As the Trump administration clamped down on the country’s medical research funding apparatus in recent months, scientists and administrators at the National Institutes of Health often privately wondered how much autonomy the agency’s director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, had. After all, the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s signature cost-cutting project, helped drive decisions to cancel…
Nine years ago, one of the world’s leading artificial intelligence scientists singled out an endangered occupational species. “People should stop training radiologists now,” Geoffrey Hinton said, adding that it was “just completely obvious” that within five years A.I. would outperform humans in that field. Today, radiologists — the physician specialists in medical imaging who look…
President Trump has long railed against drug traffickers. He has said they should be given the death penalty “for their heinous acts.” On the first day of his second term, he signed an executive order listing cartels as “terrorist organizations.” But many public health and addiction experts fear that his budget proposals and other actions…
Another long-term concern is pulmonary fibrosis, a progressive disease in which scarring thickens and hardens lung tissue, making it difficult for oxygen to move into the bloodstream. Dr. Elsayegh describes a lung with pulmonary fibrosis as “a stiff balloon from the party store” — your face flushes as you try to force air inside, but…
St. Louis has been battered by two tornadoes in the past two months. A fire shut down a new nursing home last month in Enterprise, Ala., forcing residents to evacuate. Cleveland grappled with a power outage while inundated with visitors for the N.C.A.A. women’s basketball Final Four. In each case, local health officials played a…
A man lay on a New York City sidewalk with a gun shot wound, clutching his side. Emily Borghard, a social worker who hands out supplies to the homeless through her nonprofit, found him and pulled out her phone, preparing to dial 911. But the man begged her not to make the call, she said….
Donald Trump is the face of these cuts, but the cruelty of his administration is not the only story. After leaping upward in the 2000s, global giving for health grew very slowly through the 2010s. The culture of philanthropy has changed somewhat, too, with the age of the Giving Pledge — in which hundreds of…
Every year, tens of thousands of young women opt to freeze their eggs, an expensive and sometimes painful procedure. As more Americans postpone childbearing, the numbers are growing. But there are many unknowns: What is the optimal donor age for freezing? What are the success rates? And critically: How long do frozen eggs last? The…
Two independent medical practices in Minnesota once hoped to expand operations but have spent the past year struggling to recover from the cyberattack on a vast UnitedHealth Group payment system. Odom Health & Wellness, a sports medicine and rehabilitation outfit, and the Dillman Clinic & Lab, a family medicine practice, are among the thousands of…
Sybil Shainwald, a lawyer who for nearly half a century represented women whose health had been irreparably and often catastrophically harmed by poorly tested drugs and medical devices, died on April 9 at her home in Manhattan. She was 96. Her daughter Laurie Shainwald Kleeger announced the death, which was not widely reported. Ms. Shainwald…