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Why Measles Deaths Are Surging–and Coronavirus Could Make it Worse

A viral outbreak has killed more than 6,500 children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and is still spreading through the country. The foe isn’t the feared coronavirus, which has only just reached the DRC. It’s an old, familiar and underestimated adversary: measles. Cases began to spike here in October 2018. Children became […]

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Can Coal Survive the Coronavirus?

Add U.S. coal to the list of industries threatened by the novel coronavirus. Part of its problem is conditions that precede the pandemic. U.S. coal plants are an aging bunch. Weak electricity demand has only intensified competition with gas and renewables. The weather has been a drag on American miners, too; a warm winter helped […]

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How People with Autism Forge Friendships

It is lunchtime on a Sunday in January. At a long table inside a delicatessen in midtown Manhattan, a group of young people sit together over sandwiches and salads. Most of them have their phones out. One boy wears headphones around his neck. But there is less conversation than you might expect from a typical […]

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Our Knowledge of Viruses Is Badly Inadequate

Living through the COVID-19 pandemic, we are all now seeing the consequences of a failure to plan ahead when an event is predictable but the timing is uncertain. The inattention paid by America’s political leadership to the recommendations, or even the existence, of the Pandemic Influenza Plan prepared in 2017 is having tragic consequences as […]

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Not Just Ventilators: Staff Trained to Run Them Are in Short Supply

Governor Andrew Cuomo has warned that New York State is running out of time to get enough ventilators to treat the sickest coronavirus patients. Without them, vastly more New Yorkers could die. But the number of ventilators is not the only bottleneck: hospitals around the country are worried that a surge in COVID-19 patients will […]

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Quest to Use CRISPR Against Disease Gains Ground

The prospect of using the popular genome-editing tool CRISPR to treat a host of diseases in people is moving closer to reality. Medical applications of CRISPR–Cas9 had a banner year in 2019. The first results trickled in from trials testing the tool in people, and more trials launched. In the coming years, researchers are looking […]