The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced a new standard for testing the safety of vaccines, a “radical departure from past practices.” All new vaccines will be evaluated against a placebo, an inert look-alike that serves as a point of comparison, the department said. Health Secretary RobertContinue Reading
Kristin Kramer woke up early on a Tuesday morning 10 years ago because one of her dogs needed to go out. Then, a couple of odd things happened. When she tried to call her other dog, “I couldn’t speak,” she said. As she walked downstairs to let them into theContinue Reading
A national organization that sets practice standards for physicians has for the first time outlined how doctors can give patients pain-relief options during the insertion of intrauterine devices and other common gynecological procedures. The new guidelines, published today by The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, urge doctors to “notContinue Reading
When most people think of obsessive-compulsive disorder, they may picture behaviors they’ve seen on TV — like repetitive hand-washing, flicking light switches on and off and meticulously arranging small items over and over. But the disorder manifests in many other ways. Some patients obsess over thoughts that they might hurtContinue Reading
A few years ago, I contracted pneumonia and landed in the hospital for a few days. My nurse and I became fast friends as I asked her a thousand questions about her job. During her nightly rounds, she slipped me extra Jell-O, and we watched “Jeopardy!” together, both of usContinue Reading
Residents of Marquette, a city in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, gathered outside Planned Parenthood to celebrate and thank staffers as they finished the last day of patient care on April 23. Bobby Anttila Bobby Anttila On the last day of patient care at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Marquette, Mich., aContinue Reading
Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard researcher from Russia who has been fighting deportation proceedings since February, will now face felony smuggling charges in Massachusetts, a federal judge in Louisiana said on Thursday. Ms. Petrova made a brief court appearance Thursday morning via video from a jail in Monroe, La., near theContinue Reading
Come this fall, only older Americans and those with chronic health problems may be urged to get the Covid shot — assuming the vaccine is available at all. For years now, scientific advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been debating whether to continue to recommend thatContinue Reading
Something was very wrong with Kyle and Nicole Muldoon’s baby. The doctors speculated. Maybe it was meningitis? Maybe sepsis? They got an answer when KJ was only a week old. He had a rare genetic disorder, CPS1 deficiency, that affects just one in 1.3 million babies. If he survived, heContinue Reading
Texas State Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, one of the original sponsors of the Texas Heartbeat Act, is now the lead sponsor of a bill to clarify when a doctor can terminate a pregnancy to save the life of the mother. Eric Gay/AP Eric Gay/AP Since abortion became nearly entirely illegalContinue Reading
