This article was originally published by Undark Magazine. When Ina Chung, a Colorado mother, first fed packaged foods to her infant, she was careful to read the labels. Her daughter was allergic to peanuts, dairy, and eggs, so products containing those ingredients were out. So were foods with labels that said they “may contain” the … Read more
Nothing compares to the perfect summer run. All winter, even through spring, I sustain myself with the dream of jogging in shorts down a dry, grass-lined path, unencumbered by puddles or black ice. But that dream is becoming more elusive. Now, in mid-June, I already dread the prospect of being outside past about 7:30 in … Read more
This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Sign up for it here. On New Year’s Day 2020, I was zipping up my fleece to head outside when the phone in the kitchen rang. I picked it up to find a reporter on the line. “Dr. Fauci,” he said, “there’s something … Read more
The only immovable object on my weekly calendar is a Sunday-night basketball game. We play in a rented gym in Washington, D.C., usually at a high school, because we’re all conserving cartilage and the local middle schools don’t place much cushioning underneath the hardwood. The game has been running for more than 20 years, but … Read more
There’s no such thing as a miracle cure for obesity, but the latest weight-loss drugs seem to come pretty close. People who take Ozempic or other weekly shots belonging to a class known as GLP-1 agonists, after the gut hormone they mimic, can lose a fifth or more of their body weight in a year. … Read more
Updated at 12:05 p.m. ET on June 7, 2024 Our most recent flu pandemic—2009’s H1N1 “swine flu”—was, in absolute terms, a public-health crisis. By scientists’ best estimates, roughly 200,000 to 300,000 people around the world died; countless more fell sick. Kids, younger adults, and pregnant people were hit especially hard. That said, it could have … Read more
“People will die if doctors misdiagnose patients.” This is true as far as it goes. But the recent news that prompted Elon Musk to share this observation on X was not precisely about medical errors. It was about what he might call the “woke mind virus.” A story by Aaron Sibarium in The Washington Free … Read more
Tomorrow, a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee will meet to discuss whether the United States should approve its first psychedelic drug. The fate of the treatment—MDMA-assisted therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder—will turn on how the FDA interprets data from two clinical trials that, on their face, are promising. Long-suffering patients who took the drug … Read more