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Category: Health

‘Forever chemicals’ may pose a bigger risk to our health than scientists thought

‘Forever chemicals’ may pose a bigger risk to our health than scientists thought

Science News reports: For decades, chemicals that make life easier — your eggs slide out of the frying pan, stains don’t stick to your sofa, rain bounces off your jackets and boots — have been touted as game changers for our busy modern lives. “Better things for better living … through chemistry,” was the optimistic slogan coined by DuPont, the company that invented the widely used chemical coating Teflon. But this better living has come at a cost that is getting…

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Depressed, powerless, angry: Why frustration at China’s zero-Covid is spilling over

Depressed, powerless, angry: Why frustration at China’s zero-Covid is spilling over

The Observer reports: Victoria Li* has experienced several lockdowns since Covid emerged in China almost three years ago. Being a prisoner in her own home in Beijing made her feel depressed, powerless and angry. “Being stuck at home with my door sealed, I felt unmotivated to do anything,” she said. “I didn’t want to work, I didn’t want to study. Sometimes, I crept into my bed and cried,” said the lawyer, who is in her 20s. Even when she was…

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Treating long Covid is rife with guesswork

Treating long Covid is rife with guesswork

Blake Farmer writes: Medical equipment is still strewn around the house of Rick Lucas, 62, nearly two years after he came home from the hospital. He picks up a spirometer, a device that measures lung capacity, and takes a deep breath — though not as deep as he’d like. Still, Lucas has come a long way for someone who spent more than three months on a ventilator because of Covid-19. “I’m almost normal now,” he said. “I was thrilled when…

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Honeybees are living half as long as they were 50 years ago

Honeybees are living half as long as they were 50 years ago

New Scientist reports: Honeybees kept under laboratory conditions in the US only live half as long as they did in the 1970s, suggesting that genetics could be contributing to colony losses, and not just environmental factors such as pesticides and sources of food. Five decades ago, the median lifespan for a worker western honeybee (Apis mellifera) that spent its adult life in a controlled environment was 34.3 days. Now, the median is 17.7 days, according to research by Anthony Nearman…

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COVID-19 origins: Investigating a ‘complex and grave situation’ inside a Wuhan lab

COVID-19 origins: Investigating a ‘complex and grave situation’ inside a Wuhan lab

By Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair, and Jeff Kao, ProPublica “A Secret Language of Chinese Officialdom” Toy Reid has always had a gift for languages — one that would carry him far from what he calls his “very blue-collar” roots in Greenville, South Carolina. In high school, Spanish came easily. At nearby Furman University, where he became the first person in his family to attend college, he studied Japanese. Then, “clueless but curious,” as he puts it, he channeled his fascination…

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Humans are 8% virus. How the ancient viral DNA in your genome plays a role in human disease and development

Humans are 8% virus. How the ancient viral DNA in your genome plays a role in human disease and development

Pandemics over the course of evolution have led to the integration of viruses into our genome. Westend61via Getty Images By Aidan Burn, Tufts University Remnants of ancient viral pandemics in the form of viral DNA sequences embedded in our genomes are still active in healthy people, according to new research my colleagues and I recently published. HERVs, or human endogenous retroviruses, make up around 8% of the human genome, left behind as a result of infections that humanity’s primate ancestors…

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CDC officials describe intense pressure, job threats from Trump White House, harming pandemic response

CDC officials describe intense pressure, job threats from Trump White House, harming pandemic response

The Washington Post reports: Trump appointees oversaw a concerted effort to restrict immigration at the U.S.-Mexican border during the pandemic, change scientific reports and muzzle top officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to emails, text messages and interviews gathered by a congressional panel probing the pandemic response. Former CDC Director Robert Redfield, former top deputy Anne Schuchat and others described how the Trump White House and its allies repeatedly “bullied” staff, tried to rewrite their publications…

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Long Covid plagues 1 in 20 people more than six months after infection

Long Covid plagues 1 in 20 people more than six months after infection

The Washington Post reports: A new long-covid study based on the experiences of nearly 100,000 participants provides powerful evidence that many people do not fully recover months after being infected with the coronavirus. The Scottish study found that between six and 18 months after infection, 1 in 20 people had not recovered and 42 percent reported partial recovery. There were some reassuring aspects to the results: People with asymptomatic infections are unlikely to suffer long-term effects, and vaccination appears to…

