Opinion

AI is helping us read minds, but should we?

Since mind reading has existed only in the realms of fantasy and fiction, it seems fair to apply the phrase to a system that uses brain scan data to decipher stories that a person has read, heard or even just imagined. It’s the latest in a series of spooky linguistic feats fuelled by artificia...

Opinion

The Pacific garbage patch is now hosting a new threat

The infamous Pacific garbage patch is changing the balance of life in the seas. At least 37 species of coastal creatures — worms, crabs, shellfish and the like — have colonised the Texas-sized plastic tangle, turning it into an unnatural floating habitat.The findings, reported last week ...

Opinion

Evidence is mounting that Covid is bad for the brain

The possibility that a Covid infection could damage your brain is terrifying. Scientists have established that long Covid often manifests itself with neurological changes — brain fog, memory problems, fatigue. And some researchers have found changes in the brain after even mild cases of the vi...

Opinion

Why the future of technology is so hard to predict

They don’t make technology predictions like they used to. Just look at the amazingly prescient technological wish list famed chemist Robert Boyle jotted down in a note found after his death in 1691:“The recovery of Youth, or at least some of the Marks of it, as new Teeth, new Hair, new h...

Opinion

No, vaccines aren’t making new Covid variants worse

A new Covid variant called XBB.1.5 is driving a new wave of infections. But susceptibility to it is not, as some contend, being fueled by vaccines. Still, the surges of ever more immune-evasive variants raise legitimate questions about whether vaccines and boosters are still protecting us from infec...

Opinion

World needs to draw serious lessons from the pandemic

Whose pandemic strategy really saved lives? Which states or countries lost the most people to the virus? Or to the unintended consequences of mitigation efforts? Now there’s finally some clear, objective data emerging from the fog.The most telling statistic turns out to be the simplest: all-ca...

Opinion

Even a small nuclear war would mean mass famine

This century’s worst-case climate scenario isn’t global warming of 4 or even 5 degrees Celsius. It’s a nuclear winter that would trigger global cooling up to 12 or 13 degrees C.That would happen within weeks of the start of a nuclear war, as smoke from burning cities blotted out th...

Opinion

How to solve the Covid testing data problem

For the first time, we’re heading into a Covid winter mostly free of restrictions. People are tired of mandates and rules, tired of lining up for tests and even, as booster rates show, tired of getting shots. And so public health needs a new approach to do any good — one based not on res...

Opinion

Better cancer screenings are coming

Patients and their doctors count on cancer screening tests to save lives, and yet a number of large, controlled studies are showing disappointing results for mammography and other mass screening tests. This month, the New England Journal of Medicine published a controversial study that cast doubt on...

Opinion

Mapping our genetic ties to Neanderthals deserved a Nobel

What do Neanderthals have to do with medicine? More than enough, it turns out, to earn Svante Pääbo Monday’s Nobel Prize in medicine for sequencing the Neanderthal genome. It may sound more like a feat worthy of an anthropology prize, but scientists are already using Neanderthal DNA ...

Opinion

Svante Paabo’s work richly deserved a Nobel

What do Neanderthals have to do with medicine? More than enough, it turns out, to earn Svante Paabo Nobel Prize in medicine for sequencing the Neanderthal genome. It may sound more like a feat worthy of an anthropology prize, but scientists are already using Neanderthal DNA to make important medical...

Opinion

Latest Covid conundrum is when to get yet another shot

It feels intuitively right that a reformulated booster vaccine aimed at the omicron BA.5 variant would vastly improve our protection against it as well as any offspring that might threaten us in the fall. But intuition doesn’t always agree with scientific data.It’s not intuitive at all t...

Opinion

How worried should you be about Omicron BA.5?

The ways we think about the Covid pandemic have evolved with the virus: In 2020, it was a potentially deadly threat we could avoid by being careful; in 2021, it was something that was likely to infect everyone eventually; and now, it’s becoming seen as a persistent health hazard that can re-in...

Opinion

Fuzzy language is setting back the fight against Covid

People no longer know what to do about the Covid pandemic. Part of the problem is the very language we use to talk about it. Words such as “breakthrough,” “booster” and even “sick” mean different things to different people — and to experts and the general pu...

Opinion

Have public health officials given up on Covid-19?

We’re now in a very weird pandemic phase. On Twitter, doctors such as Eric Topol sound five-alarm warnings about the latest subvariants of omicron. Offline, even in blue states, people are back to parties, bars and restaurants — and will soon be flying around the world with no testing re...

Opinion

People, get your booster shots already

Fewer than half of eligible Americans have received a third Covid vaccine shot despite clear evidence of its benefit. That booster shot improves your odds of avoiding even mild omicron. So why haven’t more people gotten it?One reason may be that we’re all over map in our risk of getting ...

Opinion

As rapid tests replace PCRs, we need better guidance

Rapid antigen tests have been among the tools many public health experts and politicians have to ease into “living with Covid.” But many people are still skeptical about the tests’ reliability.The bigger problem may be with the advice people are getting on how to use them. It&rsquo...

Opinion

What else could Covid inflict on us?

Rabbits were the victims of the deadliest epidemic in recent history — a germ warfare attack, really — with a virus that killed off more than 99% of the 100 million rabbits inhabiting Australia in 1950. However, the virus didn’t “win” — both the virus and the rabb...

Opinion

We need better Covid booster shots

In the US, Covid cases in the Northeast are increasing again, which has some people worried about yet another surge. This is also one of the most heavily vaccinated parts of the country. While the Covid vaccines have been very effective at stopping hospitalization and death, it’s now clear the...

Opinion

We need better Covid booster shots

In the US, Covid cases in the Northeast are increasing again, which has some people worried about yet another surge. This is also one of the most heavily vaccinated parts of the country. While the Covid vaccines have been very effective at stopping hospitalization and death, it’s now clear the...