Physician-scientist and man about town. Account is personal + does not represent the opinions of the University or Federal Government in any way.
Iowa City, IA
Joined November 2011
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Cancer prevention fails when infrastructure can’t support longitudinal care. When high-risk patients must leave their health system for “routine” prevention, that’s a systems signal.
In hematologic malignancy precursor states (e.g. MGUS, smoldering myeloma), prevention requires embedded biobanking, defined surveillance pathways, and realistic capacity planning. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/article…
These are catchment & shared-resource issues. Prevention cohorts depend on reliable surveillance access, stable accrual pipelines, and biobanks integrated into clinical operations. When access breaks, accrual breaks—and prevention science stalls
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
Christ almighty. I quit.
Want advice on your aims page? Pull the study section’s past 3 rosters and have claude read all their publications/websites and create a profile for each with special attention to standing members. Then call a group of agents that mirror each one’s perspectives. Teach them the NIH scoring rules and have them critique your page. Highlight common faults and strategize on how to please as many as possible. Wash, rinse, repeat. Then do it again on GPT.
Cancer rates take center stage in Iowa nytimes.com/2026/10/30/us/io…
We need one of those public academic bets here @mbeisen. What is your “AI solves biology” gauntlet?
Mine: $100 on whether pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma are effectively cured by October 30, 2036
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
History will never forget the name Captain Picard.
Thank you for inspiring the Next Generation of explorers. ✨
ALT Two interacting galaxies against the black of space. Together, they fill most of the right side of the image. They have a rounded center shape, with two extended arms. The arms both extend back, shaped roughly like the starship Enterprise. A third smaller galaxy spirals to its left.
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins.” —James Baldwin buff.ly/Lg6v2qz
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
As Epic’s dominance grows, its iron grip is choking innovation in health technology statnews.com/2026/10/28/epic… via @statnews
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
Cancer doctor here with 30 years of experience.
AI will NOT cure cancer.
Anyone claiming that doesn't know cancer or out to rip people off.
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
Just wrong. What is simulated “exactly” here? How do you simulate it without knowing the concentrations of all cellular components, the full range of human genetic diversity, the precise free energies of the major molecular interactions, etc. etc. Compute is not a magic wand.
If you had an exponential amount of compute you could solve simulate biology exactly and wouldn't need to run any experiments.
Some of you will think "of course, but that's an unrealistic assumption" and others will think "no, you need experiments even with that much compute. That's just How It's Done".
You would of course need evaluations once you have a solution, but you don't in principle need experiments to find it: Experiments are a way to save compute, dating from a time when it was much more expensive.
And I think the presentation is exponential but real systems aren't irreducibly exponential. AlphaFold worked, after all.
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
“How simple the red flags were” indeed. A complete fraud.
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
Such an outstanding discussion (emphasizing agency, no less!!) with @zakkohane about AI in @Harvard Gazette: news.harvard.edu/gazette/sto…
@HarvardDBMI @NEJM_AI @AdamRodmanMD @emollick
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
The question isn’t will there be another pandemic? The question is which virus and when? Erroneous public health messaging during COVID destroyed a lot of support for public health infrastructure and preparedness, but we still need them.
There is something really concerning (and disappointing) going on in the US right now.
A dangerous and preventable situation.
Let me explain.
nextstrain.org/avian-flu/h5n…
1/
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
I wish these biespecifics would be tested in Angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphomas...
PD(L)1-VEGF bispecifics are already beating PD1 inhibition alone in trials, so what's next?
This trial (BioNTech, DualityBio, BMS) adds a new B7-H3 ADC to a PDL1-VEGF bispecific, with potential synergy:
1) VEGF blockade: normalizes tumor vasculature, improves ADC delivery and T cell infiltration.
2) B7-H3 ADC: kills cancer cells, triggers immunogenic inflammation.
3) PDL1 blockade: releases immune suppression, allows T cells to exploit immune response induced by ADC.
Confirmed ORR up to 71% -- in immune-cold platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.
The broader, ongoing phase 2 includes colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer and other tumor types.
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
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RACHEL CARSON: THE WRITER WHO HID HER CANCER TO WARN THE WORLD
In 1960, Rachel Carson was finishing two chapters on cancer for a book about pesticides. Then she found a lump in her own breast. She was 52.
She had a mastectomy. By December, she knew the tumor was malignant and had spread. She told almost no one, so the chemical companies couldn't call her book biased.
Silent Spring came out on Sept. 27, 1962. Through radiation treatments, she defended it on TV and testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1963.
She died on April 14, 1964, at 56, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
She spent her last strength on everyone else's health.
ALT Rachel Carson, the biologist who wrote Silent Spring while secretly fighting breast cancer, in a black-and-white portrait: short wavy hair, smiling, white collar over a dark jacket.
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
Rare disease already has a template for this in parent-led foundations that recruit the patients and pay for the first models themselves. The new tools mostly make those people faster.
Packed house for the opening night of the @RefocusFilmFest @englert A truly special Iowa City event!!
❤️🩺🔬 There have been a number of advances in medicine made by self-experimentation. While at @washumedicine I learned that the immune mechanism of immune mediated thrombocytopenia was demonstrated by the self-experimentation of William J. Harrington and James W. Hollingsworth.
They injected themselves with the serum of a patient with ITP and recorded their drop in platelet count.
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WERNER FORSSMANN: THE DOCTOR WHO WALKED HIS CATHETER TO X-RAY
Doctors thought touching a living heart would kill it. In 1929, a young German surgical trainee in Eberswalde tested that on himself.
Werner Forssmann's chief had said no. So he numbed his own arm, opened a vein, pushed a catheter toward his heart, and walked down to radiology. The X-ray showed its tip inside.
Berlin's Charité dismissed him after the stunt. His career drifted, and he ended up a small-town urologist. Meanwhile, André Cournand and Dickinson Richards in New York turned his idea into a science. In 1956, the three of them shared the Nobel.
Every cath lab runs on the vein he opened.
ALT Werner Forssmann, the German doctor who threaded a catheter into his own heart in 1929, in a black-and-white Nobel portrait: short swept-back hair, suit and tie.
Michael H. Tomasson, MD retweeted
During his Presidents Award speach, @DGlaucomflecken talks about his experience and more importantly his wife's experience following his cardiac arrest. Advising people to show compassion to the co-survivors, the family.
Graduate programs have cratered due to funding cuts. Not complicated. Unpopular opinion: hearing tech bros talk about AI makes me think we need the humanities now more than ever.
The number of people writing dissertations in the humanities has collapses, now the same thing is happening in the social sciences.
I'd wager that we will see a similar trend in psychology and other fields before long. Cuts in funding, the tight academic job market, and AI are rapidly changing the university and cratering graduate programs.
