When Purdue Pharma agreed last month to plead guilty to criminal charges involving OxyContin, the Justice Department noted the role an unidentified consulting company had played in driving sales of the addictive painkiller even as public outrage grew over widespread overdoses. Documents released last week in a federal bankruptcy court in New York show that…
In excruciating pain with lesions on her face and scalp, Tracey Fine lay for 13 hours on a gurney in an emergency room hallway. All around her, Covid-19 patients filled the beds of the hospital in Madison, Wis. Her nurse was so harried that she could not remember Ms. Fine’s condition, and the staff was…
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has no shortage of ideas about how to transform caregiving. One striking feature of his team’s plan: It does not address elder care separately from child care, or divide plans to support family caregivers from those for paid caregivers. Rather, it takes on Medicaid benefits for older and disabled adults,…
“We’re jumping in here?” I ask my sister, as we rush to jam fins on our feet and sling snorkels over salty ponytails. Nervousness lodges in my throat as I consider the blue deep that goes on forever under the catamaran’s rolling hull. Her husband keeps the 40-foot boat a short distance from the waves…
HONG KONG — First, it was travelers and university students bringing the coronavirus back to Hong Kong from Europe and the United States. Then, sea crews and bar patrons were the ones spreading infections. In the latest wave, a large cluster appears to have started in ballroom dancing halls that are popular with older women,…
In a 1988 essay on pandemics Joshua Lederberg, Nobel laureate and president of The Rockefeller University, reminded the medical community that when it comes to infectious disease, the laws of Darwin are as important as the vaccines of Pasteur. As medicine battles bacteria and viruses, those organisms continue to undergo mutations and evolve new characteristics.…
We’ve all been there. Whether we’re stuck in traffic at the end of a long day, or eagerly anticipating the release of a new book, film or album, there are times when we need to be patient. Learning to suppress the impulse for instant gratification is often vital for future success, but how patience is…
Dr. Mary Fowkes, a neuropathologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan whose autopsies of Covid-19 victims early in the pandemic discovered serious damage in multiple organs — a finding that led to the successful use of higher doses of blood thinners to treat patients — died on Nov. 15 at her home in Katonah, N.Y.,…
WASHINGTON — When President Trump talks about efforts to deliver the coronavirus vaccine to millions of Americans eager to return to their normal lives, he often says he is “counting on the military” to get it done. Mr. Trump has given the impression that troops would be packing up vials, transporting them from factories to…
Earlier this month, Farah Khemili popped a wintergreen breath mint in her mouth and noticed a strange sensation: a bottom tooth wiggling against her tongue. Ms. Khemili, 43, of Voorheesville, N.Y., had never lost an adult tooth. She touched the tooth to confirm it was loose, initially thinking the problem might be the mint. The…