When Ashley Porter began slurring her speech one October day four years ago, doctors suspected a stroke. A spinal tap, an MRI, dozens of blood draws, another MRI, and a night spent at the hospital were followed, finally, by an answer: Porter had multiple sclerosis. Her shock turned to outrage, she said, when she received…
By MIKE MAGEE This week, New York Times political columnist, Linda Kindler reflected on “How Silicon Valley Stole the Future.” Signaling that this wasn’t simply another article on the binary choices of an AI world – or as she put it “either a world in which A.I. has eliminated all jobs, unleashed bioengineered viruses and…
Stephanie Rowell was standing on her parents’ front porch in July when a wasp stung her left arm. She said that almost immediately her arm felt like it was “on fire,” her body started itching all over, and her face became swollen and red. Rowell, 53, took Benadryl, and her father started driving her to…
PAGE, Ariz. — Doug Herrera still lives in the house his father built, though his dad died some time ago from cancer. Herrera wonders if that illness could have been linked to pollutants from nearby uranium mining. Now, he worries that a possible new neighbor — a proposed $10 billion mega data center — could…
CREVE COEUR, Mo. — Reneé Luckfield tries not to knock like a cop. In fact, the 29-year-old spends a lot of time thinking about how to make strangers comfortable when she shows up at their door to talk about transgender healthcare. A syncopated “tap — tap-tap-tap” sounds friendly even when she knocks loudly. In each…
Hospital units dedicated to treating the nation’s sickest kids are disappearing nationwide. In the past year alone, hospitals have closed pediatric intensive care units for critically ill kids in Montana, Oregon, and Missouri. Overnight hospital wings for kids have also shuttered in Illinois and California. Depending on the hospital, pediatric units — which are separate…
Karlo Campana is usually outnumbered these days. He has three young kids under age 4. On a recent Saturday, he played a mini game of basketball with his two older kids in their Southern California home, shooting a ball into a hoop on the door, while his baby boy watched from his bouncy chair. Campana…
By KIM BELLARD Let’s say your favorite social media platform is bought by a right wing trillionaire, who espouses free speech, but only when it echoes his. You can switch to, say, Threads, but – whoops – that’s owned by Mark Zuckerberg, another of the super-rich who have turned to the right. There’s always Facebook…
By XAVIER WARTELLE The Metric Healthcare Could Never Move One statistic should capture the attention of every hospital executive. A peer-reviewed analysis published in Medical Care examined HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) performance across nearly 4,000 U.S. hospitals over an eleven-year period. Nearly every measured category improved meaningfully except one. Overall…
This article was produced in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence in America. Sign up for its newsletters here. JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — In a Florida county with a startling rate of child firearm injuries, a boarded-up elementary school named for famed educator and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune sits in…