Oct 18 Watch Vaccine Could Become ‘Another Very Powerful Weapon’ to Fight Malaria An experimental vaccine against malaria, an oftentimes-deadly disease that half the world is exposed to, is still in trials, but it could be in production by 2015. Jeffrey Brown discusses the potential impact of the vaccine with GlaxoSmithKline CEO Andrew… Continue watching
Oct 18 Study: Experimental Vaccine Cuts Malaria Cases in Half Child with severe malaria in Tanzania. Photo by Talea Miller/NewsHour. For the first time, Phase III results of an experimental malaria vaccine showed significant protection against the deadly disease, raising hopes that a vaccine could be in use… Continue reading
Oct 17 Cocaine’s Historical Ties to Rubber Gloves, Beverages, Freud’s Nightmares Dr. Howard Markel didn't need to look far for characters to help personalize his new best-selling book, "An Anatomy of Addiction." Simple snapshots of a handful of recognizable celebrities would have been enough to shed light on most… Continue reading
Oct 17 Watch Cocaine: How ‘Miracle Drug’ Nearly Destroyed Sigmund Freud, William Halsted In "An Anatomy of Addiction," medical historian Howard Markel details the cocaine addictions of Sigmund Freud and William Halsted, both medical revolutionaries a century ago. Betty Ann Bowser and Markel discuss what their stories tell us about one of modern… Continue watching
Oct 17 What Famine Refugees Are Eating Tens of thousands of Somalis have starved to death this year from drought and famine conditions, says the United Nations, bringing a new level of urgency to World Food Day activities held over the weekend. The World Food Program… Continue reading
Oct 17 PSA Testing Controversy Reignites ‘Over-Screening’ Debate Photo by AFP/Getty Images Denham Kelsey seems like a healthy man -- a chronic dog-walker, professional pilot, and occasional scuba diver. The 54-year-old from Tucson recently hauled several tons of supplies to the top of his house and replaced the… Continue reading
Oct 14 What the Death of the CLASS Act Means for Long-Term Disability Care By Jason Kane Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius; Getty Images The Obama administration reversed course on a major provision of its landmark health care reform law Friday when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the CLASS Act… Continue reading
Oct 14 Global Health Week in Tweets Each week the NewsHour's global health unit highlights what's new in the Twitterverse for our readers. Check out our Tweet picks from the world of global health this week, and be sure to send us your suggestions! Follow our global… Continue reading
Oct 13 2 Million Deaths a Year Attributed to Pollution from Indoor Cookstove Fires By Talea Miller Cooking roti in India. Photo by Flickr user Michael Foley. A woman rises at dawn to prepare food for her family, building a small fire inside the house and frying bread on a makeshift stove above it. Some variation of… Continue reading
Oct 13 Black Death’s DNA Decoded Using Teeth From London’s ‘Plague Pits’ Illustration of the Black Death from the Toggenburg Bible An international consortium of researchers announced this week that they've managed to reconstruct the genome of Black Death -- the "great-grandmother" of modern plagues and the same illness that wiped… Continue reading