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Tara Law

Welcome to my portfolio! I'm a reporter who's passionate about covering health, housing and public safety.

National Geographic •

Dogs and their owners really do look alike—here’s why

When I strolled into the ring at the Pennington Day dog show’s Look-Alike Contest in suburban New Jersey in the mid-1990s, I had all the confidence of a young girl assured of victory.After all, my buff cocker spaniel puppy had long, floppy ears that perfectly matched my wavy, blond bob. After winning that first contest, Soccer and I competed for about four years at Pennington Day in an array of matching outfits—hers purloined from my younger sister—racking up a row of blue ribbons. I have not su...
Time •

Bodies Crushed By Debris, Looting, and Limited Sanitation: Bahamas Survivors Describe Dorian’s Aftermath

Amid the destruction Hurricane Dorian brought down upon Great Abaco in the Bahamas this week, Brian Symonette lost his shoes. As he’s traveled around the island in Dorian’s aftermath to get supplies and care for his family, he’s been forced to walk over the feces and debris-strewn ground barefoot. His feet are gashed and his toenails are falling off, he says, but the 34-year-old crab fishing business owner knows he’s been relatively lucky.

“I’ve seen dead bodies. I’ve seen bodies of people crus
Time •

Maine Is Missing Opportunities to Stop Gun Violence

The investigation into a mass shooting that left at least 18 people dead at a bar and a bowling alley in Lewiston, Maine on Wednesday evening continues to unfold, but advocates and experts say the attack has already highlighted Maine’s legal laxity on gun safety.

Specifically, Maine doesn’t have some measures that have been shown to reduce gun deaths among adults, such background checks for handgun sales or laws that require gun permits— which in his own research found was associated with a 60%
Time •

Scott O’Neill

Early next year, a factory in Brazil plans to release a new product: mosquitoes. The World Mosquito Program facility will give more than 1 billion of the insects the Wolbachia bacteria, which is harmless to humans but prevents the mosquitos from carrying the deadly virus that causes dengue fever, and even Zika and chikungunya. As they interbreed with local mosquitos, they’ll pass along the bacteria until eventually no mosquitoes can carry the diseases.

The founder and CEO of the project, Scott
Time •

Home Births Became More Popular During the Pandemic. But Many Insurers Still Don’t Cover Them

Tia DeShazor began to question whether she wanted to give birth in a hospital when she was about six months pregnant. It was winter 2021 and COVID-19 was still raging through New York City, where she lives. Pandemic restrictions prevented her husband from attending doctors’ appointments with her, and she wasn’t even allowed to video chat with him during her ultrasound. She felt ignored by her doctors, who assured her that her round ligament pain was normal, even though it was so severe that she
Time •

State Laws Are Treating Fentanyl Like the New Crack—And Making the Same Mistakes of the 80s and 90s

Since the U.S. drug war was declared in 1971, various drugs have been identified as public enemy number one—from crack cocaine, in the 1980s, to prescription opioids in the early 2000s. Today, the primary villain is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid about 50 times more potent than heroin. In 2021, more than 71,000 people in the U.S. died after overdoses involving synthetic opioids—mostly fentanyl, according to provisional data released by the National Center for Health Statistics on May 11.

Such a d
Time •

Why the Major Drop in Veteran Homelessness Offers Hope

A homeless person sleeping on America’s streets in 2010 was far more likely to be a veteran than today: while the rate of homelessness has remained relatively stagnant in the U.S., it’s dropped by about 55% among veterans, from about 74,000 in 2010 to 33,129 in 2022. Even more veterans will have a home for the holidays this year: on November 29, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced it had permanently housed nearly 39,000 veterans since the start of the year, surpassing its goal for
Time •

Why Overdose Deaths Have Increased

The American crackdown on the drugs that kicked off the modern opioid overdose epidemic—prescription opioids—largely succeeded. According to data released by the American Medical Association (AMA) on Sept. 8, opioid prescriptions have dropped in every state over the last decade, plummeting nearly 50% nationally.

The effort to prevent overdose deaths, however, is an abject failure. Annual opioid overdose deaths more than tripled between 2010 and 2020, according to federal data. Drug overdose dea
Time •

We’re in the Third Quarter of the Pandemic. Antarctic Researchers, Mars Simulation Scientists and Navy Submarine Officers Have Advice For How to Get Through It

McMurdo Station, an Antarctic research base 2,415 miles south of Christchurch, New Zealand, is a strange place to ride out the COVID-19 pandemic. But it’s been a home of sorts for Pedro Salom since he took a dishwashing job there in 2001, when he was 24. Now an assistant area manager with more than a dozen Antarctic deployments behind him, Salom has grown accustomed to the ebb and flow of life on the ice. There’s the surge of excitement when new arrivals join the camp, the feeling of isolation f
Time •

Psilocybin May Help Treat Alcohol Addiction, Study Shows

By the time Jon Kostas was 25, he was desperate to beat his alcohol addiction. He had started drinking at age 13 and had cycled through different treatments—going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, taking pharmaceutical medications, and trying in-patient rehab—but nothing worked. Ever since 2015, however, when he took part in a clinical trial that combined talk therapy and psilocybin—the psychedelic active ingredient in magic mushrooms—Kostas has quit drinking. “I’m forever grateful and indebted,
Time •

Michael Pollan on the Psychedelic Renaissance and Netflix's New 'How to Change Your Mind' Documentary

For decades, psychedelics have evoked a freewheeling past, calling to mind images of hippie counterculture and swirly neon patterns. Recently, however, psychedelics have become synonymous with serious, forward-looking science. Researchers at renowned institutions are researching the mental-health effects of pairing psychedelics with psychotherapy, and with the promising research has come a surge of investment in new psychedelic start-up companies.

