Digital health company Celero Systems is developing an electronic pill that can measure heart rate, breathing rate, and core temperature—from inside the human stomach. As a first step, the company envisions people with ongoing conditions using the digital capsule to monitor their vital signs at home. But in the future, …
Read More »Jennifer Doudna Believes Crispr Is for Everyone
It’s been a monumental year for Crispr, the molecular tool scientists use to edit genetic material. This November, the United Kingdom authorized the first medical treatment using Crispr gene editing, giving people with sickle cell disease new opportunities to receive a one-time therapy to prevent episodes of terrible pain. This …
Read More »Was Bobi the World’s Oldest Dog—or a Fraud?
On October 21, 2023, Bobi the dog died. As with most celebrity deaths, the press coverage was wall-to-wall, but Bobi’s demise wasn’t unexpected. At 31 years and 163 days (or 217 in “human” years), he was old. So old, in fact, that in February 2023 Bobi had been crowned the …
Read More »Ozempic Could Also Help You Drink Less Alcohol
Ozempic and Wegovy’s usefulness might not stop at weight loss. For more than a decade, research has emerged that similar drugs used to treat diabetes have a surprising side-effect: They make people want to drink less alcohol—way less. The apparent effectiveness of drugs like semaglutide won’t come as a surprise …
Read More »The Race to Find What’s Making America’s Dogs Sick
Copper, a tan-and-brown mixed-breed, spent October fighting for his life. The Missouri dog first got sick on October 7, a light cough quickly progressing into a wet hacking one, loss of appetite, and lowered blood oxygen levels. When antibiotics didn’t help, he was admitted to the ICU at his local …
Read More »Dr. Ishwaria Subbiah Is Reimagining Cancer Care
Some people struggle with what they want to be when they grow up. For Dr. Ishwaria Subbiah, the decision to be a doctor was so easy that she calls it a “no-brainer.” “Medicine was a way of life for me. I’m a third generation of doctors and second generation of …
Read More »A Cutting-Edge Cancer Treatment May Cause Cancer. The FDA Is Investigating
The US Food and Drug Administration says it is investigating cases in which some patients who received a type of cutting-edge cancer treatment later developed new cancers. Known as CAR-T cell therapy, the treatment involves removing certain immune cells called T cells from patients and genetically modifying them to find …
Read More »How to Set Your Thermostat—According to Science
The house in New Jersey came with a menagerie of control panels. Pallid little rectangles with fuzzy LCD screens, of varying brands and designs. Some were decades old, and there were six of them in total, dotted around various rooms. Joe Truncale, a customer engineer at Google, remembers trying to …
Read More »Dr. Paula Johnson Is Breaking Down the Barriers to Better Health
When she considers how far she’s come, Dr. Paula Johnson sees the path that brought her from being a public school kid in Brooklyn to being the first Black woman president of Wellesley College and a tireless advocate for equity in medicine. It’s a path that refined her life’s work …
Read More »Dust Is So Much More Than You Realize
I’ve got a complicated relationship with my Roomba, Keith, who sometimes refuses to charge but also works his wheels off ridding my home of dust. I hate dust, both because I’ve got allergies and because a good chunk of the particulates are toxic microplastics. Modern humans wage an unwinnable battle …
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