In 1961, President John F. Kennedy told the nation, “We choose to go to the moon.” It’s often remembered as a moment of national ambition. In reality, the United States was locked in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and the fear of falling behind in technological dominance made the mission unavoidable.

Today’s space race is driven by a...Read more

LOS ANGELES — At Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital, patients on gurneys line the hallways of the emergency department waiting for care, and overflow mental health patients are consigned to outdoor tents.

The 152-bed hospital, which sits on a sprawling medical campus close to the predominantly Latino and Black neighborhood of Watts, ...Read more

Tumors need two things to thrive: a good blood supply and a way to keep the immune system at bay. Scientists have discovered the protein that helps skin cancer achieve both, and proved that disabling it shrinks tumors and reactivates the immune system.

The molecule, known as the transcription factor HOXD13, helps control gene activity and is ...Read more

America’s obesity rate is near record highs, and that may pose more than just health problems.

Children with obesity are less likely to climb the income ladder later in life than children without it, a new study published in the Journal of Population Economics found.

Per the report, childhood obesity lowers someone’s chances of earning ...Read more

Each year, approximately 3 million people, many under age 5, swallow or come into contact with a poisonous substance. Most poisonings occur at home where even simple household products can be dangerous. These include over-the-counter and prescription medicines, cleaning products, liquid nicotine, antifreeze, windshield wiper fluid, pesticides, ...Read more

Next time you go to the pharmacy, you might be offered a coupon on your prescription drugs. While it may sound like a great deal — with the prospect of saving hundreds of dollars — the decision to accept it is complicated, especially for people with insurance.

Even as prescription drug costs rise, patients with commercial insurance have ...Read more

Washington treats healthcare spending like a moral obligation and interest payments like an accounting nuisance. They’re linked: Federal spending that is wasted in the healthcare system forces higher taxes or more borrowing, leaving less money for Medicare, defense or anything else. To slow deficit spending and the ballooning costs of the ...Read more

The last thing Chelsea Cheveria remembers after the birth of her daughter was greeting her new baby girl.

“I said, ‘Hi, oh, that’s my baby,’” Cheveria, 38, recalled. She kissed the tiny newborn, and her husband told her, “You did it.”

Then everything went dark. Without warning, Cheveria’s heart stopped as she lay atop the ...Read more

ELBERT, Colo. — To say Brandon Patterson’s father wasn’t fully on board when he first brought up the idea of having electrodes implanted into his brain would be an understatement — and their family doesn’t mince words.

Brandon, 41, already relied on his dad for all of his daily needs, ranging from setting up the lift to move him from ...Read more

Throughout last year, Mayor Brandon Johnson vowed to protect Chicago’s public health dollars from President Donald Trump.

But behind the scenes, his health commissioner voluntarily returned tens of millions of dollars in COVID-19 grants to the federal government months before expiration — funds that could have gone to disease surveillance ...Read more

Silvana Toska was playing in a grass field with her daughters late last fall when she felt a sting on her ankle. The family had come to listen for barred and great horned owls as the sun set on a large park near their Davidson, North Carolina, home.

It was “just like a mosquito bite, nothing major, and I just scratched it,” said Toska, a ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- The morning after Christmas, 37-year-old Taylor Armendariz awoke in her South Jersey apartment with stomach pain and nausea like nothing she had ever experienced.

A self-described “avid” cannabis user, she had smoked before her holiday meal of beef Wellington, mashed potatoes, and ice cream-topped apple pie. “In the stoner...Read more

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: I need to have a joint replacement, but I'm really nervous. What questions should I ask my orthopedic doctor?

ANSWER: Knee and hip replacements have changed so much due to advanced surgical techniques, making them far different from those even five years ago. From multiple-day hospital stays, total joint replacement has ...Read more

With each step you take, coordinated contractions in your abdominal muscles help keep you stable and upright.

Now, new research finds that those gentle changes in tension and pressure also affect your brain, and may play a role in the organ's overall health.

Imaging in humans and other animal species has long shown that the brain gently moves ...Read more

The MV Hondius, a Dutch cruise ship with a deadly outbreak of hantavirus, was on its way to the Canary Islands on May 7, 2026, after evacuating three ill passengers for treatment.

The World Health Organization confirmed the outbreak on May 4, noting a total of seven infections, with three deaths since the outbreak began in early April...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California is outpacing much of the rest of the nation in cases of tuberculosis, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2025, California had 5.5 tuberculosis cases per 100,000 people on average, according to the CDC’s latest provisional tuberculosis data report, released in March.

That...Read more

SAN DIEGO — A new study from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology suggests that it is possible to treat measles infections though additional research is necessary to prove that the concept will work in humans.

Published online Thursday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, the study identifies several Y-shaped proteins called antibodies that a...Read more

It’s tough to avoid the current hype about the health benefits of injecting peptides. Although these substances – essentially, synthetic bits of protein in solution – have long made the rounds in the fitness world, their popularity has exploded. Social media influencers, podcasters, wellness clinics and online sellers promote peptides ...Read more