In 2011, Germany’s Frankfurt Airport — the country’s busiest — unveiled its fourth runway. The addition sparked major protests, with demonstrators returning to the airport every Monday for years. “It’s destroying my life,” one protester told Reuters a year later. “Every time I go into my garden, all I can hear and see are planes right above.” The new runway also channeled dozens of aircraft...
For nearly 30 years, the hunt for a cure for Alzheimer’s disease has focused on a protein called beta-amyloid. Amyloid, the hypothesis goes, builds up inside the brain to bring about this memory-robbing disorder, which afflicts some 47 million people worldwide. Billions of dollars have poured into developing therapies aimed at reducing amyloid — thus far, to no avail. Trials of anti-amyloid...
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- On Interstate 59, a neon billboard used by the Alabama Department of Public Health advises motorists to get their flu and pneumonia vaccines. Placards placed atop gas pumps around the state also promote the flu vaccine. But the vaccine that will quell COVID-19, a virus that has killed 400,000 nationwide, crippled businesses and prompted governments to force onerous...
Last week, after finishing inoculations of some front-line hospital staff, Jupiter Medical Center was left with 40 doses of precious covid vaccine. So, officials offered shots to the South Florida hospital’s board of directors and their spouses over age 65. But that decision sparked outrage among workers left unvaccinated, including those at one of the hospital’s urgent care clinics, or who...
One tray of COVID-19 vaccine from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer contains 975 doses — way too many for a rural hospital in Arkansas. But with the logistical gymnastics required to safely get the Pfizer vaccine to rural health care workers, splitting the trays into smaller shipments has its own dangers. Once out of the freezer that keeps it at 94 degrees below zero, the vaccine lasts only five days...
If there’s such a thing as a date with destiny, it’s marked on Dr. Taison Bell’s calendar. At noon Tuesday, Bell, a critical care physician, is scheduled to be one of the first health care workers at the University of Virginia Health System to roll up his sleeve for a shot to ward off the coronavirus. “This is a long time coming,” said Bell, 37, who signed up via hospital email last week. “The...
