Free birth is the home birth movement’s extreme edition. Its proponents advocate removing the guardrails of medicine, believing that the medicalization of childbirth results in too many unnecessary interventions. Although no one has exact figures, free births are believed to represent a tiny proportion of home births, a majority of which are planned and attended…
Over the two and a half years following the 2022 rollout of the 988 national suicide prevention hotline, the rate of suicides among young people in the United States dropped 11 percent below projections, decreasing most sharply in states with a higher volume of answered 988 calls, a new study has found. The findings, published…
Available for over a year People frequently turn to AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok for health advice. Some people argue that using them is similar to an Internet search. But some experts say that chatbots are getting things dangerously wrong. James Gallagher, the BBC’s Health Correspondent, explains how chatbots work, what the risks…
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday refused to commit to supporting the vaccine recommendations of President Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The nominee, Dr. Erica Schwartz, has publicly supported immunizations and drawn applause from mainstream public health leaders. “If Dr. Schwartz is confirmed, will you commit on…
UnitedHealth Group, the giant conglomerate, showed some signs of recovery from last year’s steep decline in profits when the company reported first-quarter earnings on Tuesday that were higher than Wall Street’s expectations. The company’s earnings were relatively flat year over year, reflecting UnitedHealth’s difficulties in navigating rising medical costs, government scrutiny of its billing practices…
On the surface, it appeared as though Antoinette Del Rio was a successful 20-something. She had a flourishing career in advertising, took frequent vacations and enjoyed an active social life. But Ms. Del Rio was drinking too much, using weed as a coping mechanism and spending weekends holed up in her New York City apartment….
On a recent Monday, Sandy Guzman, a community health worker in rural Oregon, drove to visit a patient in her 60s in a small city called The Dalles. The patient lived alone, and “really struggles with social isolation,” Ms. Guzman said. After a serious fall and subsequent surgery, the woman was using a wheelchair. She…
In 2021, a disabled parrot named Bruce made headlines worldwide for creating his own prosthetic beak. He didn’t stop there: Scientists reported on Monday that Bruce has now become the alpha male of his group. And he did it by learning to joust. The new research, published in Current Biology, is an important addition to…
“There are examples of balls that transfer high or low energy through all eras of play” said Andy Harland, a professor of sports technology at Loughborough. “There is no trend that suggests the magnitude of energy transfer is increasing or decreasing over time. “Our evidence suggests that high energy pressure wave transfer was not limited…
President Trump on Saturday signed an executive order seeking to hasten research into the therapeutic benefits of LSD, Ecstasy, psilocybin and other mind-altering drugs by ordering federal agencies to ease restrictions that have long limited the ability of scientists to study them. The measure also provides $50 million for state-level research into ibogaine, a powerful…
