Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Photo A Ministry of Public Health and Population worker fumigates against mosquito breeding in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Feb. 2. Credit Andres Martinez Casares/Reuters There’s a lot we don’t know about the Zika virus, but there’s one thing I’m sure of: I had it last month. I got to Haiti in early January, a few days…
(Amy King/The Washington Post; iStock) In the aftermath of an E. coli outbreak at Chipotle that sickened dozens of people across the United States last fall and led to an overhaul of the company’s food safety practices, Americans reacted by avoiding the beloved fast-food chain. Restaurants that once sported long lines were suddenly empty, a phenomenon that was almost…
Zika, a virus that barely bothered humans until last year, has been moving. First, it made its way from Africa to a series of tiny islands in Micronesia. Then it bounced through the Pacific Ocean to Easter Island, off the coast of Chile. From there, it was on to Brazil. Now Zika has infected people…
Theranos chief executive Elizabeth Holmes gestures as she speaks at a technology conference in October (Glenn Chapman/AFP/Getty Images) Theranos, the high-profile Silicon Valley company that promised to revolutionize blood testing, was warned by federal regulators this week that its Newark, Calif. laboratory has “deficient practices” that “pose immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety,” according…
Officials from the World Health Organization said on Thursday that the Zika virus is “spreading explosively” in the Americas and announced that they would convene an emergency meeting on Monday to decide whether to declare a public health emergency. close nocontent “The level of alarm is extremely high,” said Margaret Chan, the director general of…
Calories consumed minus calories burned: it’s the simple formula for weight loss or gain. But dieters often find that it doesn’t work. The calorie is broken—and this is why. “For me, a calorie is a unit of measurement that’s a real pain in the rear.” Bo Nash is 38. He lives in Arlington, Texas, where…
The story of Flint, Michigan’s children being poisoned by lead-contaminated drinking water has, rightly, shocked and scandalized the nation. But while the situation in Flint is certainly an extreme case, the problem is much more widespread than many realize: Children in essentially every city in America are being exposed to hazardous levels of toxic lead, and…
Until recently, alcohol, like energy-dense food, was viewed as fundamentally different from tobacco in the sense that a little of what you like is fine. This contrasted with no safe level for smoking. But the new health evidence underpinning the latest alcohol guidelines in the United Kingdom suggests that it may have much more in…
It seems everyone’s on a detox for the new year, and don’t we all need one? Our bodies are full of toxic chemicals. It would be great if we could just purify ourselves with a few smoothies, right? Tough luck. Detoxes are bullshit. It’s easy to get drawn into the marketing of detoxes or cleanses…
The night before a big meeting with a Swiss drug company in 2008, Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes and a colleague sat in a Zurich hotel, sticking their fingers with a lancet. They drew drops of their own blood to try the company’s testing machine, but the devices wouldn’t work, says someone familiar with the…