Bioethics.net

September 5, 2017 9:00 am

F.D.A. Approves First Gene-Altering Leukemia Treatment, Costing $475,000 (The New York Times)

The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday approved the first-ever treatment that genetically alters a patient’s own cells to fight cancer, a milestone that is expected to transform treatment in the coming years.

August 29, 2017 9:00 am

Hunting a Killer: Sex, Drugs and the Return of Syphilis (The New York Times)

OKLAHOMA CITY — For months, health officials in this socially conservative state capital have been staggered by a fast-spreading outbreak of a disease that, for nearly two decades, was considered all but extinguished.

Syphilis, the deadly sexually transmitted infection that can lead to blindness, paralysis and dementia, is returning here and around the country, another consequence of the heroin and methamphetamine epidemics, as users trade sex for drugs.

July 7, 2017 9:00 am

Ebola outbreak in Africa ends — but gaps in public health leave region vulnerable (Nature)

“The response was good, but it would not be valid to say that this shows that we’re ready for a larger response in a bigger context — that remains to be seen,” says Daniel Bausch, director of the UK Public Health Rapid Support Team, an agency created to fill some of the gaps exposed by the 2014 crisis.

May 15, 2017 9:00 am

Ebola virus disease – Democratic Republic of the Congo (WHO)

On 11 May 2017, the Ministry of Health (MoH) of DRC informed WHO that of the five samples collected from suspected cases, one tested positive by RT-PCR for Ebola virus subtype Zaire at the Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale (INRB) in Kinshasa. Additional specimens are currently being tested and results, including sequencing, are awaited to describe the outbreak.

March 10, 2017 9:00 am

Drugs are killing so many people in West Virginia that the state can’t keep up with the funerals (Washington Post)

Deaths in West Virginia have overwhelmed a state program providing burial assistance for needy families for at least the fifth year in a row, causing the program to be nearly out of money four months before the end of the fiscal year, according to the state’s Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR). Funeral directors in West Virginia say the state’s drug overdose epidemic, the worst in the nation, is partly to blame.

March 1, 2017 9:00 am

Ebola funding surge hides falling investment in other neglected diseases (Nature)

Global funding for research on neglected diseases — which include tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria — is at its lowest level since 2007, according to the annual G-FINDER investment report by Policy Cures Research, a health-policy analysis firm in Sydney, Australia.

February 15, 2017 9:00 am

This stereotype is killing black children (Washington Post)

USA Swimming, the nation’s organizing body for the sport, has some 337,000 members — of whom only 1.3 percent are black. Today, nearly 60 years after the abolishment of Jim Crow laws that kept African Americans from pools and safe swimming places, many children still never get the chance to swim.

February 9, 2017 9:00 am

India scraps funding ties with Gates Foundation on immunization (Reuters)

A group backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that works on India’s immunization program will now be funded by the health ministry, a government official said, a move in part prompted by fears foreign donors could influence policy making.

January 17, 2017 9:00 am

The Life of a Disabled Child, From Taunts to Hate Crimes (The New York Times)

Since the days when my mother wouldn’t let my older brother go out to play stickball if I wasn’t with him, there’s been a lot of progress in attitudes toward those we now call developmentally or intellectually challenged.

December 16, 2016 9:00 am

We need to feed a growing planet. Vegetables aren’t the answer. (Washington Post)

If we’re going to feed them and us, responsibly and healthfully, vegetables are not the answer.