TimeMagazine “My first reaction was to be angry,” says JoAnn Wooding. “I’ve gotten over that, and frustration is more the word right now.” Wooding’s husband, Peter, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016, was among the more than 3,200 people with the disease who volunteered to test a promising drug called aducanumab. Made by Biogen, a … Read more
I have spent my entire career interested in the mysteries of the brain: what it looks like, how it works and what happens when it doesn’t. Alzheimer’s disease has been the primary focus of my professional life, starting as a young researcher looking at brain scans, and leading up to now, as the head of … Read more
It’s karaoke-rehearsal time at Knollwood Military Retirement Community, a 300-bed facility tucked away in a leafy corner of northwest Washington, D.C. Knollwood resident and retired U.S. Army Colonel Phil Soriano, 86, has hosted the facility’s semi-monthly singalongs since their debut during a boozy snowstorm happy hour in 2016. For the late August 2019 show, he’ll … Read more
Some of the most cutting-edge — and effective — treatments in medicine are unaffordable to the majority of people who need them, with price tags sometimes exceeding $1 million. A new initiative from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is meant to change that unfortunate reality. Over the … Read more
Illness is universal, health care is not. Over half of the world’s 7.3 billion people, including 1 billion in rural communities, lack access to health care. Approximately 13 million children still go without a single dose of any vaccine. Nearly 9 million newborns, children and mothers still die each year from preventable or treatable conditions. … Read more
The suicidal thoughts started when Kristina Mossgraber was 17. A loud voice in her head told her that she was a bad person, a failure, better off dead. She cut herself in secret and told no one about the thoughts slamming around her brain, except her pediatrician, who dismissed them as normal teen angst. But … Read more
Artificial intelligence has the potential to radically change health care. Imagine a not too distant future when the focus shifts away from disease to how we stay healthy. At birth, everyone would get a thorough, multifaceted baseline profile, including screening for genetic and rare diseases. Then, over their lifetimes, cost-effective, minimally invasive clinical-grade devices could … Read more
In the beginning, there were single-cell bacteria. They were the only life on earth for billions of years, then larger cells evolved, then multicellular organisms, and then plants and animals. But the bacteria never went away, and all organisms, including us humans, have had to learn to live with them. Today, the lessons they are … Read more
Ever since the discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950s, scientists have been dreaming about rewriting the code of life. What if we could correct genetic mutations that cause disease in order to radically improve human health? Harnessed from the naturally occurring immune system that bacteria use to defend themselves against viruses, CRISPR-Cas9 … Read more
In recent years we have witnessed incredible advances in science and technology that improve the care we deliver to patients. But if people can’t take their medication because they don’t have a home, or have to choose between buying food and medication, then this innovation means little. Health is about so much more than the … Read more