Last Word

Wealth can buy health – but only to a point. marekuliasz/iStock via Getty Images Plus ~~~~~ Americans at all wealth levels are more likely to die sooner than their European counterparts, with even the richest U.S. citizens living shorter lives than northern and western Europeans. That is the key finding of our new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. We also found that while...

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Since at least April 2021, the Montana medical licensing board has had evidence, including thousands of pages of patient files and medical reviews, that Dr. Thomas C. Weiner, a popular Helena oncologist, had hurt and potentially killed patients,...

Can genetically modified animals help ease the shortage of organs? After years of research into xenotransplantation, the field is at a turning point — yet risks and ethical issues remain. More than 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for a new heart, kidney or some other organ. Many will die waiting. Some scientists see new hope for these people in organs from pigs that have been...

Some private schools have shut down because of a rapidly escalating measles outbreak in West Texas. Local health departments are overstretched, pausing other important work as they race to limit the spread of this highly contagious virus. Since the outbreak emerged three weeks ago, the Texas health department has confirmed 90 cases with 16 hospitalizations, as of Feb. 21. Most of those infected...

Flawed thinking can lead us into a lifetime of pointless arguments and bad decisions. Fixing the problem won't be easy — but we know how to do it. Life in 21st-century America is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for the faint of mind. Every day seems to pile fresh burdens on us. We have to process a tsunami of unfamiliar and frequently contradictory information, and then make the best...

A scientific journal on Tuesday retracted the March 2020 study that introduced the world to hydroxychloroquine early in the COVID-19 pandemic – and confirmed that the attention was undeserved from the start…The International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, which is owned by Elsevier and the International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, issued a formal retraction.   USA Today,...