startup looking for a niche on a busy market

Actual video of a startup successfully participating in innovation pilots/ securing innovation grants:

And then turning around, looking at a chart like this and go "Trust me, bro, climate change, HOAX"

Imagine looking at charts like these and going "Trust me, bro, Vaccines Bad!"