Many people use a smartwatch to monitor their cardiovascular health, often by counting the number of steps they take over the course of their day, or recording their average daily heart rate. Now, researchers are proposing an enhanced metric, which combines the two using basic math: Divide your average daily heart rate by your daily … Read more
The Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, Dr. Peter Marks, abruptly resigned Friday, saying in a searing letter that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s aggressive stance on vaccines was irresponsible and posed a danger to the public. “It has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather … Read more
The City of Fort Worth, Texas, is ending its contract with Synagro, the Goldman Sachs-backed provider of fertilizer made from sewage sludge, over concerns that “forever chemicals” in the fertilizer are contaminating local farmland and groundwater. Fort Worth this month also sued several manufacturers of the chemicals, also called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, … Read more
The silent season is drawing to a close. All winter, there was little birdsong to lift my heart. The occasional caw of a crow, the chickadee-dee-dee of a chickadee, the big song of the little Carolina wren that now stays on our Pennsylvania farm all winter. But no courtship call of great horned owls, no … Read more
Another eclipse is upon us. On Saturday, the moon will cast its shadow on Earth’s surface, a phenomenon that people in parts of the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Russia and Africa will get to experience as a partial solar eclipse. It is only partially as impressive as the total solar eclipse that cut … Read more
A steadfast figure in the anti-vaccine movement who has helped shape Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s thinking on a possible link to autism has joined his department to work on a study examining the long-debunked theory, according to people familiar with the matter. The new analyst, David Geier, has published numerous articles in the … Read more
The American Psychological Association, which sets standards for professional training in mental health, has voted to suspend its requirement that postgraduate programs show a commitment to diversity in recruitment and hiring. The decision comes as accrediting bodies throughout higher education scramble to respond to the executive order signed by President Trump attacking diversity, equity and … Read more
A New York county clerk on Thursday blocked Texas from filing a legal action against a New York doctor for prescribing and sending abortion pills to a Texas woman. The unprecedented move catapults the interstate abortion wars to a new level, setting the stage for a high-stakes legal battle between states that ban abortion and … Read more
The Biden administration required coal- and oil-burning power plants to greatly reduce emissions of toxic chemicals including mercury, which can harm babies’ brains and cause heart disease in adults. Now, the Trump administration is offering companies an extraordinary out: Send an email, and they might be given permission by President Trump to bypass the … Read more
Nolen: The first TB patient that I sat down with in Nairobi was a man who had extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB — essentially there’s a just a very slim chance that the only drugs we know about will actually cure him. We’re out of options. And he’d come in that day, like he had … Read more