December 7, 2023
(The Guardian) – San Francisco is facing its deadliest year ever for drug overdoses, a trend blamed on the surge of powerful synthetic fentanyl in the US’s illicit drug supply. In the first nine months of 2023, the northern California … Read More
December 7, 2023
(Vice News) – Microplastics have recently entered the public consciousness for finding their way into our bodies and to some of the most remote places on Earth. But now, a much smaller, potentially much more nefarious, and less understood threat … Read More
December 7, 2023
(Wall Street Journal) – The U.N. said its operations were near collapse and it was unable to send aid beyond the strip’s southernmost city of Rafah, and only patchy delivery to Khan Younis. Israeli military restrictions have made it impossible to distribute … Read More
December 6, 2023
(Nature) – The approval of yet another RNA-based vaccine for COVID-19 might not seem momentous. But the endorsement last week by Japanese authorities of a jab against SARS-CoV-2 constructed using a form of RNA that can make copies of itself … Read More
December 6, 2023
(The Free Press) – I’ve spent years trying to understand the mental health crisis among teenage girls. But both sexes are suffering. Since 2015, I have been trying to solve a mystery: all of a sudden, around 2013, rates of … Read More
December 5, 2023
(STAT News) – Given the widespread acceptance that the current flu vaccines could use improvement, are mRNA shots the answer? As the scientific world waits for published data on which to formulate conclusions, STAT spoke to influenza and vaccine experts … Read More
December 5, 2023
(Reuters) – Vaccines and treatments that could help tackle an mpox epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo are lying unused outside the country despite a death rate far higher than from the global outbreak that began last year. Stigma, … Read More
December 4, 2023
(New Scientist) – Vaccines can be delivered through the skin using ultrasound. This method doesn’t damage the skin and eliminates the need for painful needles. To create a needle-free vaccine, Darcy Dunn-Lawless at the University of Oxford and his colleagues … Read More
December 4, 2023
(STAT News) – For years health experts have argued that criminalizing marijuana use was a mistake, and that rather than handling the drug as a law enforcement problem, with cops, lawyers, and jails, we should manage it as a public … Read More
December 4, 2023
(Wired) – Ozempic and Wegovy’s usefulness might not stop at weight loss. For more than a decade, research has emerged that similar drugs used to treat diabetes have a surprising side-effect: They make people want to drink less alcohol—way less. … Read More
December 1, 2023
(New York Times) – The rate of suicides involving guns in the United States has reached the highest level since officials began tracking it more than 50 years ago, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control … Read More
December 1, 2023
(ABC News) – Progress in women’s health since the 1960s is backsliding, with millennial and Gen Z women facing heightened risks to their physical well-being and safety compared to their moms or grandmothers, according to a report released on Thursday … Read More
December 1, 2023
(STAT News) – A new study published this week in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that while hospitalizations of adults with congenital heart disease stayed stable from 2010 to 2020, the proportion of admissions for those who … Read More
December 1, 2023
(Axios) – The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a proposal on Thursday that would require most U.S. cities to replace lead water pipelines within 10 years. Why it matters: The EPA estimates that 9.2 million lead pipelines bring water to … Read More
November 30, 2023
(STAT News) – Many commonly suggested ways to address climate change present few ethical challenges: Cut fossil fuels. Eat less meat. Don’t buy fast fashion. But what happens when products that contribute to climate change also save lives — millions … Read More
November 30, 2023
(Axios) – A record number of people in the United States died of suicide last year, while the country’s suicide rate reached the highest level in over 80 years, according to new federal data. The big picture: The startling statistics … Read More
November 30, 2023
Bioethics (vol. 37, no. 9, 2023) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “When Offering a Patient beneficial Treatment Undermines Public Health” by Nir Eyal and Bridget Williams “Opt?out, Mandated Choice and Informed Consent” by Ben Saunders
November 29, 2023
(The Atlantic) – According to the FDA, people qualify for prescriptions of Wegovy and Zepbound—the obesity-drug versions of the diabetes medications Ozempic and Mounjaro—only if their BMI is 3o or higher, or 27 or higher with a weight-related health issue … Read More
November 29, 2023
(The Guardian) – What is new is the emerging field of environmental neuroscience, which seeks to explore why – and how – our brains are so profoundly affected by being in nature. You are probably aware of studies showing that … Read More
November 28, 2023
(New York Times) – By midway through this year, 47 countries were reporting serious measles outbreaks, compared with 16 countries in June 2020. Nigeria is currently facing the largest diphtheria outbreak in its history, with more than 17,000 suspected cases … Read More
November 28, 2023
The American Journal of Bioethics (vol. 23, no. 11, 2023) is available online by subscription only. Articles include: “Ethical Responsibilities for Companies That Process Personal Data” by Matthew S. McCoy “Slowing the Slide Down the Slippery Slope of Medical Assistance … Read More
November 27, 2023
(Axios) – There’s an emerging debate around a popular class of anti-obesity drugs: whether patients who go on themcan ever expect to stop taking them. Why it matters: The drugs represent an important shift in treating obesity as a chronic … Read More
November 27, 2023
(Associated Press) – South Africa, Colombia and other countries that lost out in the global race for coronavirus vaccines are taking a more combative approach towards drugmakers and pushing back on policies that deny cheap treatment to millions of people … Read More
November 27, 2023
(Reuters) – China’s health ministry on Sunday urged local authorities to increase the number of fever clinics as the country grapples with a surge in respiratory illnesses in its first full winter since easing COVID-19 restrictions. The spike become a … Read More
November 24, 2023
(New York Times) – In the two years since its emergence, Omicron has proved to be not only staggeringly infectious, but an evolutionary marvel, challenging many assumptions virologists had before the pandemic. It has given rise to an impressive number … Read More