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America is choosing to remain vulnerable to pandemics

America is choosing to remain vulnerable to pandemics

Ed Yong writes: Recently, after a week in which 2,789 Americans died of COVID-19, President Joe Biden proclaimed that “the pandemic is over.” Anthony Fauci described the controversy around the proclamation as a matter of “semantics,” but the facts we are living with can speak for themselves. COVID still kills roughly as many Americans every week as died on 9/11. It is on track to kill at least 100,000 a year—triple the typical toll of the flu. Despite gross undercounting,…

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How a secretive far-right network attacks abortion rights across the globe

How a secretive far-right network attacks abortion rights across the globe

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports: Things were tough enough for Nelly Munyasia, the executive director of Kenya’s Reproductive Health Network. Then came a surge of hateful propaganda targeting her and others working in reproductive health. Munyasia says that as she saw her face appear on social media posts calling her a killer, she and her fellow targets were able to identify the strange driving force behind this sudden tide of hostility. CitizenGO is an online community that claims to…

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These male politicians are pushing for women who receive abortions to be punished with prison time

These male politicians are pushing for women who receive abortions to be punished with prison time

CNN reports: A businessman turned state representative from rural Oil City, Louisiana, and a Baptist pastor banded together earlier this year on a radical mission. They were adamant that a woman who receives an abortion should receive the same criminal consequences as one who drowns her baby. Under a bill they promoted, pregnant people could face murder charges even if they were raped or doctors determined the procedure was needed to save their own life. Doctors who attempted to help…

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Graham’s abortion ban stuns Senate GOP

Graham’s abortion ban stuns Senate GOP

Politico reports: Lindsey Graham’s anti-abortion legislation once unified the Republican Party. The 15-week abortion ban he pitched Tuesday had the exact opposite effect. The South Carolina senator chose a uniquely tense moment to unveil his party’s first bill limiting abortion access since this summer’s watershed reversal of Roe v. Wade. It was designed as a nod to anti-abortion activists who have never felt more emboldened. Yet Graham’s bill also attempted to skate past a Republican Party that’s divided over whether…

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Brain fog: One of long Covid’s worst symptoms is also its most misunderstood

Brain fog: One of long Covid’s worst symptoms is also its most misunderstood

Ed Yong writes: On March 25, 2020, Hannah Davis was texting with two friends when she realized that she couldn’t understand one of their messages. In hindsight, that was the first sign that she had COVID-19. It was also her first experience with the phenomenon known as “brain fog,” and the moment when her old life contracted into her current one. She once worked in artificial intelligence and analyzed complex systems without hesitation, but now “runs into a mental wall”…

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Once a ‘quintessential pro-life Texan,’ she had to flee her home state to get an abortion

Once a ‘quintessential pro-life Texan,’ she had to flee her home state to get an abortion

CNN reports: Nine years ago, Cade DeSpain messaged a friend about a cute girl he saw on her Facebook feed. The friend introduced him to Kailee Lingo, her sorority sister at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. Kailee remembers that when she and Cade met, it was “a connection at first sight.” A month after college graduation, Kailee and Cade married in Marble Falls, Texas. They’re both proud to be native Texans: Kailee’s family has lived there for generations, and…

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What you need to know about the new omicron booster shots

What you need to know about the new omicron booster shots

Science News reports: Revamped COVID-19 vaccines are poised to do battle with the super-contagious omicron variant. On September 1, U.S. health officials greenlit the first major update of the mRNA-based shots, reformulated to recognize both the original version of SARS-CoV-2 and the recently circulating versions of omicron. Those mRNA vaccine boosters could start going into arms within days. “They can help restore protection that has waned since previous vaccination and were designed to provide broader protection against newer variants,” Rochelle…

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The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading

The pandemic erased two decades of progress in math and reading

The New York Times reports: National test results released on Thursday showed in stark terms the pandemic’s devastating effects on American schoolchildren, with the performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropping to the levels from two decades ago. This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests began tracking student achievement in the 1970s, 9-year-olds lost ground in math, and scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years. The…

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