As a reporter who covers sex and intimacy, I spend a lot of time listening to experts extol the virtues of open, honest communication. To have good sex — and to keep having good sex over time — couples must be willing to talk about it, they say. But some people would rather leave their…
When a patient with a severe traumatic brain injury is comatose, in intensive care, unresponsive and hooked up to a ventilator, but not brain-dead, when is the time to withdraw life support? A small study on the fates of people in such situations suggests that doctors and patients’ families may make better decisions if they…
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved an innovative new treatment for patients with a form of lung cancer. It is to be used only by patients who have exhausted all other options to treat small cell lung cancer, and have a life expectancy of four to five months. The drug tarlatamab, or Imdelltra,…
Engineers and scientists have an enduring fascination with spider silk. Similar to typical worm silk that makes for comfy bedsheets, but much tougher, the material has inspired the invention of lighter and more breathable body armor and materials that could make airplane components stronger without adding weight. Researchers are even using examples drawn from spider…
The Biden administration, under acute pressure from House lawmakers, moved on Wednesday to ban funding for a prominent virus-hunting nonprofit group whose work with Chinese scientists had put it at the heart of theories that Covid leaked from a lab. The decision, announced in a letter from the Department of Health and Human Services, came…
Overdose deaths in the United States declined slightly last year, the first decrease in five years, according to preliminary federal data released Wednesday. The rare good news in the decades-old addiction crisis was attributable mostly to a drop in deaths from synthetic opioids, chiefly fentanyl, said researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics, who…
The four adult children were in agreement. Their father, William Curry, a retired electrical engineer and business executive, was sinking deeper into dementia. They had found a memory care facility about a mile from their parents’ house in Chelmsford, Mass., where they thought Mr. Curry would do better. But their mother, Melissa, who was 83…
Richard “Rick” Slayman, who made history at age 62 as the first person to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig, has died about two months after the procedure. Massachusetts General Hospital, where Mr. Slayman had the operation, said in a statement on Saturday that its transplant team was “deeply saddened” at his death….
Half a century ago, one of the hottest questions in science was whether humans could teach animals to talk. Scientists tried using sign language to converse with apes and trained parrots to deploy growing English vocabularies. The work quickly attracted media attention — and controversy. The research lacked rigor, critics argued, and what seemed like…
Nancy Neveloff Dubler, a medical ethicist who pioneered using mediation at hospital bedsides to navigate the complex dynamics among headstrong doctors, anguished family members and patients in their last days, died on April 14 at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 82. The cause was heart and lung disease, her…
