China’s Declining Population Can Still Prosper
Earlier this week, the National Bureau of Statistics in China announced that the Chinese population has decreased for the first time in 60 years. The population decrease does not come as…
Microbial Cocktails Are More Than a Gut Feeling
In 2023, our understanding of the microbes that live inside the human gut will lead to new ideas for medicine. Today, we know that gut microbes help develop and sustain…
The Gas Stove Culture Wars Have Begun
A new way to show your political affiliation may be emerging, and it’s close to home. So close, you’ll find it in your kitchen. A debate over gas stoves reignited…
In the Next Pandemic, Let’s Pay People to Get Vaccinated
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that people like money. If you show them the cash, they’re generally more likely to do what you want, whether that be to stop smoking, work out,…
The US Just Greenlit High-Tech Alternatives to Animal Testing
The Covid-19 crisis highlighted certain economic and welfare issues associated with using animals for research. Pandemic-related closures meant that many labs had to halt experiments and euthanize animals. Then the race…
Does Dry January Really Make People Healthier?
If the bars look a bit emptier this month, it may be because more people are trading happy hour for Dry January. The tradition, in which people abstain from alcohol…
What China’s Covid Crisis Means for the Rest of the World
The fear is that the sudden spread of Covid through a new population with relatively little prior exposure to the virus will lead to the emergence of a new “supervariant”—one…
Smart Home, Health Tech, and Everything Else We Saw at CES
Michael Calore: Fantastic. Julian Chokkattu: Smart. Adrienne So: Because by God, I will not be standing in a line for terrible coffee for 20 minutes when I have to get…
Would You Sell Your Extra Kidney?
When we were teenagers, my brother and I received kidney transplants six days apart. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. He, two years older, was scheduled to receive my…
A Mass Extinction Is Taking Place in the Human Gut
In November 2022, Swiss scientists opened an eagerly awaited package from rural Ethiopia. It was full of shit. For two months, public health researcher Abdifatah Muhummed had been collecting stool…
Why Do You Get Sick in the Winter? Blame Your Nose
To figure out what exactly was causing this antiviral capability, the scientists then incubated the vesicles with the viruses and imaged them under a microscope. They found that the viruses…
A Drug to Treat Aging May Not Be a Pipe Dream
Life expectancy in the best-performing countries has been increasing by three months per year every year since the early 1800s. Throughout most of human history, you had a roughly 50–50…
WIRED Tested Miracle Hangover Cures. You’re Welcome
“I don’t remember much and felt pretty awful the next day, if I’m honest,” says Will. “If it’s a particularly big night out you have to remember to take the…
The Magic of mRNA Will Push Medical Advances for Everyone
mRNA is one of the first molecules of life. While identified six decades ago as the carrier of the blueprint for proteins in living cells, its pharmaceutical potential was long…
22 Things That Made the World a Better Place in 2022
It seemed as if the world was plunging from one crisis to another this year. Just as most countries broke free from the shackles of the pandemic, the horror of…
Crispr’s Quest to Slay Donegal Amy
In the 5th century, in early medieval Ireland, Conall Gulban, an Irish king, gave his name to an area of land at the northwest tip of the Irish coast. His…
Digital Health Tools Need a New Benchmark
During the Covid-19 pandemic, digital health technologies transformed the way that many of us received health care, supercharging the uptake of digital tools such as telehealth platforms, mobile symptom trackers,…
Here’s What’s Next for Pig Organ Transplants
Starting in the 1960s, doctors attempted transplants of kidneys, hearts, and livers from baboons and chimpanzees—humans’ closest genetic relatives—into people. But the organs failed within weeks, if not days, due…
A More Elegant Form of Gene Editing Progresses to Human Testing
In April 2016, Waseem Qasim, a professor of cell and gene therapy, was captivated by a new scientific paper that described a revolutionary way to manipulate DNA: base editing. The paper,…
13 Best Air Purifiers (2022): HEPA, Portable, and Quiet
Welcome to the future, where clean air is a luxury. From pandemics to wildfires, air purifiers have become the gotta-have-it home appliance. Buildings let in a lot of particulate matter,…
Stop Listening to Sleep Experts
Sleep is an essential part of our biology. Not getting enough of it harms our decision-making skills, our reasoning, even our social interactions. However, sleep has recently become yet another…
The Bittersweet Defeat of Mpox
For a few weeks this summer, the world worried that monkeypox might become the next global pandemic. At the peak in early August the US was recording 600 cases a…
The Crispr Baby Scientist Is Back. Here’s What He’s Doing Next
Some scientists and ethicists think He deserves a chance to prove that he’s capable of producing scientifically valid and ethically sound work. “His case is publicly known enough that the…
It’s Time to Focus on Reproductive Longevity Research
Women’s ovaries age prematurely, at more than twice the rate of other organs. Why that is remains a mystery to scientists, making it one of the most important unanswered questions…
Russia Has Turned Eastern Ukraine Into a Giant Minefield
Living among mines then has a well-documented deleterious effect on a country’s psychological health. Research shows that just the knowledge that you are in an area contaminated with explosives can lead to…