For the past six years, a team of researchers from Stanford has been foraging the jungle in Madagascar, catching mouse lemurs and sampling the blood …
Author: Ruthann Richter
A small African country with a powerful voice
The recent film "A United Kingdom" tells the story of Botswana’s maverick first president who defied convention and caused an international scandal by marrying a …
Special delivery: Letters of support to Syrian refugees
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 …
Parkinson’s patients find a new rhythm
I arrived a bit late, breathless, to the dance class, held in a corner studio in the Stanford neuroscience clinic. It had been a stressful …
Latest ban on U.S. global funding ignores science, Stanford researchers say
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 …
Health experts urge FDA to lift restriction on abortion pill
Women in the United States are often unable to get ready, affordable access to mifepristone, a drug used to induce abortion, because of burdensome federal …
Test can spot TB in children, helping save lives
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 …
In Madagascar, Stanford researchers are working to improve health — and studying lemurs
When Mark Krasnow, MD, PhD, isn’t in his biochemistry lab at Stanford, he might be found in the rainforests of Madagascar chasing down mouse lemurs. …
New ban on U.S. aid to family planning groups could have unintended consequences
The Trump administration’s reinstatement of a policy that bans U.S. foreign aid to agencies that provide abortion counseling abroad was a predictable move that could …
Keeping mosquitoes in check to prevent widespread disease
What is the most deadly animal in the world, when it comes to human disease? Some might be surprised to learn that it’s a bug: …
Keeping Zika out of the nation’s blood supply
When the Zika crisis erupted last year, U.S. blood bank officials began to worry: What if the virus were to infiltrate the blood supply, as …
The challenge of being gay and working in countries where homosexuality is a crime
Jason Nagata, MD, sat in a wooden pew in the church in Kenya, listening to the pastor thunder away at the “abomination” of homosexuality. He …
Whither the stethoscope?
When we go for a routine visit to the doctor’s office, we take it for granted that he or she will use a stethoscope to …
Scientists call for end to devastating worm diseases
Consider the lowly worm. For some, it’s just a garden pest. But for more than a billion people in the developing world, parasitic worms can …
Ebola infection may be asymptomatic, study finds
In the heat of the Ebola crisis in late 2014, Stanford’s Gene Richardson, MD, was among the brave physicians who volunteered in Sierra Leone to …
Exploring the promise and challenges of cancer immunotherapy
The immune system is primed to protect the body from outside invaders, like viruses and bacteria. But can the immune system also be trained to …