Latest Stories By Arthur Allen

Many scientists at the federal health agencies await the second Donald Trump administration with dread and uncertainty over how the president-elect will reconcile starkly different philosophies among the leaders of his team. Trump announced Nov. 14 he’ll nominate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, after saying during […]

In what has become a pattern of spreading vaccine misinformation, the Florida health department is telling older Floridians and other people at highest risk from COVID-19 to avoid most booster shots, saying they are potentially dangerous. Clinicians and scientists denounced the message as politically fueled scaremongering that also weakens efforts to protect against diseases like measles […]

Evangelical minister Eddie Hyatt believes in the healing power of prayer but “also the medical approach.” So on a February evening a week before scheduled prostate surgery, he had his sore throat checked out at an emergency room near his home in Grapevine, Texas. A doctor confirmed that Hyatt had COVID-19 and sent him to […]

Everyone over the age of 6 months should get the latest COVID-19 booster, a federal expert panel recommended Tuesday after hearing an estimate that universal vaccination could prevent 100,000 more hospitalizations each year than if only the elderly were vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 13-1 for […]

A small percentage of Americans got the most recent COVID-19 booster shot, and even fewer probably realize the federal government is preparing to recommend yet another shot as early as Tuesday. Until a week or two ago, William Schaffner read that indifference as a sign the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should advocate vaccinating […]

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a University of California-Irvine psychiatry professor, felt he didn’t need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because he’d fallen ill with the disease in July 2020. So, in August, he sued to stop the university system’s vaccination mandate, saying “natural” immunity had given him and millions of others better protection than any vaccine could. […]

If you think vaccination is an ordeal now, consider the 18th-century version. After having pus from a smallpox boil scratched into your arm, you would be subject to three weeks of fever, sweats, chills, bleeding and purging with dangerous medicines, accompanied by hymns, prayers and hell-fire sermons by dour preachers. That was smallpox vaccination, back […]