Immunology, Research, Transplantation

The journey to a pig-heart transplant began 60 years ago

On Friday, January 7 2022, David Bennett became the world’s first person to successfully receive a transplant of a pig’s heart. The eight-hour-long operation by surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, USA, was no doubt arduous. But it was a short final step in a 60-year-long journey to genetically alter the pig’s heart so that it would not be immediately rejected – a journey that began with a plane crash in Oxford in the summer of 1940.

Coronavirus, Laboratory Medicine

What Patients Can Learn With Confidence From One Negative Rapid Test (Hint: Very Little)

There are just so many variables. Testing may come either too soon, before enough virus is present to detect, or too late, after a person has already spread the virus to others. And most rapid tests, even according to their instructions, are meant to be used in pairs — generally a day or two apart — for increased accuracy. Despite that, a few brands are sold one to a box and, with the tests sometimes expensive and in short supply, families are often relying on a single screening.

Supreme Court building
Coronavirus, Health Policy, Politics, Vaccines

Justices Block Broad Worker Vaccine Requirement, Allow Health Worker Mandate to Proceed

The OSHA rules are opposed by many business groups, led by the small business advocacy organization the National Federation of Independent Business. It argued that allowing the rules to take effect would leave businesses “irreparably harmed,” both by the costs of compliance and the possibility that workers would quit rather than accept the vaccine.

A group of young women drinking wine at a party.
Health News

Here’s where (and how) you are most likely to catch COVID – new study

We yearn to get back to normal. We’d like to meet friends in a pub or have them over for dinner. We’d like our struggling business to thrive like it did before the pandemic. We’d like our children to return to their once-familiar routine of in-person schooling and after-school activities. We’d like to ride on a bus, sing in a choir, get back to the gym, or dance in a nightclub without fear of catching COVID. Which of these activities is safe? And how safe exactly? These were the questions we sought to answer in our latest research.