April 19, 2024
(BBC) – Sammy [not her real name] is an unlikely drug trafficker. She is one of what international law enforcement agencies estimate could be thousands of online sales representatives, working for illicit Chinese pharmaceutical and chemical companies producing and smuggling … Read More
April 19, 2024
(The Guardian) – The World Health Organization has raised concerns about the spread of H5N1 bird flu, which has an “extraordinarily high” mortality rate in humans. An outbreak that began in 2020 has led to the deaths or killing of … Read More
April 18, 2024
(New York Times) – Nearly 1.5 million teenage girls in some of the world’s poorest countries will miss the chance to be protected from cervical cancer because the drugmaker Merck has said it will not be able to deliver millions … Read More
April 17, 2024
(Quartz) – An Arm executive says generative AI’s overwhelming demand for electricity could hinder its rapid growth. Ami Badani, the chief marketing officer of the British tech company, said at Fortune’s Brainstorm AI Conference in London that the data centers powering … Read More
April 16, 2024
(New York Times) – A Chinese company targeted by members of Congress over potential ties to the Chinese government makes blockbuster drugs for the American market that have been hailed as advances in the treatment of cancers, obesity and debilitating … Read More
April 16, 2024
(Associated Press) – A report released by the Mexican government Friday says the country is facing a dire shortage of fentanyl for medical use, even as Mexican cartels pump out tons of the illicit narcotic. The paradox was reported in … Read More
April 15, 2024
April 12, 2024
(New York Times) – The outbreak of dengue fever that has unfolded in Latin America over the past three months is staggering in its scale — a million cases in Brazil in a matter of weeks, a huge spike in … Read More
April 12, 2024
(New York Times) – Doses of cholera vaccine are being given to patients as fast as they are produced and the global stockpile has run completely dry, as deadly outbreaks of the disease continue to spread. This does not shock … Read More
April 12, 2024
(The Atlantic) – Much of the information that generative AI “learns” from is simply scraped from the open web. For that reason, the preponderance of English-language text online could mean that generative AI works best in English, cementing a cultural … Read More
April 11, 2024
(NBC News) – It was quiet, grim work for a recovery team this week as it sifted through the rubble of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Shovels in hand, it unearthed what appeared to be a femur, a shoulder blade, … Read More
April 11, 2024
(NPR) – Across the world, hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people live in areas where there’s not enough blood in at least 75% of medical cases. Last month, a coalition of 27 doctors, researchers, and patient advocates coined … Read More
April 10, 2024
(Nature) – Wamaitha and Burrows are part of a growing chorus of people speaking up about the impacts of climate change on mental health. Climate change is exacerbating mental disorders, which already affect almost one billion people and are among … Read More
April 9, 2024
(Associated Press) – Shelves have gone empty, as residents hunt in vain and resort to DIY alternatives. And surging resale prices are shocking even to Argentines accustomed to triple-digit inflation. The country’s latest crisis: There isn’t enough mosquito repellent. As … Read More
April 8, 2024
(Vox) – Adults in the prime of their lives, often otherwise outwardly healthy, are dying of aggressive cancers that appear to develop more quickly and be more deadly than in the past, for reasons that scientists cannot adequately explain. Clinicians … Read More
April 5, 2024
(STAT News) – To put these developments in perspective, STAT turned to Dutch virologist Ron Fouchier, a leading expert on H5N1, for his assessment of these latest twists in the H5 saga. Fouchier, who studies avian influenza at the Erasmus … Read More
April 3, 2024
(The Guardian) – The Israeli military’s bombing campaign in Gaza used a previously undisclosed AI-powered database that at one stage identified 37,000 potential targets based on their apparent links to Hamas, according to intelligence sources involved in the war. In … Read More
April 3, 2024
(Reuters) – Kenyan public hospital doctors who have been on strike since last month convened in two major cities on Tuesday to discuss their grievances against the government. The Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union (KMPDU), which represents over … Read More
April 3, 2024
(Nature) – Worldwide, around one-quarter of adults feel very or fairly lonely, according to a 2023 poll conducted by the social-media firm Meta, the polling company Gallup and a group of academic advisers. That same year, the World Health Organization … Read More
April 2, 2024
(Associated Press) – Several humanitarian aid organizations suspended operations in Gaza on Tuesday after Israeli airstrikes killed seven World Central Kitchen workers. The nonprofits, including World Central Kitchen, said they now need to determine whether their workers can safely provide … Read More
April 1, 2024
(Wired) – Effective altruism pitches itself as a hyperrational method of using any resource for the maximum good of the world. Here in Silicon Valley, EA has become a secular religion of the elites. Effective altruists filled the board of … Read More
March 26, 2024
(NPR) – Now, in a new perspective paper in Nature Communications, Plowright and a team of 24 ecologists, infectious disease scientists and policy experts have distilled their collective observations into three recommendations to prevent spillovers and halt epidemics and pandemics … Read More
March 21, 2024
(The Telegraph via Yahoo! News) – The world population is expected to fall for the first time since the Black Death because of plummeting birth rates, a Lancet study has found. The decline in the number of children women are … Read More
March 21, 2024
(Nature) – A small Indian biotechnology company is producing a home-grown version of a cutting-edge cancer treatment known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy that was pioneered in the United States. CAR-T therapies are used mainly to treat blood … Read More
March 18, 2024
(NPR) – Two rigorous government studies found no unusual pattern of injury or disease in the brains of people with the mysterious cluster of symptoms known as Havana syndrome. The studies involved more than 80 government employees and family members … Read More