Few people have done more to return psychedelic
Time •

What 'Euphoria' Gets Right—and Wrong—About Teen Drug Use

Euphoria—the most tweeted-about TV show of the decade in the U.S.—has thrust teenage drug use into the cultural spotlight. The HBO show follows 17-year-old Rue Bennett, a sweet but troubled teen played by Zendaya, as she navigates a deepening drug use disorder. It’s not pretty. Rue takes the powerful opioid fentanyl, injects morphine, and drags around a suitcase filled with thousands of dollars worth of drugs (a stash she can’t resist dipping into). Meanwhile, she rips apart her life: tearing th
Time •

How Russian Media Are Covering the Ukraine Invasion

The Russian government doesn’t create much of an illusion of press freedom. Many of the most prominent media organizations, from television channels to the Russian news agency TASS, are owned by the federal government, and journalists critical of the political establishment face not only censorship, but also risk to their lives and livelihoods.

That reality has become only more obvious since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A survey of headlines in Russian news outlets this week reveals not so
Time •

For HIV/AIDS Survivors, COVID-19 Reawakened Old Trauma—And Renewed Calls for Change

Forty years ago this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report noted a rare lung infection among five otherwise healthy gay men in Los Angeles, Calif. Though they didn’t know it at the time, the scientists had written about what would turn out to be one of the historical moments that launched the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic.

Since then, HIV/AIDS has killed an estimated 35 million people, including 534,000 people in
Time •

Experts Fear a Shortage of Forensic Pathologists Will Leave Deaths Unexplained

Makeshift morgues were necessary back in 2020, when COVID-19 lacked a vaccine and was killing so many people that hospitals and funeral homes couldn’t keep up. But two years later, they were still in use in Baltimore—for a different reason. In February, according to news stories at the time, at least 200 bodies from the medical examiner’s office sat in refrigerated truck trailers parked inside a parking garage for weeks. There was simply nowhere else to put them—because of a shortage of forensic
Time •

Dying Patients Are Fighting for Access to Psychedelics

Erinn Baldeschwiler, a 48-year-old with metastatic breast cancer, is struggling with anxiety and depression as she nears the untimely end of her life. “The last thing I want is to be terrified and scared and anxious, especially when I pass,” she says.

She knows that no treatment can change the outcome of her disease. But she’s fighting for access to a different kind of therapeutic: psilocybin-assisted therapy, which past research has found can ease anxiety for depression in advanced cancer pati
Time •

What Abortion Providers in Anti-Abortion States Will Do Post-Roe

On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, undoing the constitutional right to abortion that has been in place for nearly 50 years. The reversal paves the way for states to ban or limit abortions, and many are expected to do so soon.

Four abortion providers who live in states that severely restrict or are likely to soon criminalize abortion spoke with TIME about what they plan to do now. Some say they’ll shift care across state borders, while others resolve to amp up their activ
Time •

Meet the Young People Shaping Health Care's Post-Pandemic Future

The COVID-19 pandemic has been exhausting for the world’s health care workers, who have spent the last year-plus putting their lives on the line to keep the rest of us safe and healthy. Now, their tireless efforts are inspiring a new generation to join their ranks: applications to U.S. medical schools shot up nearly 20% in fall 2021, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Individual schools are reporting similar spikes—New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing saw
Time •

Narcan Can Save an Opioid User's Life. What to Know About the Drug

In a change long sought by advocates for preventing drug overdose deaths, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced on March 29 that it will make the 4mg dose of Narcan, a nasal-spray form of the opioid overdose reversing drug naloxone, available over the counter and without a prescription.

While the medication is already widely available without a prescription in many parts of the country through state laws, advocates say that the change will increase access to the drug. This is especial
Time •

Loneliness Is a Public Health Emergency. Here's What Helps, According to Experts

When the pandemic first began, many experts feared that even people who managed to avoid the virus would suffer from unprecedented levels of loneliness. What would happen when millions of people were told to stay at home and distance themselves from friends and loved ones?

Two years of research later, experts have found that the pandemic did make Americans slightly more lonely—but loneliness levels were already dire enough to pose a threat to mental and physical health. Here’s what you need to
Time •

Residents Already Need to Travel for Abortion Training. Experts Fear Roe's End Will Make It Even Harder

In 2021, Dr. Mallika Govindan, a family medicine resident at Mount Sinai Health System, got disappointing news. Even though she had pursued a career in medicine in order to become an abortion provider—and had chosen a residency in New York City, where she felt she would get the best training—she wouldn’t be able to learn how to provide abortion care locally. Because of pandemic precautions, Planned Parenthood New York City, which trains many medical residents, had to scale back its abortion trai
Time •

The Story Behind TIME's 'Resilience of Ukraine' Cover

Since Russia’s invasion began, dozens of Ukraine’s 7.5 million children have been killed and thousands of others have left in search of safety. Among those thousands is 5-year-old Valeriia from Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine. Her image—a smiling child, literally supported by her fellow Ukrainians—appears on one of this issue’s covers.

If you met Valeriia, you might think she’s shy, her mother Taisiia told TIME, but don’t be fooled; at home, she commands a
Time •

COVID-19 Killed My Grandfather. But My Dad Was Too Busy Treating COVID-19 Patients to Grieve Him

In early February, I got the call I’d dreaded for months: my 82-year-old grandfather, Charlie Law, had died. I’d tried to prepare myself as best as I could; Grandpa had Parkinson’s disease and dementia, and he had been in physical and mental decline for about four years. Still, I hadn’t seen my grandparents in person for two of those years because of the pandemic.

Once the initial waves of shock and sadness had washed over me, I was surprised to find I was angry. Losing my grandfather was inevi
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