Robert Bazell

The push by AIDS activists for an effective treatment was a breakthrough in the medical industry. It showed the power of a grassroots movement to spur the government and Big Pharma to action. But it had a dangerous and lasting side effect.Photograph by Cagkan Sayin / Shutterstock Three decades ago, a small group from within […]

  After I got my second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, a wave of euphoria infused me along with the modified messenger RNA. Many friends describe the same feeling. This is the end of the pandemic for me. Life returns to normal.  But then my usual, pessimistic view of life returned along with an examination […]

Medical research director Eric Topol sees light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.

The time it takes to ship COVID test samples to central labs and back is a burden—people risk infection as they wait days, sometimes weeks, for results.Photograph by MIA Studio / Shutterstock Imagine that every morning your child and her classmates take a COVID-19 test that offers results within a half hour, showing the transmission […]

  The images are everywhere: People crowded face-to-face in swimming pools, shoulder-to-shoulder in indoor bars, cheering without masks at a rally held by President Trump, who often downplays the global pandemic. Now, as many public health experts predicted, waves of new COVID-19 infections and deaths are rolling across the South and West. Many, still practicing […]

The COVID-19 death rate in Sweden has exposed worldwide bias against the elderly.

  When I worked as a TV reporter covering health and science, I would often be recognized in public places. For the most part, the interactions were brief hellos or compliments. Two periods of time stand out when significant numbers of those who approached me were seeking detailed information: the earliest days of the pandemic […]

There are many challenges to developing a vaccine that will be successful against COVID-19.eamesBot / Shutterstock Wayne Koff is one of the world’s experts on vaccine development, the president and CEO of the Human Vaccines Project. He possesses a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges along the road to a safe and effective vaccine […]

Medical testing has been a Pearl Harbor. But the war could be won.

We have no idea what will happen if, for example, New York runs out of ventilators or if people are sent away from hospitals too soon and infect many others.Illustration by eamesBot / Shutterstock On April 15, 2020, 2,271 people in the United States will die from COVID-19. That day, the U.S. will be short […]