STAT
There was an opioid epidemic 130 years ago. Can it teach us anything about today’s crisis?
The 1890s and 1990s were both characterized by unopposed amplification of the benefits of opioids, the transformation of physicians into ...
Viewpoint: 4 ways the FDA must evolve to deal with fast-moving technologies and health threats
As we look toward the FDA of the 2020s that can achieve further progress in addressing urgent health threats and ...
Is the quest for profits getting in the way of ending the HIV epidemic?
Four decades after the HIV epidemic began, there’s finally hope it might end. Indeed, “Getting to Zero” — meaning zero ...
Those childhood vaccinations for tetanus and diphtheria should cover you for life, study says
People who got all their vaccinations against tetanus and diphtheria in childhood don’t need booster shots to remain protected against ...
Seeking new momentum in Alzheimer’s research after decades of slow progress
5.8 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, with a new person developing the condition about every minute of every day. There is still ...
‘A real mystery’: Why hasn’t anyone attempted to make a cloned human baby?
For nearly seven years, then, the scientific community has had solid proof that human embryos can be cloned. ... So ...
Viewpoint: We still haven’t agreed on the definition of biological aging. That needs to change
I’ve been committed to understanding the biology of aging since I was a teenager, and my education and career took ...
Viewpoint: My daughter taught me that ‘broken’ genes shouldn’t always be fixed
Ruthie is a vibrant teenager. She will never learn how to drive and or read normal-sized print without assistive technology, ...
Viewpoint: ‘Hunches’ can’t be used to decide the fate of ‘covertly conscious’ patients in vegetative states
[A]s many as 15% to 20% of patients who have been rigorously diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state ...
Unconventional drug ‘lottery’ will hand out 50 doses of Zolgensma, world’s most expensive gene therapy
The lottery that began [recently] was not about money, or about choosing a school, or about obtaining a visa. It ...
Viewpoint: We can’t trust research about the benefits of marijuana if the studies are industry funded
Imagine that scientists charged with doing research on tobacco’s health implications were funded by tobacco companies. (In fact, the tobacco ...
If China’s coronavirus isn’t contained soon, we may be stuck with it permanently
With the new coronavirus spreading from person to person (possibly including from people without symptoms), reaching four continents, and traveling faster than ...
Viewpoint: AI has one glaring weakness in health care: There’s no human touch
It might be that, as physicians who work in a public health care system that relies on fax machines, carbon ...
Viewpoint: Confronting coronavirus outbreak requires us to cope with our own ‘paralyzing’ fears
Fear is a primal emotion, and to pretend that the medical staff are any less susceptible than the general public ...
Viewpoint: Chronic pain sufferers are needlessly ‘stigmatized’ and how we can change that
Millions of people who live with chronic pain experience intense stigma. I view stigma as the combination of difference plus ...
‘We’ve only begun to scratch the surface’: How the cannabis boom opens the door to new medicines and wellness products
Cannabis, and what it might be able to do for human health, inspires me. And I think it can do ...
A video game for ADHD? We’re still waiting to see what the FDA thinks
In mid-2018, the startup Akili Interactive Labs asked the Food and Drug Administration to let it do something that’s never ...
Refining CAR-T therapy could halt ‘violent, life-threatening’ immune reactions
CAR-T cells that have been so successful against some leukemias and lymphomas often cause a violent and even life-threatening immune ...
Aging is ‘truly personal’: You could have the immune system of a teenager and the metabolism of a 50-year-old
One 50-year-old has the nimble metabolism of a teenager, while another’s is so creaky he developed type 2 diabetes — ...
Psychedelics have ‘extraordinarily potent’ anti-inflammatory power. Is there a place for them in mainstream medicine?
Research on psychedelics, which have been profoundly stigmatized, highly restricted, and tragically undeveloped for more than half a century, is ...
Some patients in vegetative states have functioning minds. Keeping them alive may amount to ‘torture’
[Researchers] have convincingly demonstrated that a subset of individuals in persistent vegetative states have meaningfully functioning minds — even as ...
‘We need it now’: Why precision medicine isn’t doing enough for children with cancer
Precision medicine, the concept of giving the right treatment to the right patient at the right time, is flourishing in ...
CBD fraud? Fate of controversial CBD industry could be decided by lawsuits alleging misleading marketing
Since the Food and Drug Administration can’t figure out whether supplements that contain cannabidiol, the marijuana-adjacent oil known as CBD, are ...
Rapid genetic sequencing marks key step in China’s efforts to contain mysterious new viral outbreak
Chinese scientists have recovered a previously unknown virus from an infected individual and generated a full genetic sequence of it, ...
Second opinion? Google AI spots breast cancer more accurately than radiologists, in trial
Researchers at Google, working alongside experts at Northwestern University and three British medical institutions, have created an AI model that ...
Viewpoint: In 100 years, we’ll be honoring controversial CRISPR scientist He Jiankui
When I saw the news that He Jiankui and colleagues had been sentenced to three years in prison for the first human ...
Would the US prosecute a rogue scientist like China’s He Jiankui who illegally gene edited an embryo?
13 months after He Jiankui announced that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies, the Chinese scientist was sentenced to ...
