Health

A Number That Sums It Up: Thousands of lives have been saved with CAR-T.CAR-T involves removing a type of white blood cell — T cells — from a patient’s blood, then genetically engineering to make proteins — chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) — which allow the T cells to attach to cancer cells and kill them. The engineered cells are then infused back into the patient’s blood.The F.D.A. has approved six commercial CAR-T products. Cancer specialists said the treatments have saved the lives of thousands of patients with blood cancers. Even if there is a causal link between the treatments and a small risk of a new blood cancer, the regulators said on Tuesday, the benefits of the treatment outweigh the risks. That sentiment was echoed by doctors involved in cancer treatment.While the hypothetical ...

France will ban smoking on beaches, near public buildings like schools and in public parks and forests next year, the French government said on Tuesday, as it unveiled plans to curb the habit by making it slightly more expensive and far less attractive, especially to younger people.“We have won battles,” Aurélien Rousseau, France’s health minister, said at a news conference in Paris. Noting that the smoking rate for 17-year-olds had already dropped to 16 percent in 2022 — down from 25 percent in 2017 — he added that “tobacco remains a major public health scourge.”The government’s plan is part of an ambitious effort to produce the first “no-tobacco generation” by 2032.While anti-smoking campaigners welcomed some of the measures announced by Mr. Rousseau, they said that lofty objective would...

For seven years, Sulemana Musah put almost every bit of money that came his way into his war with hepatitis C.His student loans for graduate school, his salary from his job as a high school teacher and the cash he earned from a side gig selling yams all went to tests and medicines to try to cure the virus that debilitated him. Mr. Musah, 27, who lives in Accra, the capital of Ghana, set aside dreams of starting a business, building a house, getting married.He scraped together enough cash — $900, half his annual salary — to buy a course of the drugs that, a decade ago, began to revolutionize hepatitis C treatment in the United States and other high-income countries.He was the rare patient for whom that treatment wasn’t enough, so for years he tried, unsuccessfully, to save enough for anoth...

Longevity drugs are intended for healthy dogs, which changes the risk-benefit calculus. “It’s one thing if a dog is on death’s door and you’re giving them some late-breaking treatment,” said Bev Klingensmith, a Great Dane breeder in Iowa who also has a Great Dane and a golden retriever of her own. “Giving my young, healthy dog a brand-new drug would seem a little scary.”Even drugs that deliver on all their promises will raise ethical questions. “If animals are living longer, do we have the resources and commitment to provide lives worth living?” Dr. Anne Quain, a veterinarian and an expert on veterinary ethics at the University of Sydney, said in an email. “What if we see more dogs outliving their owners?”Reforming the breeding practices that have contributed to life-shortening health prob...

Large outbreaks of diseases that primarily kill children are spreading around the world, a grim legacy of disruptions to health systems during the Covid-19 pandemic that have left more than 60 million children without a single dose of standard childhood vaccines.By midway through this year, 47 countries were reporting serious measles outbreaks, compared with 16 countries in June 2020. Nigeria is currently facing the largest diphtheria outbreak in its history, with more than 17,000 suspected cases and nearly 600 deaths so far. Twelve countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, are reporting circulating polio virus. Many of the children who missed their shots have now aged out of routine immunization programs. So-called “zero-dose children” account for nearly half of all child deaths from vacci...

The World Health Organization said that China had shared data about a recent surge in respiratory illnesses in children, one day after the agency said it was seeking information about the possibility of undiagnosed pneumonia cases there.The Chinese data indicated “no detection of any unusual or novel pathogens,” according to a W.H.O. statement on Thursday. The data, which included laboratory results from infected children, indicated that the rise in cases was a result of known viruses and bacteria, such as influenza and mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes usually mild illness.Hospital admissions of children had increased since May, as had outpatient visits, but hospitals were able to handle the increase, China told the global health agency.The W.H.O. requested information after ...

Below the shattered windows of the high-rise hotels in downtown Acapulco, people walk alongside towering hills of garbage bags filled with rotting food and debris, from mattresses to Christmas decorations. Volunteer firefighters from distant states clear the waste, wiping away swarms of cockroaches from their arms.Miles from the coastal beachside resorts, Elizabeth Del Valle, 43, listened as her teenage daughter Constanza Sotelo described the “mountains of trash” still blocking many streets surrounding their home.“We have no way to find face masks to keep ourselves healthy,” said Ms. Del Valle. “We expect that we’re going to get an infection from the smell, from the garbage.”Weeks after Hurricane Otis shocked forecasters and government officials by intensifying rapidly into the strongest s...

Two people have died in a salmonella outbreak linked to cantaloupes as cases have more than doubled since the outbreak was first announced last week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday.The Food and Drug Administration said on Nov. 17 that it was investigating the outbreak. At that point, 43 cases and 17 hospitalizations had been reported in 15 states. As of Friday, federal officials had reported 99 cases in 32 states.Several fruit producers have issued recalls for a number of cantaloupe and cantaloupe products that were distributed nationwide, the C.D.C. said.Health officials asked consumers and business to throw away the recalled fruits, which include imported whole cantaloupes grown in Mexico labeled “Rudy” and “Malichita” and pre-cut cantaloupes sold unde...

The motives for relocating vary, of course. Ms. Cave, 67, moved to Riderwood because “I was the daughter who had to take care of parents from afar, and I swore I’d never do that to my kids,” she said.At first, Ms. Cave recalled, “I looked around and saw the walkers and the scooters and thought, ‘My God, what have I done?’” Now, though, she appreciates the community college courses offered on campus, the square dancing and the pickleball, the shared meals. “The people are so interesting,” she added.Such graduated communities allow residents to transfer to assisted living, nursing care or memory care units as their health declines. It’s a benefit that Carol Holmes Alpern, 81, learned to value after she and her husband, Bowen Alpern, moved into Foulkeways, a nonprofit Quaker-affiliated contin...

Coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, is far more harmful to human health than previously thought, according to a new report, which found that coal emissions are associated with double the mortality risk compared with fine airborne particles from other sources.The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, linked coal pollution to 460,000 deaths among Medicare recipients aged 65 and older between 1999 and 2020.Yet the study also found that during that period the shuttering of coal plants in the United State, coupled with the installation of scrubbers in the smokestacks to “clean” coal exhaust, has had salubrious effects. Deaths attributable to coal plant emissions among Medicare recipients dropped from about 50,000 a year in 1999 to 1,600 in 2020, a decrease of more than 95 percent...