Journalist and Author
You don’t have to live in Tornado Alley or earthquake country to need a ‘go bag.’ Here’s why you should always be prepared for the unexpected need to flee.
Pastured poultry is new old-style: Beyond cage-free, beyond free-range, it puts chickens out on grass for most of their lives, producing a bird that lives longer, looks healthier, and tastes distinctly different from standard supermarket chicken. Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna asks some New York City chefs about bringing chicken that actually tastes like chicken to their menus.
Last week’s New England Journal of Medicine included a thoughtful meditation on the possibility that the new bird flu out of China, H7N9, could become a globe-spanning pandemic — and on how much knowledge is needed before we’ll be able to predict whether it will or not. The authors, all from the US National Institutes […]
There’s a shortage of doxycycline — the antibiotic used to treat STDs, uncomplicated infections, acnes, and Lyme disease. In some places, the cost of doxycycline has soared from $20 to $3,000 — just in time for summer, which is Lyme disease season.
You know those wallet cards and apps that help you make good choices about buying seafood: what’s endangered, what’s overfished, what’s responsible to eat? This Kickstarter effort, BuyingPoultry.com, hopes to do the same for chicken.
Practically since the multi-drug resistant bacterium MRSA became a public health issue in the 1960s, health care has been arguing over how best to prevent its spread — particularly in hospitals, where the bug first became a problem and where the most vulnerable patients are concentrated. The camps break down, more or less, into procedures […]
In Geneva today, the World Health Assembly — that is, the annual meeting of the 194 governments whose collective commitment support the World Health Organization — opened as traditional, with a speech by the WHO’s director-general, Dr. Margaret Chan. It is a very interesting time, not just for the WHA to be meeting, but for […]
The US Food and Drug Administration has decided to bring the semi-outlawed — but very safe and very effective — procedure called “fecal transplant” under its auspices, ruling that to perform it, physicians must have applied for an “investigational new drug application.”
A novel coronavirus continues to spread, with infections now reported in France. Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna reports on the latest developments, including a statement from the WHO.
The most recent official update on the novel coronavirus raises the possibility that most of the recent cluster — 13 cases out of 30 — may be due to the novel disease spreading within one hospital. (Yesterday there were reports of the spread having to do with dialysis. I’m skeptical of that.) Infectious disease experts […]
The most recent update on the novel coronavirus that has been spreading in the Mideast since last summer adds three more cases to the outbreak, and raises the possibility that most of the recent cluster — 13 cases out of 30 — may be due to the infection spreading within one hospital. Infectious disease experts […]
Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna has the roundup on news related to food, foodborne illness, and antibiotic use and resistance.
Saudi Arabia has quickly reported that another three patients have been sickened by a mysterious coronavirus. Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna has the update.
A new avian flu, H7N9, is emerging in China. In Saudi Arabia, seven cases of a mysterious coronovirus have just been reported — after five of the people had already died. Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna addresses the issue of government transparency in reporting disease outbreaks.
I don’t often recommend print magazines here, because I figure they already have their own megaphone, and whatever power we at Wired have to push along other writers, I’d rather use to promote bloggers who might not have high traffic. That said: There is a piece in the current Harper’s which should be a must-read […]
So, hi, constant readers. Sorry, didn’t mean to disappear for quite that long. I’ve been on the road, first teaching for a week at the University of Wisconsin as their Science Writer in Residence, and then in New York to attend the annual meeting of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, where I received […]
Superbug blogger Maryn McKenna gets to the bottom of the scary new bird flu emerging in China and tells you how to keep up with the new information.
A new study of Danish farmers and their livestock uses genetic sequencing to show that antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections travel from animal to human. Maryn McKenna describes the evidence.
On the heels of the director of the US Centers for Disease Control declaring emerging antibiotic resistance a “nightmare,” the UK’s Chief Medical Officer released a report in which she calls resistance a “catastrophic threat” that poses a national security risk as serious as terrorism. Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna has the report.
It’s not normal for a top federal health official to deploy a word such as “nightmare,” or warn: “We have a very serious problem, and we need to sound an alarm.” But on Tuesday, the director the CDC said both during a press conference about the advance of a highly drug-resistant strain of bacteria. Wired Science blogger Maryn McKenna explains why you should be concerned.