On April 22, Jason Stephany, a researcher in a yeast lab, received an email from his co-worker, a woman whose husband has a fast-growing blood cancer called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). She explained that her husband would need a bone marrow transplant. In patients with ALL, the bone marrow produces hordes of immature white blood […]
*Warning: This post starts with a story, ends with a rant, and has little to do with science. Read at your own risk. In 2001, I joined the Peace Corps and moved to a tiny village in the middle of Bolivia called Chuqui Chuqui. My job description was vague. I taught some English. I gave […]
Since the launch of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988, intense vaccination campaigns have dramatically reduced the number of cases of polio worldwide. Between 1988 and 2000, the number of polio cases dropped 99 percent — from 350,000 to just 3,000. But the polio eradication effort appears to have stalled out. Despite an investment […]
Last week, my neighborhood health food store ran out of potassium iodide, a compound that can prevent thyroid cancer in people exposed to high doses of radiation. When I called the store, an employee told me demand has been high “ever since the incident in Japan.” I live in Brooklyn, New York, nearly 7,000 miles […]
Please allow me to introduce a new person of LWON . . . Sally Adee, a technology features editor at New Scientist and an all around top-notch human being. I first met Sally in 2006, when we were both starry eyed graduate students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Back then she was obsessed with […]
Baltimore has a hard-core drug problem. The evidence is unmistakable. Head down an alley in the wrong part of town and you’re liable to find a discarded needle, some broken vials, and maybe even a shell casing or two. Why, yes. That was a gunshot. See that guy on the corner? No, he’s not tired. […]
“The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.” – George S. Patton Early American warfare has always seemed — to me, at least — rather quaint. Men in uniforms line up in a grassy meadow. They march toward one another. They fire, reload, […]
January 3rd was a bad day for Cee. That morning she had a colonoscopy. The procedure went smoothly. But afterward, Cee felt ill. Something wasn’t right. She had a bite to eat, poured a glass of milk, and told her husband she was going to lie down. She set the milk on her nightstand. Then […]