articles
NASA astronauts say they’d fly the Boeing craft again: ‘I’d get on in a heartbeat’
Their craft’s mechanical issues led to a stay in space that was 35 times longer than originally scheduled, an eight-day mission that ultimately clocked in at 286 days. Yet both of NASA’s unlikely celebrity astronauts say they’d go again—on the same Boeing Starliner that failed them once. “We’re going to rectify all the issues that we encountered. […]
‘Moon to Mars—That’s our outlook’: NASA astronaut Suni Williams on her hopes for the future
For NASA’s Sunita “Suni” Williams, a scheduled eight-day trip to the International Space Station last summer has instead become a nine-month work assignment. Williams, 59, and fellow astronaut Butch Wilmore initially remained at the ISS last June after the Boeing Starliner craft they were aboard malfunctioned. Officials ultimately decided to return the Starliner to Earth uncrewed last September, while William […]
RFK Jr. touts vitamin A and cod liver oil as another death is reported in growing measles outbreak. Health experts warn the move is ‘misleading the public’
When U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently wrote that vitamin A “can dramatically reduce measles mortality,” he was remarking on what happens after someone gets infected, not before. Kennedy knows, as he wrote in that same op-ed, that what actually prevents measles is a vaccine. Yet Kennedy, in discussing the fatal measles outbreak in West Texas, […]
New bird flu variant found in Nevada dairy cows has experts sounding alarms: ‘We have never been closer to a pandemic from this virus’
The disclosure that dairy herds in Nevada have been infected by a version of the H5N1 bird flu not previously seen in cows, has put virologists and researchers on high alert. Among other things, the news from the Nevada Department of Agriculture, suggests that driving the virus out of the U.S. cattle population won’t be nearly as […]
Largest-ever Ozempic and GLP-1 drug study finds they lower risk of 42 health conditions, including heart attacks and Alzheimer’s disease
Drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy were already off to fast starts because of their ability to help treat Type 2 diabetes and improve weight loss for millions of Americans. But a new study suggests that those may represent only a small sample of the potential uses of the drugs. The study, led by researchers at […]
Bird flu will be the next pandemic unless health officials take 6 critical steps, experts say
In its announcement this week of the first human death from bird flu in the United States, health officials in Louisiana were quick to note that the patient was over age 65 and “reported to have underlying medical conditions.” If the goal of that description was to calm the waters around the passing of the patient, whose case was […]
California declares a state of emergency as a new severe bird flu case was discovered. What it means for the rest of the country
Health officials in the most populous state in the country have seen where the bird flu story appears to be heading, and they’re determined to stay ahead of it. Whether the rest of the nation is willing to follow suit remains to be seen. On the same day that the first severe case of the avian […]
Canadian teenager in critical condition with presumptive bird flu as U.S. official warns the virus ‘seems to be gearing up for wider impact’
As a Canadian teenager’s condition worsened amid the first presumptive positive test for bird flu in that country in over a decade, health officials were struggling to answer a broader and potentially worrisome question: how the infection occurred. None of the obvious connections to an H5N1 influenza case were in play, according to Dr. Bonnie […]
Bird flu begins its human spread, as health officials scramble to safeguard people and livestock
Almost from the beginning of the spread of H5N1 bird flu among farms and ranches in the U.S. earlier this year, experts and researchers warned that a critical lag in the blood testing of exposed workers might lead to an underestimation of the virus’s potential transmission to humans. Those warnings have proved prophetic. And the federal Centers […]
COVID-19 raises the stakes for heart attacks, strokes, and even death long after infection, new study finds
Practically from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers and medical experts feared–and often loudly warned–that the virus wasn’t like other infections that people might encounter during, say, flu season. SARS-CoV-2 was different. It was worse. And the potential long-term effects, as we reported two years ago, were even more worrisome. A new large-scale study puts those longer-range […]
