Dear clients and friends: Given your interest in health and medicine, we would like to share with you our collection of the most interesting perspectives on our industry's trends and developments. We are happy to share them with you — and hope you share your thoughts with us.

Here’s to yuletide cheer and fewer discussions about the weather!

1. Lucy’s Not in the Sky with Diamonds

Psychedelics hold exciting therapeutic promise, but also confront a vexing question: how can blind clinical trials be run for a therapy that involves hallucinations? Researchers are tripping. Science shares some paths forward:

Scientists and companies are experimenting with trial designs meant to shield participants from recognizing what they’re getting, or to separate expectations from the drug’s impact on health. These include incorporating a range of doses; giving the drug, with permission, to people who are asleep; and misleading participants about how a trial is set up.

2. Crazy Rich Asian Biotechs

Big Pharma’s growth strategy gains clarity: buy Chinese biotechs. Last year, nearly a third of all deals over $50 million involved Chinese companies. Why?

Chinese companies are creating better molecules than ever before – and more of them. They can start testing those compounds in humans sooner and at a lower price than in the U.S. Buyers have figured out a business model to essentially import the drugs through licensing deals.

3. The CRISPR Learning Curve

The early fanfare over gene therapies has quieted. The Economist thinks it will come roaring back. But pharma may not be invited to the party:

The early hubris of the gene-editing therapy companies has hurt them, and they will have to learn from it before biotech fully re-emerges from its slump. It may yet turn out that venture-funded startups and pharmaceutical giants are poorly suited to developing and producing high-cost CRISPR therapies for the rarest of genetic diseases. Non-profits and public institutions may have to step in to fill a void should the economics of such therapies continue to be formidable.

The scientists also need to wise up: “You do not become a successful artist when someone first hands you a paintbrush. Scientists first saw the potential of CRISPR just 13 years ago. They just have to learn how to use it.”

4. Keep Away from Children

Criticisms of RFK Jr. heading HHS are more common than vandalized Teslas. Even still, Megha Satyanarayana’s broadside in Scientific American hits hard:

 Kennedy is a litigator who is now running our nation’s most comprehensive health care agency. He is not a doctor, not a health care specialist, but a litigator—and one who kept saying during his confirmation hearings that he wanted to see the data that support the health care he has been desperately trying to undermine for the past decade. He is a litigator who once called people on certain antidepression drugs “addicts” and who has (falsely) claimed that it is harder to quit selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—drugs like Prozac—than heroin. And now he wants a chance at your children’s mental health care.

5. Downing Street Goes DOGE

The British comedian John Oliver has joked that the UK served as “America’s rough draft.” Now the opposite is true. British PM Keir Starmer kicks off the UK’s own DOGE-y teardown, starting with NHS England:

The UK prime minister said the abolition of the body — which employs more than 15,000 staff — would put the NHS “back at the heart of government” and free it up to “focus on patients” and cut waiting lists...“We’re duplicating things that could be done once. If we stripped that out, which is what we’re doing today, that then allows us to free up that money to put it where it needs to be, which is the front line,” Starmer said.