Health

In March 2023, the Japanese medical authorities announced that the new weight loss drug Wegovy—which was in staggering demand across the world, causing shortages everywhere—had been approved to treat obesity in their country. It sounded, at first glance, like great news for Novo Nordisk, the company that makes Ozempic and Wegovy. But industry outlet the Pharma Letter explained that this would not in fact turn out to be much of a boost. They predicted that these drugs would dominate the market in Japan, but that won’t mean much, for a simple reason: there is almost no obesity there. Some 42% of Americans are obese, compared with just 4.5% of Japanese people. Japan, it seems, is the land that doesn’t need Ozempic.I wondered how this could be, and if the answer might offer me a way out of a d...

If you are newly suspicious about the safety of the products in your medicine cabinet, there’s a good chance you have Valisure, a tiny laboratory in New Haven, Conn., to thank. Or blame. Tucked away in an unassuming office park, Valisure’s team of about a dozen scientists has over the past five years detected potentially cancer-causing chemicals in widely used medications, hand sanitizers, sunscreens, antiperspirant body sprays, dry shampoos, and—most recently—acne treatments. When Valisure sounds the alarm about a new scary-sounding finding, a flood of headlines, lawsuits, and product recalls often follows. The company is helping to shatter an illusion that some 80% of Americans believe: that the products they buy have been through enough safety testing to be proved not harmful.“Most cons...

If H5N1 turns into a full-blown pandemic, we are currently in chapter one. To prevent chapter two from becoming a reality, the most important tool in our arsenal will be widespread testing. Testing isn’t just about diagnosing people with the virus. Containing the spread of this highly pathogenic bird flu strain in cattle hinges on our ability to detect and track it. The H5N1 outbreak in dairy cows is widespread and spans multiple U.S. states. Although only one human infection with the virus has been documented, more infections are likely going undetected. Most importantly, unchecked transmission among cattle means the virus is increasingly bumping up against humans. Every human exposure, in turn, provides an opportunity for new mutations that could enable human-to-human transmission.The U....

Gina Moffa’s fear of flying took off early. When she was 10, her mother—overwhelmed by bad turbulence on a flight to Italy—clambered to the emergency exit and tried to get out of the plane. A fellow passenger offered her Valium, and a nun onboard prayed the Rosary with her. “And then she was OK,” says Moffa, now a grief therapist based in New York City. “But it taught me there was something to be afraid of.”That hasn’t lessened over the years. Moffa recently returned from a “precarious adventure” to the Portuguese island Madeira that involved flying in a tiny 12-seater plane for nearly three hours over the Atlantic. She almost didn't board. “They were like, ‘Ma'am, you're going to make us late—we have to get on before the winds come,’” she recalls.If your heart also takes a nosedive while ...

(TOKYO) — Loaves of bread have been taken off store shelves in Japan after the remains of “a small animal” believed to be a rat were found.Production of the bread was halted at a Tokyo factory, with 104,000 packages being recalled, according to Pasco Shikishima Corp.The company apologized and promised compensation.“We will do our utmost to strengthen our quality controls so that this will never happen again. We ask for your understanding and your cooperation,” it said in a statement this week.Japanese media reports said at least two people who bought the bread in Gunma Prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, complained to the company about finding a rodent in the bread.The bread had been sold in various areas, including Ibaraki, Niigata, Kanagawa, Fukushima, Aomori and Tokyo, according to Pasco.Th...

(DES MOINES, Iowa) — As Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin began thinking about ways to prevent starvation and protect the world's food supply, they came up with what Fowler called “the craziest idea anybody ever had” — a global seed vault built into the side of an Arctic mountain.About 20 years ago, Fowler, now the U.S. special envoy for Global Food Security, and Hawtin, an agricultural scientist from the United Kingdom, envisioned the so-called “doomsday vault” as a backup spot for seeds that could be used to breed new crops if existing seed banks were threatened by wars, climate change or other upheaval. On Thursday, officials in Washington announced that Fowler and Hawtin would be named 2024 World Food Prize laureates for their work.“To a lot of people today, it sounds like a perfectly re...

Sunscreen is a $10 billion business, with a seemingly endless array of products available for sale. Walk into your local drugstore and you’ll find chemical and mineral formulas in virtually every SPF count and format imaginable, from creams to sprays to sticks. So which one should you throw in your beach bag this summer? Here’s how to choose the right sunscreen, according to dermatologists.What’s the difference between chemical and mineral sunscreens?There are two major types of sunscreen: chemical and mineral (also known as physical) formulas. They serve the same purpose—preventing sunburns and other skin damage from the sun’s UV radiation—but they do so in different ways. Sunscreens made from the minerals titanium dioxide and zinc oxide create a physical barrier atop the skin that reflec...

More than 321,000 children in the U.S. lost a parent to a drug overdose from 2011 to 2021, an alarming figure that shows the nation’s obligation to “comprehensively address the needs of individuals, families and communities” when tackling the growing overdose crisis, experts say.A new study published Wednesday in the medical journal JAMA Psychiatry found that the rate of children who lost a parent to an overdose more than doubled in that decade span, jumping from 27 to 63 children per 100,000. In total, the study estimates that 321,566 children in the U.S. lost a parent to a drug overdose in that time span. And while the rates of loss increased consistently each year across all demographics examined in the study, people of color were disproportionately affected by this trend.The highest nu...

(NEW YORK) — All dogs coming into the U.S. from other countries must be at least 6 months old and microchipped to help prevent the spread of rabies, according to new government rules published Wednesday.The new rules require vaccination for dogs that have been in countries where rabies is common. The update applies to dogs brought in by breeders or rescue groups as well as pets traveling with their U.S. owners.“This new regulation is going to address the current challenges that we’re facing,” said Emily Pieracci, a rabies expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was involved in drafting the updated regulations.The CDC posted the new rules in the federal register on Wednesday. They take effect Aug. 1 when a temporary 2021 order expires. That order suspended bringing in d...

Dr. Jesanna Cooper cried when she heard that the labor and delivery unit at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham, Ala., would close in October 2023. She’d started delivering babies at the hospital in 2013, and had helped make it one of the best maternity care centers in the U.S., a huge accomplishment in a state with one of the highest rates of maternal mortality.   Princeton Baptist is located in a low-income part of Birmingham where birthing mothers often had serious complications. But Cooper and her partners in private practice worked with the hospital to bring in midwives, reduce the number of C-sections, and lower the amount of obstetric trauma women experienced. "We realized that we could really change an entire community's health trajectory," she says. Yet Cooper left the ...