March 28, 2025
A New Edition of Medico-Legal Journal Is Now Available
Medico-Legal Journal (vol. 93, no. 1_Suppl, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
Global Bioethics
March 27, 2025
China built hundreds of AI data centers to catch the AI boom. Now many stand unused.
(MIT Technology Review) – The country poured billions into AI infrastructure, but the data center gold rush is unraveling as speculative investments collide with weak demand and DeepSeek shifts AI trends. Just months ago, a boom in data center construction … Read More
March 26, 2025
World’s Largest ‘Baby Exporter’ Admits to Adoption Fraud
(New York Times) – South Korea on Wednesday admitted for the first time that in its rush to send children to American and European homes decades ago, its adoption agencies committed widespread malpractices, including falsifying documents, to make them more … Read More
March 26, 2025
U.S. to End Vaccine Funds for Poor Countries
(New York Times) – A 281-page spreadsheet obtained by The Times lists the Trump administration’s plans for thousands of foreign aid programs. The Trump administration intends to terminate the United States’ financial support for Gavi, the organization that has helped … Read More
March 25, 2025
Skin bleaching is terribly popular — and takes a terrible toll
(NPR) – Dr. Vivian Oputa, an aesthetic dermatologist, observes: “A lot of people don’t realize how dangerous this practice has been. We’ve had several cases of newborns being bleached by their parents because they don’t want the kids to be … Read More
March 24, 2025
An ‘Impossible’ Disease Outbreak in the Alps
(The Atlantic) – In one tiny town, more than a dozen people were diagnosed with the rare neurodegenerative disease ALS. Why? In March 2009, after a long night on duty at the hospital, Emmeline Lagrange took a deep breath and … Read More
March 24, 2025
One family. One attack. 132 names.
(NPR) – Investigating one of the deadliest moments of the war in Gaza. On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian militant group Hamas attacked Israel, killing nearly 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage, according to Israeli government figures. In response, Israel launched … Read More
March 20, 2025
2025 World Happiness Report shows U.S. in lowest-ever spot on list
(CBS News) – The United States this year fell to its lowest-ever place on the World Happiness Report, an annual survey published on International Day of Happiness. The 2025 report highlights the positive effects benevolence and social connections have on people’s … Read More
March 18, 2025
Parkinson’s disease numbers set to rise dramatically in coming decades
(Washington Post via MSN) – By 2050, there will be an estimated 25.2 million people living with Parkinson’s disease worldwide, a 112 percent increase from 2021, according to a new study published in the journal BMJ. The World Health Organization … Read More
March 14, 2025
Eye-Popping WHO Report Shows Measles Surging Across the Globe
(Gizmodo) – Measles isn’t just making a comeback in the United States. In a report out this week, the World Health Organization found that cases of the vaccine-preventable disease surged in Europe and Central Asia last year, reaching the highest … Read More
March 14, 2025
Aid workers warn ‘people are dying and they’re going to continue dying’ as funding cuts hit
(The Guardian) – Moves by US, UK and other donors to cut aid mean ‘high malnutrition rates, starvation and death’, say experts As the United Nations and other agencies try to understand just how badly President Donald Trump’s announced 83% … Read More
March 14, 2025
This Annual Shot Might Protect Against HIV Infections
(MIT Technology Review) – Every year, my colleagues and I put together a list of what we think are the top 10 breakthrough technologies of that year. When it came to innovations in biotech, there was a clear winner: lenacapavir, … Read More
March 13, 2025
Let’s Not Talk About It’: 5 Years Later, China’s Covid Shadow Lingers
(New York Times) – People who endured the longest Covid restrictions in the world are still grappling with what they lost: their loved ones, their livelihoods, their dignity. Perhaps no country was as deeply reshaped by the pandemic as China, … Read More
March 13, 2025
German spy agency concluded COVID virus likely leaked from lab, papers say
(Reuters) – Germany’s foreign intelligence service in 2020 put at 80%-90% the likelihood that the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic was accidentally released from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, two German newspapers reported on Wednesday. According to a joint report … Read More
March 13, 2025
A New Edition of The New England Journal of Medicine Is Now Available
The New England Journal of Medicine (vol. 392, no. 7, 2025) is available online by subscription only. Articles include:
March 6, 2025
Five years on: The countries that never locked down for Covid-19
(BBC) – Sweden, Taiwan, Uruguay, Iceland and a few others never enacted a lockdown that involved severe restrictions on the movement of people, such as legally binding stay-at-home orders applied across large swathes of the population. Those countries instead chose … Read More
March 6, 2025
Deadly H5N1 bird flu strain has hit all but 1 continent
(Axios) – The H5N1 bird flu strain has infected humans and other animals in every continent except Australia, and scientists say it could serve as a model for other countries. The big picture: The continent has seen small outbreaks of … Read More
March 6, 2025
How Covid Remade America
(New York Times) – A growing health libertarianism insists on bodily autonomy, out of anger about pandemic mitigation and faith that personal behavior can ward off infection and death. And the greatest social and technological experiment of our time, artificial … Read More
March 5, 2025
Hundreds of Children Are Among the Rape Victims of Sudan’s War, U.N. Says [Content Warning]
(New York Times) – Health providers in Sudan have recorded 221 cases of rape since the start of 2024, according to the UNICEF report. Among the victims, 147 were girls and 74 were boys. Sixteen children were younger than 5 … Read More
March 4, 2025
‘We wish we could have taken more’: 29 children evacuated from Gaza to Jordan for treatment
(The Guardian) – A slow convoy of a dozen ambulances and buses brought 25 wounded and sick Palestinian children from Gaza and across Israel on Tuesday, past the heavily armed forces that bombarded the territory for 15 months, and that … Read More
March 4, 2025
Extreme heat silently accelerates aging on a molecular level − new research
(The Conversation) – Scientists already know that extreme heat increases the risk of heat stroke, cardiovascular disease, kidney dysfunction and even death. I see these effects often in my work as a researcher studying how environmental stressors influence the aging … Read More
March 4, 2025
Chinese Company to Single Workers: Get Married or Get Out
(New York Times) – As China’s government worries about the falling birthrate, some private employers have ordered workers to do their part, or else. Last year, 6.1 million Chinese couples got married — a 20 percent decline from a year … Read More
March 3, 2025
U.S.A.I.D. Memos Detail Human Costs of Cuts to Foreign Aid
(New York Times) – The Trump administration’s decision to withdraw foreign aid and dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development is likely to cause enormous human suffering, according to estimates by the agency itself. Among them: up to 18 million … Read More
March 3, 2025
States Facing Doctor Shortages Ease Licensing Rules for Foreign-Trained Physicians
(KFF Health News) – A growing number of states have made it easier for doctors who trained in other countries to get medical licenses, a shift supporters say could ease physician shortages in rural areas. The changes involve residency programs … Read More
March 3, 2025
DR Congo conflict: 500 mpox patients flee clinics after rebel looting
(BBC) – More than 500 mpox patients have fled clinics in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo over the last month amid the current conflict. Officials at Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), a leading health agency on … Read More
