Dylan Scott

2 weeks ago | vox.com | Dylan Scott

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expanding his crusade to turn back the clock on federal health policy. Having undermined the government’s support for childhood vaccines amid the worst measles outbreak in years, he is now targeting another longstanding pillar of American public health: water fluoridation. HHS will convene a board of experts to review the federal government’s recommendation that communities fluoridate their water, the agency announced on Monday.

2 weeks ago | vox.com | Dylan Scott

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought to be confirmed as Donald Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), he had to overcome a long record of fringe anti-science beliefs. He had indulged in conspiracies about chem trails, questioned whether HIV was the actual cause of AIDS, and, most notably, spread the repeatedly debunked theory that childhood vaccinations could lead to autism.

3 weeks ago | vox.com | Dylan Scott

Vox reader Brian Diederich asks: Why and how do so many collegiate basketball teams — both men’s and women’s — now have so many international student-athletes? If you’ve turned on March Madness this year, you’ve witnessed the most international players ever in college basketball’s signature competition. Across both the men’s and women’s brackets, 264 athletes — 15 percent of all NCAA players in the tournaments — hailed from outside of the US.

1 month ago | theashlandchronicle.com | Dylan Scott |Amy Hawkins |Krishani Dhanji

One of America’s worst measles outbreaks in recent years continues to spread, with 292 reported cases in western Texas and eastern New Mexico as of March 17. A nearby Oklahoma county has confirmed its first case, which officials believed to be linked to the outbreak’s epicenter in Gaines County, Texas. Two people have so far died from measles infections since the outbreak began in late January.

1 month ago | yahoo.com | Dylan Scott

If you have any say, you might want to avoid scheduling your next surgery on a Friday. The most comprehensive analysis of what happens to patients who have surgery on Fridays versus Mondays, published this month in JAMA by more than a dozen US and Canadian researchers, is unequivocal: The people who underwent all kinds of procedures before the weekend suffered on average more short-term, medium-term, and long-term complications than people who went under the knife after the weekend was over.