Health

Desperate Americans Are Getting Botox for Their Teeth

When mouth guards fail, are injections the answer?

The COVID Data That Are Actually Useful Now

Move over, case rates and hospitalizations. The next generation of COVID tracking is here.

Don’t Pay for Cord-Blood Banking

Umbilical blood can be a valuable treatment for rare diseases. But that doesn’t mean you need to pay thousands of dollars to bank your baby’s.

Doctors Still Struggle to Diagnose a Condition That Kills More Americans Than Stroke

Can computers crack the code of sepsis?

The Masks We’ll Wear in the Next Pandemic

N95s are good. Some scientists want to do much better.

Medium COVID Could Be the Most Dangerous COVID

After you’re infected, the first few months may pose the greatest risks.

I Was Allergic to Cats. Until Suddenly, I Wasn’t.

No one quite knows why some allergies disappear and others don’t.

What Doctors Still Don’t Understand About Long COVID

Even mild COVID-19 is at least correlated with a startlingly wide spectrum of seemingly every illness. We need a much better taxonomy to address people’s suffering.

Warning Signs About the First Post-pandemic Winter

It may not be as bad as last year’s … but it certainly won’t be good.

The Pandemic’s Legacy Is Already Clear

All of this will happen again.

Effective Altruism’s Philosopher King Just Wants to Be Practical

“Somehow people feel like unless you’re doing the most extreme version of your views, then it’s not justified,” Will MacAskill says.

When’s the Perfect Time to Get a Flu Shot?

Experts can’t agree.

Long COVID Has Forced a Reckoning for One of Medicine’s Most Neglected Diseases

Only a couple dozen doctors specialize in chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Now their knowledge could be crucial to treating millions more patients.

The Glory of Feeling Fine

People seem cursed to take being well for granted. Can we change?

The ‘End’ of COVID Is Still Far Worse Than We Imagined

Even now, the coronavirus is killing three times as many people as the flu.

Fauci Addresses ‘The Pandemic Is Over’

President Biden’s controversial remarks, Fauci says, are a matter of “semantics.”

The Fatal Error of an Ancient, HIV-Like Virus

It got too cozy with its host.

The Other Abortion Pill

In the U.S., medication abortion usually consists of two drugs. One of them has always mattered more.

Hundreds of Americans Will Die From COVID Today

Is this what normal now looks like?

Polio Is Exploiting a Very Human Weakness

The world has been so close to eradicating polio for so long—which is exactly why the virus is staging a comeback now.