Tag: Medicine and Health

Russia’s Silence on Possible Plague Outbreak Stokes Fears of a Cover-Up

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As rumors swirled this week that a woman working in a Siberian lab may have died of the plague, news programs on Russian state television paid scant attention. The authorities in Moscow released little information. Faced with this potential new threat, the Kremlin seems to be resorting to a familiar playbook: avoiding bad news. The lack of information has caused unease around the world, particularly given the memory of China’s effort to withhold information about Covid-19. The Kremlin has a history of hiding bad news In Russia, federal officials are…

The Fake Influencers Selling Wellness on Your Feed

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“This is what we look like on Day 1 of taking beetroot every day. This is Day 50.” They look like the kind of wellness influencers you see every day on social media. “This is Day 77, girl.” But none of them are real. They are A.I.- generated and designed to sell health supplements on social media. The Times reviewed hundreds of these ads to understand how A.I. video tools are helping a loosely regulated industry target American consumers and profit off of disinformation about their health. “They’re targeting us…

Imprisoned Chinese Journalist Seeks Medical Parole for Lung Tumor

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A prominent Chinese journalist, who was imprisoned on spying charges that he denies, is caught in a deadlock with the authorities in Beijing after they rebuffed his request for medical parole to remove a potentially cancerous lung tumor, his son said on Thursday. The journalist, Dong Yuyu, 64, was convicted of espionage and sentenced to seven years in prison in 2024. He was an editor for a Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper, Guangming Daily, but in past years wrote essays that called for political liberalization. He mixed with foreign journalists and…

China’s Rise in Drug Development Looms Over U.S.

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For decades, an annual gathering of oncologists has featured drug trials that were run mainly at American and European hospitals. But at this year’s meeting, which is being held in Chicago this weekend, the signs are everywhere of China’s ascendance as a powerhouse in drug development — and of the threat that many believe it poses to American biotechnology. The clearest sign: In what appears to be a first, one of the conference’s five coveted headliners is a presentation of a clinical trial conducted only in China. That milestone at…

Illness Surge in China Is Not From a Novel Pathogen, Data Suggests

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The World Health Organization said that China had shared data about a recent surge in respiratory illnesses in children, one day after the agency said it was seeking information about the possibility of undiagnosed pneumonia cases there. The Chinese data indicated “no detection of any unusual or novel pathogens,” according to a W.H.O. statement on Thursday. The data, which included laboratory results from infected children, indicated that the rise in cases was a result of known viruses and bacteria, such as influenza and mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes usually…