On LWON’s first birthday, Richard Panek asked me to explain why being circumcised makes a man less likely to catch HIV. So I will. Here you go, Richard. Let’s be honest. Foreskin is weird. The rules of evolution suggest that it once conferred an advantage, but I can’t fathom what that advantage might have been. […]
Cassandra
One year ago today, the People of LWON published their first post. It was by Josie Glausiusz, it was on flesh-eating algae, and we thank her for setting that tone. Writing LWON — that is, writing what we want to and in the way we want to write it — turns out to be a […]
When antiretroviral drug cocktails hit the scene in 1996, they were so effective they became known as ‘the Lazarus drug.’ Many AIDS patients recovered seemingly overnight. Over the past 15 years, these drugs have saved the lives of millions of people infected with HIV. Several new studies suggest antiretrovirals could save millions more if we […]
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 […]