Siddhartha Mukherjee

Este archivo solo abarca los artículos del autor incorporados a este sitio a partir del 1 de septiembre de 2006. Para fechas anteriores realice una búsqueda entrecomillando su nombre.

Covid’s Deadliest Effect Took Five Years to Appear

InternacionalSalud Pública, ,

February 2025. A blustery morning. I alight, a little breathless, from the subway at 168th Street and walk the oddly deserted blocks toward the hospital where I work. I hear a distant cough. A windblown plastic bag tumbles along the sidewalk and lodges itself in the skeletal branches of a tree. The familiar, insistent whine of an ambulance rises in the distance.

It has been five years since the world was blown into the tumult of a lethal pandemic. Back then, deserted streets and distant coughs, to say nothing of ambulances docking into hospitals, would have carried a very different meaning.…  Seguir leyendo »

How to Quarantine Against Ebola

MundoAméricaInternacionalSalud Pública, , ,

One feature of the tragic case of Thomas Eric Duncan, the first traveler known to have carried the Ebola virus into the United States, rankles me as a physician: Even if every system in place to identify suspected carriers had been working perfectly, he may have still set off a mini-epidemic in Dallas.

Mr. Duncan, recall, was screened before his flight and found to have a normal temperature. Asked specifically about exposures, he denied any contact with the ill. On Sept. 25, when he first presented to the emergency room with a fever, he was discharged. He returned three days later with fulminant infection.…  Seguir leyendo »

InternacionalSalud Pública

Three recent events highlight the extraordinary task that lies ahead for cancer prevention.

First: in late May, a World Health Organization panel added cellphones to a list of things that are “possibly carcinogenic” — a category that also includes pickles and coffee.

Second: in mid-June, the National Toxicology Program, countering years of lobbying by certain industries, finally classified formaldehyde (used in plywood manufacturing and embalming) as a carcinogen.

And third: in late June, the Food and Drug Administration issued newer and more graphic warning labels for cigarette packages. These include deliberately disturbing images of a patient with mouth cancer and of a man with tobacco smoke coming out of a tracheotomy stoma.…  Seguir leyendo »