Rob Kennedy mingled with about a dozen other people in a community space in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania. The room, decorated with an under-the-sea theme, had a balloon arch decked out with streamers meant to look like jellyfish and a cloud of clear balloons mimicking ocean bubbles. Kennedy comes to this memory cafe twice a month since being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease in his...
Focus
What does it mean for Biden’s prostate cancer to be aggressive? A urologic surgeon explains
Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative was started in honor of his son, Beau Biden, who died from brain cancer. AP Photo/Elise Amendola ~~~~~ Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. But what does it mean for this type of cancer to be called aggressive? As a urologic surgeon who specializes in diagnosing and treating...
How stress shapes cancer’s course
Studies show psychological strain can accelerate tumors — could beta blockers slow them down? About two millennia ago, the Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen suggested that melancholia — depression brought on by an excess of “black bile” in the body — contributed to cancer. Since then, scores of researchers have investigated the association between cancer and the mind, with some going as far...
Trump Pick to Run DEA Could Challenge America’s Already Tense Relations With Mexico
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. In the spring of 2019, as a new Mexican government shut down most of its cooperation with the United States in the fight against drug trafficking, a small group of American drug agents decided to confront the problem in a different way. Sifting...
How cancer cells travel to new tissues and take hold
Understanding these astonishing migrations through the human body, known as metastases, could suggest novel treatments Back in 2014, a woman with advanced cancer pushed Adrienne Boire’s scientific life in a whole new direction. The cancer, which had begun in the breast, had found its way into the patient’s spinal fluid, rendering the middle-aged mother of two unable to walk. “When did this...
The Colorado Psychedelic Mushroom Experiment Has Arrived
BOULDER, Colo. — Colorado regulators are issuing licenses for providing psychedelic mushrooms and are planning to authorize the state’s first “healing centers,” where the mushrooms can be ingested under supervision, in late spring or early summer. The dawn of state-regulated psychedelic mushrooms has arrived in Colorado, nearly two years since Oregon began offering them. The mushrooms are a...