Science writer at Gizmodo and pug aficionado elsewhere
Truly, 2018 has been a year filled with news that made us look blankly ahead and utter ‘wat’ into the void, frozen in confusion, every day. But there were a few stories that were cream of the crop when it came to their sheer weirdness. And that’s especially true within the world of science and health.
For all the good that antibiotics do, relying on them too much can have pretty drastic drawbacks. In particular, their overuse can help create bacterial superbugs resistant to future antibiotics. But a new study published this week in JAMA Psychiatry suggests there’s another, more subtle consequence of antibiotic use,…
The manufacturer of a common infants’ over-the-counter pain medication is pulling some of its products off the shelves of several big box and discount stores, over concerns that the affected products might be too potent for infants to take.
A team of doctors in Brazil have announced a medical first that could someday help countless women unable to have children because of a damaged or absent uterus. In a case report published Tuesday in the Lancet, they claim to have successfully helped a woman give birth using a transplanted uterus from a deceased donor.
A common rite of passage—having your wisdom teeth pulled—might be raising the risk of teens and young adults becoming addicted to opioids, a new study out Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests. Youngsters who are prescribed opioids by their dentist, often for wisdom tooth extractions, are more likely to abuse…
The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has reached an especially tragic milestone. According to the World Health Organization, the outbreak is now the second-largest recorded in Ebola’s 42-year-long known history.
An elusive medical advance might finally be within grasp, one that could make some couples’ sex lives a lot more convenient. This week, researchers officially kicked off the first wide-scale clinical trial of a male contraceptive topical gel.
In recent years, doctors have explored an unorthodox method to address cases of depression that haven’t responded to other treatments: sending precise electrical shocks directly to areas of a patient’s brain, otherwise known as deep brain stimulation (DBS). While the technique has shown some promise, its positive…
The health of the United States remains in decline, according to a series of new reports released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Life expectancy in the U.S. has once again declined from the previous year, extending a years-long slide the likes of which we haven’t seen since the World War I…
Just as Americans prepared to gorge on their Thanksgiving meals last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention blasted out an ominous warning: Throw out and definitely do not eat any romaine lettuce, since it might contain potentially deadly E. coli bacteria. But this Monday, following further…
No place is safe from the scourge of superbugs, a new study suggests, not even space. According to the study, samples of bacteria resistant to several antibiotics have been found on the International Space Station (ISS). And while the bacteria may not have made any astronauts sick, the authors say it’s pretty likely…
Pediatricians in the UK have finally answered one of life’s grand riddles: Just how long would it take for a Lego toy accidentally swallowed by someone to gracefully make its way back out?
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is taking things up a notch to investigate a mysterious polio-like disease that’s paralyzing young children. Earlier this week, the agency announced it would form a task force to better treat and confirm the cause of acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), seemingly in response to…
Earlier this July, the pharmaceutical company Pfizer announced price jumps for many of its brand name drugs, including the smoking cessation aid Chantix and the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. But less than a month later, the company reversed course, seemingly bending to pressure from President Donald Trump, who…
The FDA calls teen vaping an “epidemic,” but the influence of e-cigarettes on teens’ overall health might be more complicated than assumed, according to a new study out Thursday in the journal Tobacco Control. It suggests that while teens and young adults in the U.S. did start flocking to e-cigarettes these past few…
One of the strangest things that can sicken us—a rogue misfolded protein that destroys the brain, known as a prion—is even scarier than we knew. Researchers were able to find the prions responsible for sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), the most common prion disease in people, seeded everywhere in the eyes of…
Dogs have been everything we’ve ever needed them to be, including volunteers for clinical trials of drugs meant for both people and pooches. Sadly, these furry test subjects are sometimes euthanized at the end of these experiments, because it’s deemed the only way to get the accurate test results scientists are…
The Food and Drug Administration has taken its hardest swing yet against teen vaping—though not as hard as we were expecting. On Thursday, FDA chief Scott Gottlieb unveiled a series of steps aimed at forcing the e-cigarette industry to work harder at keeping its products out of the hands of minors. Chief among them is…
Heart disease has long been the number one killer in the United States. But a new study out this week is the latest to suggest that it’s only a matter of time before the second leading cause of death—cancer—becomes more commonly fatal for the average person. On the bright side, though, that’s largely because we’ve…
The vaping industry looks set to undergo a seismic shift in how it sells and markets its products, starting with its biggest U.S. player, Juul Labs.
Advertisement
