From the myth of Europeans’ “healthy drinking culture” to the surprising harm of some common family traditions, science is overturning old beliefs around alcohol and young people David Robson I turned 18 the day before I left home for university, conveniently passing the UK’s age threshold for buying alcohol just in time to explore student pubs and… Read More Why alcohol is so dangerous for young adults’ brains
Analysis estimates death toll by end of June was 64,260, with 59% being women, children and people over 65 Research published in the Lancet medical journal estimates that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war was about 40% higher than numbers recorded by the Palestinian territory’s health ministry.… Read More Gaza death toll 40% higher than official number, Lancet study finds
By Erik English Since 2014, the Chinese Communist Party has perpetuated human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region under the guise of anti-terrorism and anti-extremism—subjecting them to forced labor, mass detention, and land transfers. Now, a new report reveals that some Chinese pharmaceutical products made using forced labor in… Read More How modern slavery, in China and elsewhere, undermines the fight against existential threats
Like all despots, major & petty, Mamata thrives on playing the victim. But now, faced with this horrendous instance of a genuine victim, her fake-victimhood shrivels up into a carbonised farce.. Just as global warming creates unpredictably cruel weather, corruption too creates its own hard rain. Ruchir Joshi On the evening of the day Rizwanur… Read More Stormy weather
The scale of the silicosis crisis in India is staggering. A report by the Indian Council of Medical Research in 1999 estimated that, apart from 5.4 million construction workers, 3 million workers in other industries were at high risk of silica exposure. These figures are already over two decades old, but exact current estimates are… Read More Choking to Death
The brutal rape-murder of a junior doctor at Kolkata’s R G Kar Medical College and Hospital has an inescapable geography Saikat Majumdar The brutality of rape and murder elicits a reaction that is not only ethical and political in nature. It also evokes a response that is deeply aesthetic. By aesthetic I mean that visceral reaction to… Read More Beyond the Kolkata Rape And Murder, a history of medical corruption In West Bengal
Kidney disease is on the rise in coastal communities, where some have no choice but to drink and cook with contaminated water.. The consumption of saline water in coastal Bangladesh has long been associated with various health risks, including hypertension, respiratory problems and pre-eclampsia, but its effect on kidney health remains relatively unknown. Thaslima Begum in Khulna Shadows… Read More ‘It’s in our rivers and in our cups. There’s no escape’: the deadly spread of salt water in Bangladesh
Catriona Crombie Healthcare should make people’s lives better. That fact can hardly be contested. Yet for some patients with rare diseases, commercial interests are dictating who gets to access life-saving treatment and who doesn’t. Pharmaceutical companies have long been driven by global demand and the potential for the highest profits. In the past two decades,… Read More Imagine getting life-saving drugs to sick people without relying on big pharma? We may have found a way
By Nectar Gan, CNN A Chinese citizen journalist who has been behind bars for four years over her reporting on the initial Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan is due to be released Monday after serving her sentence, according to supporters and a court verdict. Zhang Zhan, a former lawyer, was one of the few independent Chinese journalists reporting in Wuhan… Read More Chinese journalist imprisoned for her Covid reporting due to be released after four years. But will she be free?
Will McGough, CNN On the north side of Molokaʻi — the least-visited Hawaiian Island — a piece of land called the Kalaupapa Peninsula juts out from the rest of the island. Lay eyes on it for the first time, and your reaction might be to call it a paradise. About 17 square miles (44 square… Read More At this national park in Hawaiʻi, a natural paradise and a medical purgatory
After the truth-shower 