Scope is an award-winning medical blog produced by a team of writers at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Environmental degradation is widely recognized to contribute to human illness. However, little research has been done to investigate the impact of human illness on the environment. This is a critical question particularly for the millions of people around the world who depend on natural resources for food and income while coping with high burdens of …Read More
More than a billion people drink water that is contaminated and can spread diseases such as cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, polio and diarrhea. Most contaminated water could be purified by adding hydrogen peroxide, which safely kills many of the disease-causing organisms and oxidizes organic pollutants to make them less harmful. Hydrogen peroxide disinfects water in …Read More
Becky Bach on
In many regions, mosquitos are basically flying disease distributors. Bed nets and pharmaceuticals save lives, but to support additional advances — from environmental controls such as removing breeding habitat to working with locals to avoid mosquito-dense areas — researchers need to know what types of mosquitos frequent particular places at particular times. That’s no easy …Read More
In the first chapter of their book, Operation Ebola, Stanford surgeon Sherry Wren, MD, and her Johns Hopkins colleague Adam Kushner, MD, MPH, write something startling: There are no universal guidelines on how to do surgical operations on patients in the middle of a health crisis like Ebola. “This absence of formal guidelines, which still …Read More
When President Donald Trump released his budget blueprint earlier this month, he included an 18 percent (or $5.8 billion) reduction in funding for the National Institutes of Health, as well as “a major reorganization of NIH’s Institutes and Centers to help focus resources on the highest priority research and training activities.” He also called for …Read More
In the video above, Raneem, a Syrian refugee living in Jordan, is shown reading aloud a letter of support from a research assistant at Stanford Medicine. The 18-year-old woman, wearing a black head scarf and plaid dress, pauses at one point, bows her head and wipes away tears. “She gave me motivation and hope,” Raneem …Read More
In honor of International Women’s Day, the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health teamed up with partners at Women in Global Health and the Global Health Council to call attention to the great underrepresentation of women in global health conferences and events. Leaders from these and other organizations held a live webinar and Twitter chat on …Read More
In a new commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine, two Stanford scientists make a case for lifting the ban on U.S. aid to international groups that support abortion-related activities, saying the policy harms women and ultimately could hurt U.S. economic and security interests abroad. They argue that scientific evidence, not ideology, should guide …Read More
Working in communications at Stanford Health Policy, I spend a lot of time reading about health research. But to be honest, much of our research doesn’t affect me directly. Breast cancer, statins and Medicare coverage may factor into my life someday, but while I’m still in my 2os and mercifully healthy, I’m somewhat removed from …Read More
During his decade of work in South Africa, Stanford’s Jason Andrews, MD, has seen many young children die from tuberculosis and been frustrated by the lack of progress in the field. Children can be readily treated with antibiotics if the disease is caught early, but until recently, there has been no way to identify those …Read More
