All Episodes
The pandemic brought mRNA shots to patients faster than would have seemed possible
The messenger RNA vaccines against Covid-19 seem to have emerged out of nowhere. But they’re based on decades of painstaking work, done in relative obscurity, by researchers who believed in the promise of the technology even if few others did.
On the outside, city hospitals look just as they always have: big glass and steel buildings, an ER entrance with ambulances coming and going. But on the inside, Covid has completely transformed the hospital experience for patients, their families -- and for doctors and hospital staff.
The loss of the sense of smell affects almost one in every two people who get Covid-19. Usually it resolves within a week or two. But for some, like Dr. Alex McCutchan, smell and taste distortions persist for a year, leaving an invisible illness that disrupts daily life.
Neuroscientist David Putrino doesn’t profess to understand why some Covid-19 survivors suffer persistent symptoms or how to cure them, but he’s finding ways to help “long haulers” take control of their symptoms.
To understand how to prevent the disease from lingering among the living, experts hunt for clues among those it claimed.
With a loss of smell and a high fever, New Yorker Fiona Lowenstein had a classic case of Covid-19 before she knew what a classic Covid case was. But there was more she didn't know: she was also about to join a burgeoning group we now know as “long haulers.”
Demographics alone would suggest Bradley County should be struggling fiercely with local resistance against vaccines. But that’s not what happened.
The only way to end the pandemic is to respectfully listen to the concerns of those wary of vaccines
Black skepticism of vaccines goes far deeper than the Tuskegee experiment
How the anti-vaccine establishment is waging war against Covid-19 vaccines.
The 2015 measles outbreak at Disneyland helped vaccine hesitancy into a movement.
Andrew Wakefield helped sow doubt in vaccines, and that laid groundwork for vaccine skepticism today.
Even as much of the U.S. gets in line for a shot, many people’s reluctance has been decades in the making.
A look at how the novel coronavirus lived before it entered humans and who it lived in. Bats.
How can we make sense of the scary reality we are all now living in? Where do pandemics come from?
The average cost of having a baby in the United States is $11,000 for people on private health insurance. But the price tag can vary by tens of thousands of dollars, depending on what hospital you go to and what doctor you see.
The medical community is increasingly examining the role that poverty and difficult social circumstances play in illness. Some people are asking whether the health care system could do more to address the things that influence people’s health beyond their medical care.
What happens when one doctors’ group bucks the trend toward more concentrated health-care markets, and what might it mean for the future of the U.S. health-care system?
In 2020, Americans will spend almost $4 trillion on health care. Yet for all that spending, Americans overall tend to be less healthy and die younger than citizens of other wealthy nations.
Pills we’ve relied on for decades to treat common infections simply no longer work. It’s a silent yet full-blown crisis. Yet it’s not too late. With enough will and money, the world can still turn back the rising tide of these killers among us.
It's no secret that dangerous superbugs are showing up more and more in hospitals around the world. But where do they come from?
A little-known treatment called phage therapy is helping save lives in the fight against superbugs. The viruses are the natural predator of bacteria.
In India, patients and their families face a heart-wrenching choice: forgo lifesaving treatment or run the risk of a killer infection.
Chinese consumers, just like Westerners, are lining up for DNA tests. But unlike their American and European counterparts, the Chinese appear to have far fewer qualms about privacy and sharing their data.
Do exercise-tracking apps and gadgets like Fitbit make us healthier? Or do they just create a high-tech, data-centric illusion of control over our weight, sleep and general well-being?
Some of the health information we generate from apps, DNA kits and fitness trackers can be sold to brokers who trade it like a commodity. How worried should we be?
On our latest episode of Prognosis, reporter Kristen V. Brown sets out to peddle her own DNA to the highest bidder.
Scientists are learning they greatly overestimated chances of developing deadly cancers in patients with no family history of disease.
A century-old quest for family records to unite relatives in heaven has transformed the church into a global leader in genealogy technology.
In the wake of privacy concerns, a group of Berlin-based feminist coders announced they were doing something different with their app.
In the genealogy business, finding out your dad isn’t your dad has a technical term: It’s called an non-paternity event, or an NPE.
Some patients can't wait for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs. They're pushing the drug industry to make the cures they and their loved ones need. But what's good for patients is also good for pharma's profits, creating a web of murky incentives that makes the issue of high drug costs all the more difficult to parse. In episode 8 of the Prognosis podcast, Bloomberg's Rebecca Spalding talks to these professional patients about their relationships to the big companies whose therapies they need.
Should a patient dying of a disease with no proven cure have the right to try whatever experimental drug they want? A controversial new law signed by President Trump this year says that they should, bypassing the FDA. In episode seven, Bloomberg's Michelle Fay Cortez explores what the new Right To Try law means for desperate patients who want access to experimental treatments. It isn't as simple as it sounds.
Bloomberg's Rebecca Spalding tells the surprising journey of one life-saving drug, from discovery to market. It's a story about a Nobel Prize winner, cutting edge genetic research, billions of pharmaceutical dollars, and of all things, a worm. What does it tell us about health care in America?
Researchers and pharmaceutical companies have poured time and money into developing an effective drug to combat obesity. But time and again, the drugs have failed to deliver.
In episode three of Prognosis, Kristen V. Brown and Sarah McBride take a trip to Burning Man.
Today we'll take you on a tour of a biohacker's DNA experiment to change how frogs—and possibly people—grow muscles. It's an experiment which he insists anyone can try at home. He'll even sell you a kit—frogs included—to do it
DIYers used a security flaw to bypass the $8.3 billion insulin delivery business with a cobbled-together artificial pancreas
