When Mary-Claire King discovered the first gene linked to hereditary breast cancer in 1990, she also got to decide its name. She settled on the four letters BRCA, which had…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee to be the next secretary of Health and Human Services, is America’s most prominent vaccine skeptic. An advocacy organization that he founded and chaired…

When I was teaching indoor cycling every week, an unexpected benefit of the gig was free ice cream. One of the class regulars had an ice-cream machine at home and…

The last time I sweated through my shirt, I vowed that it would never happen again. Sweat shame had dogged me for too many years. No longer would armpit puddles…

When I was taking German in college in the early years of this millennium, I once stumbled upon a word that appeared foreign even when translated into English: Diphtherie, or…

A person who is “on the couch” is known to be in therapy, but most therapists these days don’t ask their clients to lie down. The first time mine did,…

Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s improbable nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, actually such a crank? Short answer: yes. But two opinion pieces published in just…

The news came four years ago, at the end of a casual phone call. Bill’s family had always thought it was a freak coincidence that his father and grandfather both…

The reelection of Donald Trump might seem like doomsday for America’s public-health agencies. The president-elect has vowed to dismantle the federal bureaucracy.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., potentially his next health czar,…

Americans don’t typically have a reason to think about the fluoride in their water, but this is not a typical week. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the former independent presidential candidate…