In his first meeting with top executives from PepsiCo, W.K. Kellogg, General Mills and other large companies, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, bluntly told them that a top priority would be eliminating artificial dyes from the nation’s food supply. At the Monday meeting, Mr. Kennedy emphasized that it was a “strong desire and…
Dalvin Modore walked as if there was broken glass beneath his feet, stepping gingerly, his frail shoulders hunched against the anticipation of pain. His trousers had become so loose that he had to hold them up as he inched around his small farm in western Kenya. Mr. Modore has tuberculosis. He is 40, a tall…
Republican leaders in Congress have directed the committee that oversees Medicaid to cut $880 billion from the next budget. They say these cuts aren’t necessarily aimed at Medicaid, the insurance program for 72 million poor and disabled Americans. The cuts could come from Medicare, for instance. But Trump has vowed not to touch that very…
We asked 19 photographers to revisit their most enduring images of the coronavirus pandemic, five years after the virus became a global threat. Their photographs transport us to that bewildering period in an uncanny sort of time travel. The journalists who captured these scenes were not just covering the Covid-19 story but living through it….
Five years after Covid-19 shut down activities all over the world, medical historians sometimes struggle to place the pandemic in context. What, they are asking, should this ongoing viral threat be compared with? Is Covid like the 1918 flu, terrifying when it was raging but soon relegated to the status of a long-ago nightmare? Is…
Researchers have corrected a disease-causing gene mutation with a single infusion carrying a treatment that precisely targeted the errant gene. This was the first time a mutated gene has been restored to normal. The small study of nine patients announced Monday by the company Beam Therapeutics of Cambridge, Mass., involved fixing a spelling error involving…
More than 100,000 Americans are on waiting lists for donor organs, most needing a kidney. Only 25,000 human donor kidneys become available each year. Twelve Americans on the kidney list die every day on average. Scientists first transplanted genetically engineered pig organs into other animals and then to brain-dead human patients. In 2022, researchers received…
In a sweeping interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, outlined a strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas that strayed far from mainstream science, relying heavily on fringe theories about prevention and treatments. He issued a muffled call for vaccinations in the affected community, but said the choice…
Five years ago, Covid took hold and the world transformed almost overnight. As routines and rituals evaporated, often replaced by grief, fear and isolation, many of us wondered: When will things go back to normal? Could they ever? Today, for many, the coronavirus pandemic seems far away and foggy, while for others it’s as visceral…
Women’s brains are superior to men’s in at least in one respect — they age more slowly. And now, a group of researchers reports that they have found a gene in mice that rejuvenates female brains. Humans have the same gene. The discovery suggests a possible way to help both women and men avoid cognitive…