Washington Post
Viewpoint: Why attacks on the concept of ‘objective truth’ are escalating
Attacks on the concept of objective truth are not new. Left-wing attacks on objectivity date at least to the 1970s, ...
Vaccine rejectionism takes hold as a Republican litmus test
What began as “vaccine hesitancy” has morphed into outright vaccine hostility, as conservatives increasingly attack the White House’s coronavirus message, ...
73% drop in HIV infections over the past 40 years
HIV infections have declined by 73 percent nationwide since peaking in the mid-1980s, according to the Centers for Disease Control ...
‘Cutting nickel-size holes in your skull and plunging in metal-tipped electrodes’: Could deep brain stimulation cure drug addiction?
After nearly two decades of hardcore drug addiction — after overdoses and rehabs and relapses, homelessness and dead friends and ...
Does your college require a COVID shot to return this fall? It mostly depends if you are in a red or blue state
More than 500 colleges and universities plan to require coronavirus vaccination for at least some of their students and employees, ...
The horrific scale of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre has not been fully catalogued — until now, using forensic analysis of remains found in a mass grave
Forensic scientists and archaeologists investigating a mass grave near the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre have unearthed skeletal ...
Find coffee bitter? Taste-linked gene identified that could be protecting millions of people from getting COVID
People’s perception of taste (coffee tasting very bitter, slightly bitter or not bitter at all, for example) has been known ...
Vaccine disinformation and conspiracy theories run wild in California among Mexican farm workers. Here’s what’s being done to address that
For months, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories had ripped across northern California’s wine country, invisible wildfires of untruth spreading through some of ...
While much of the world moves towards mandatory vaccine passports, the US rejects them. Here is a less intrusive alternative that could enhance public safety: CDC vaccination cards
Rather than waste any more time squabbling over passports, which aren’t going to be created at a national level, let’s ...
Viewpoint: Reassessing the reassessments of COVID’s origins — The Wuhan lab leak theory is still the less likely scenario but we may never know for sure
How did the pandemic start? From the early days, experts have considered two possibilities. Either the virus somehow escaped from ...
COVID-19 may have arrived in US as early as December 2019, NIH says
[A] new report, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, bolsters earlier studies indicating the virus entered the country under ...
After a fertility clinic freezer filled with 3,500 frozen eggs and embryos malfunctioned, many families lost their only chance at having kids. A jury just awarded them $15 million in damages
[In March 2018, a] tank storing frozen human embryos and eggs at Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco had failed, ...
Video: China boasted about its bat cave virus research — before denying its existence. Here’s the government’s propaganda short issued in December, weeks before the outbreak became public
In [a video released by the Chinese government,] researchers scale [a] cavern wall, their headlamps ghostly blue. “If our skin ...
‘They can put a key on their forehead. It sticks’: Ohio GOP embraces crackpot doctor’s view that COVID vaccines magnetize people and interface with 5G towers
[Cleveland-based doctor Sherri Tennpenny, an] anti-vaccination advocate known for spreading unfounded claims falsely told legislators that [COVID shots] could leave ...
Russia approves first animal COVID vaccine to protect vulnerable species and thwart viral mutations
While many scientists say the virus causing covid-19 initially jumped from bats to humans, perhaps through another intermediary, infections have ...
FDA approves first Alzheimer’s drug in nearly 20 years — but some experts say there’s not enough evidence it actually works
[On June 7, the FDA approved Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab,] the first drug cleared that is designed to alter the course ...
‘It’s out-competing other viruses’: Killer Indian COVID strain spreads dark cloud over growing global recovery
India [has] set another coronavirus milestone. [On May 19th], authorities announced the country had recorded more than 4,500 deaths from ...
Sprawling science disinformation network: Steve Bannon teamed up with Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui to spread COVID misinformation through ‘thousands of social media accounts’
A sprawling online network tied to Chinese businessman Guo Wengui has become a potent platform for disinformation in the United ...
From Trumpian conspiracy theory to credible scenario: Here’s the Wuhan lab-leak theory timeline
[I]n recent months the idea that [SARS-CoV-2] emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — once dismissed as a ...
‘We don’t want to be human guinea pigs’: Vaccine-rejecting medical workers sue, invoking Nuremberg Code designed to prevent experimentation on human subjects
A group of 117 unvaccinated staffers from Houston Methodist Hospital filed a lawsuit [May 28] seeking to avoid the hospital’s ...
How did the Wuhan lab leak theory go from conspiracy theory hunch to genuine national security question?
Throughout much of the pandemic, the “lab leak” hypothesis has been ridiculed by scientists as a baseless conspiracy theory, fueled ...
Aquaplastic derived from E. coli confronts the plastic waste crisis? Made from gut bacteria, this genetically engineered biodegradable material completely dissolves in 45 days
Using genetically engineered E. coli, scientists from Northeastern University, Harvard, Johns Hopkins and elsewhere say they turned E. coli into ...
Viewpoint: Do people gain weight because of genes or personal choices? Here’s why the answer is so complex
More than 40 percent of adults in the United States qualify as obese, and an elevated body mass index has ...
We will need COVID tests for years to come, posing challenges for poorer countries. Here’s how trained, virus-detecting bees could be a godsend
Dutch researchers on [May 10] said they have trained honeybees to stick out their tongues when presented with the virus’s ...
No, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene: Requiring proof of vaccinations—COVID or otherwise—is not a violation of HIPPA (sic) rights
Some Americans, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), are balking at [questions about COVID vaccine status from businesses, employers, and ...
One-third of veterans have rejected COVID vaccines. This Veteran Affairs mobile van unit is trying to convert them, but it’s not going well
The rugged communities that stretch from eastern Washington through the Idaho Panhandle into northwestern Montana include some of the country’s ...
4 in 10 healthcare workers have not gotten a COVID vaccine and many say they never will
Health-care workers were the first group in the United States to be offered coronavirus vaccinations. But three months into the ...
Impact of the pandemic: US birth rate falls to lowest level in almost 50 years
New provisional data released [May 5] by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the birthrate in 2020 dropped ...
