Welcome Back Vinay Prasad

A reflection on four years of Sensible Medicine and what is ahead for SM 3.0

As of today, May 1st, 2026, Vinay Prasad is a free man. He will rejoin Sensible Medicine as one of its editors. John and Adam are thrilled to welcome him back. We look forward to hearing how his time as a senior leader of the US FDA has shaped his thinking about medicine.

His return presents an opportunity to reflect a bit on the first four years of Sensible Medicine. The site launched in the summer of 2022 as a shared site featuring the voices of leading physicians, scientists, and thinkers. The founding editors were John, Adam, Vinay, Zubin Damania, and Marty Makary.

The goal of Sensible Medicine has been, and remains, to showcase a range of ideas and opinions about all things bio-medicine. We strive to feature contrasting ideas and opinions, believing that progress occurs through dialogue. We have worked to nurture a home for this type of engagement. We are amazed by and grateful for the site's growth. We have well over 100,000 subscribers. Every article is read by many tens of thousands of people. Thank you to our readers, our subscribers, and all the people who have submitted work to us over the last four years.

Sensible Medicine 1.0 encompassed our first couple of years, from the launch until Vinay left us to join the FDA. During this time, we went from five editors to three, began accepting submissions, and found our voice. We featured a series of written debates and a lecture series on how to read the medical literature.

Sensible Medicine 2.0 saw John and Adam editing the site while Vinay was on his sabbatical. We were thrilled by the increase in high-quality submissions during this period. We also launched the This Fortnight in Medicine podcast with Andrew J Foy.

What will Sensible Medicine 3.0 look like? Some things will continue unchanged. John will post his weekly article dissections, simultaneously telling us what’s going on in medicine and teaching us how to read the literature. Every other Wednesday, we will release a This Fortnight in Medicine podcast. There will continue to be 3 hosts, but John, Vinay, Andrew, and Adam will all cycle through. Adam will do what he usually does on Friday, which seems to be writing about whatever comes to mind.

One of our goals, perhaps too lofty, is that SM creates a community of skeptical-but-not-cynical medical people large enough to hold a meeting. A congress of our own, if you will. Vinay’s foray into renting a hotel conference room at an oncology meeting to provide learners with a less biased review of the major trials is a start. All of medicine desperately needs such an alternative venue.

There will be some exciting changes. Vinay is returning with knowledge of the inner workings of the federal government and US drug and biologic regulation, and will bring this perspective to his writing. He remains committed to the central question of our era: How do we ensure medical decisions are made by good and reliable evidence, at a time of widespread excitement and innovation? He promises to only seldom mention being correct about Paxlovid.

We will also post editor debates in which we will argue important topics in medicine. We will add to our catalog of How to Not Get Fooled videos. We will continue to post submissions from our subscribers. We might even add some new Merch!

We hope that you are as excited about SM 3.0 as we are.