IntegralAnswers @IntegralAnswers

@shipdit402 You’re very welcome and I appreciate the kind words.

1/10 Type 1 diabetes: Twelve patients stopped needing insulin after an experimental treatment. What does that actually mean? Researchers at the University of Chicago have reported encouraging results from a small clinical trial involving pancreatic islet-cell transplantation and an investigational immune therapy called tegoprubart, developed by Eledon Pharmaceuticals. All 12 participants achieved insulin independence. For someone living with Type 1 diabetes, that’s significant news. But it doesn’t mean researchers have found a treatment that permanently cures the disease, or that the same results can be expected in everyone. Here’s what was achieved, how the treatment works, and the important questions that remain unanswered.

@BishopBlougram Original out of iPhone 17 Pro (w/foggy lens)

Holiday in Japan Shinjuku, Tokyo

When you’ve lost the conservative National Review. nationalreview.com/2026/10/congre…

Ref: References: CDC. Vaccination Coverage and Exemptions Among Kindergartners, 2025–26. National MMR coverage: 92.4%; exemptions: 4.2%. cdc.gov/schoolvaxview/… Chen S, Bento AI. County, district and community-level measles transmission in the United States in 2013–2025. Nature Medicine. 2026. doi.org/10.1038/s41591… Pennsylvania Department of Health. Measles outbreak update, October 16, 2026. pa.gov/measles FactCheck.org. RFK Jr.’s Faulty Claim that U.S. Measles Response Is ‘Better’ Than ‘Any Other Country.’ September 18, 2026. factcheck.org/2026/09/rfk-jr…

Chris, you’re right about one important point: the COVID pandemic disrupted routine childhood vaccination. Millions of children missed scheduled doses. That is well documented and deserves acknowledgment. But your explanation becomes much less convincing when you treat that disruption as sufficient to explain today’s measles outbreaks. The decline in vaccination coverage did not begin with COVID, nor did it end when restrictions were lifted. Vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, exemptions, and longstanding pockets of low immunization have all contributed. A 2026 Nature Medicine study examining vaccination records from more than 50,000 US schools found that average susceptibility to measles approximately doubled following the pandemic. The researchers identified a combination of pandemic disruption, vaccine hesitancy, misinformation, and differences in vaccination policies. There is no sound basis for assigning all that susceptibility to lockdowns. And consider Pennsylvania. As of October 16, the state had reported 1,260 measles cases, 238 hospitalizations, and five confirmed measles-associated deaths, with a sixth death under investigation. Only four reported cases involved vaccinated individuals. These are the consequences of measles spreading through populations with substantial immunity gaps. You acknowledge that vaccination rates influence infectious disease transmission. Good. But then you seem determined to absolve everyone whose decisions or messaging might contribute to those gaps. That includes Kennedy. Of course, Kennedy did not create every pocket of undervaccination, and we cannot attribute a particular outbreak to his rhetoric without appropriate evidence. But as HHS Secretary, his public statements about vaccine safety and effectiveness matter. His longstanding record of questioning vaccines cannot simply be excluded from an assessment of declining vaccine confidence. Personal choice is a legitimate subject for debate. So are the consequences of those choices for infants, immunocompromised individuals, and others who depend on community protection. As for Fauci, a warning in 2020 about missed childhood vaccinations was entirely reasonable. It does not establish Kennedy’s broader causal explanation in 2026. And calling Fauci corrupt and deserving of prison is an accusation that requires evidence of its own. I agree that Kennedy’s explanation is consistent with much of his previous messaging. Consistency, however, tells us nothing about whether an explanation is scientifically adequate. The question is whether it accounts for the full body of evidence. I don’t believe yours does.

“Zero evidence” is quite a claim. In January 2020, researchers reported isolating a previously unknown coronavirus from patients with pneumonia, growing it in human airway cells, visualizing it by electron microscopy, and sequencing its genome. In 2022, researchers deliberately exposed 36 healthy volunteers to SARS-CoV-2. Eighteen developed confirmed infections, with measurable viral replication and documented clinical symptoms among infected participants. These are experimental observations, not appeals to authority. You are welcome to challenge either study. Identify the specific methodological flaw, explain why the findings are invalid, and provide supporting evidence. But declaring every study fraudulent without examining its methods or results is not scientific skepticism. It’s a conclusion protected from evidence. And that was precisely my original point.

An important reminder from Ian Copeland that the historical evidence on COVID mortality cannot simply be wished away. Across successive waves, age-standardized surveillance data consistently showed substantially higher COVID-19 death rates among unvaccinated populations. These are observational comparisons, and legitimate questions about confounding and healthy-vaccinee bias deserve careful examination. But those limitations do not erase the broader evidence that vaccination substantially reduced severe disease and death. The magnitude of protection varied by age, variant, prior immunity, and time since vaccination. Scientific skepticism means scrutinizing the evidence—not selectively dismissing findings because they contradict a preferred narrative. The data deserve examination, not denial.

Ian Copeland, PhD @IanCopeland5

a week ago

The unvaccinated died at ridiculous rates during the pandemic. Don't let them tell you any different...

645 501 2K 74K 172

@1useyourbrain Declaring all evidence fraudulent before examining any of it is certainly one way to avoid being contradicted. It’s also a remarkably efficient scientific method: no data to review, no hypotheses to test, no possibility of being wrong. The only thing missing is the science.

References | Type 1 Diabetes & Tegoprubart Eledon Pharmaceuticals. Updated results from the University of Chicago islet-transplant trial. June 8, 2026. ir.eledon.com/news-releases/… ClinicalTrials.gov. Tegoprubart-based immunosuppression and islet transplantation. NCT06305286. clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06305… Breakthrough T1D. Results from all 12 trial participants. June 7, 2026. breakthrought1d.org/news-and-updat… FDA. Approval and clinical evidence for Lantidra donor-islet therapy. June 28, 2023. fda.gov/news-events/pr… Eledon Pharmaceuticals. September 3, 2026 clinical development update. ir.eledon.com/node/11256

10/10 What should someone living with Type 1 diabetes take away from this research? There is reason for cautious optimism. For the first time in this particular pilot study, all 12 participants achieved insulin independence using transplanted donor islets protected by a tegoprubart-based regimen. But this remains early clinical evidence. We need larger studies, direct comparisons, and longer follow-up before we can determine how broadly the results apply. If you’re living with Type 1 diabetes today, nothing about these findings changes the need to continue prescribed insulin and established glucose management. If you experience recurrent severe hypoglycemia despite intensive care, discussing established transplant options and clinical trials with a specialist may be worthwhile. The most important future developments will be treatments that restore reliable insulin production without exposing patients to unacceptable long-term risks. That is the goal. This research represents progress toward it, but we aren’t there yet. @IntegralAnswers