Every time the Olympics come around, it seems there’s a different disease stalking the event. At Rio 2016 it was Zika. At the postponed Tokyo games it was Covid. And at the 2024 Paris Olympics this summer? Take your pick. Authorities have been working to contain both dengue and measles, …
Read More »Anthony Fauci Worries About the Next Pandemic—But Worries More About Democracy
Bound in a book, Anthony Fauci is finally unbound. For 54 years, the nation’s leading pandemic expert stuck to science and public health policy in his public statements, because he had to. As a federal official—who spent the last 38 of those years as the director of the National Institute …
Read More »The Race for the Next Ozempic
In the 1980s, researchers identified a hormone in the human gut called GLP-1 that triggers the release of insulin, which controls blood sugar levels. The discovery would eventually launch a new class of diabetes drugs known as GLP-1 receptor agonists, the first of which was approved in 2005. The drugs …
Read More »The Highly Infectious FLiRT Variants Behind the Summer Covid Wave
This story originally appeared on WIRED Japan and has been translated from Japanese. The northern hemisphere is entering yet another Covid wave—while much of the world acts as if the pandemic were over, cases are surging again. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recorded an uptick …
Read More »Abortion Rights Groups Rush to Back Kamala Harris
Reproductive rights organizations have been quick to come out in support of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee after President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he would drop out of the presidential race and endorse Harris instead. Harris could be an even stronger proponent …
Read More »Why Paris 2024 Olympic Athletes Are Sleeping on Cardboard Beds
This story originally appeared in WIRED Italia. It has been translated from Italian. Yes, the athletes' beds at the Paris 2024 Olympics are indeed made of cardboard. The paper-based berth news, which has aroused curiosity and some skepticism after some videos of athletes circulated online, was confirmed by the organizers …
Read More »The Global IT Outage Sends Hospitals Reeling
It was half past midnight Eastern Time when Andrew Rosenberg, an anesthesiologist and critical care doctor who works as chief information officer at Michigan Medicine, suddenly noticed that a substantial number of computers across the health care center had ceased to function. In the hospital’s parlance, it counted as a …
Read More »Pancreatic Cancer Turns Off a Key Gene in Order to Grow
THIS STORY ORIGINALLY appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian. Pancreatic cancer turns off one of our most important genes in order to be able to grow and spread, new research published in the journal Gastro Hep Advances has found. The cancer is one of the most …
Read More »It’s Shockingly Easy to Buy Off-Brand Ozempic Online, Even if You Don’t Need It
The health care industry has never encountered anything quite like Ozempic before. First approved to treat Type 2 diabetes, this drug and others like it—known as GLP-1 agonists—hit blockbuster status because of their remarkable success rate as weight-loss aids. (Although it’s become shorthand for this type of drug, Ozempic is …
Read More »Everything Samsung Announced at Galaxy Unpacked in Paris
It's a big day for Samsung. At its biannual Galaxy Unpacked event—held today in Paris just weeks before the Olympics kickoff—Samsung took the wraps off of eight new devices, one of which is an entirely new product category for the company: a health-tracking smart ring. The Galaxy Ring arrives at …
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