Tara Law

Time • May 2 2024

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 • October 26 2023

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 • May 12 2022

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 • November 30 2023

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 • September 19 2022

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 • February 26 2021

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 • August 24 2022

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 • July 12 2022

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 • February 28 2022

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 • February 25 2022

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 • June 17 2021

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 • November 16 2022

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 • August 24 2022

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 • June 24 2022

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 • June 10 2021

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 • August 4 2022

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 • June 1 2022

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 • May 19 2022

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 • December 5 2022

Teen Marijuana Poisonings Are On the Rise in the U.S.

Cannabis might still be banned federally, but most U.S. adults (88%) say it should be legal, according to a Nov. 22 Pew Research Center poll—and in nearly half of states, it is. Like any psychoactive substance, however, cannabis comes with some health risks, especially for children and adolescents.

Over the last two decades, cannabis cases have flooded hotlines U.S. Poison Control Centers—facilities across the country staffed by toxicology experts who provide 24-hour-a-day guidance to both the

Time • March 17 2022

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 • February 24 2022

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

Time • October 11 2021

An Innovative Washington Law Aims to Get Foreign-Trained Doctors Back in Hospitals

Growing up in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu, where people sometimes die of preventable or treatable illnesses like diarrhea, typhoid and malaria, taught Abdifitah Mohamed a painful lesson: adequate health care is indispensable. In 1996, Mohamed’s mother died of septicemia after spending nine months hospitalized for a gunshot wound. Her death, Mohamed says, inspired him to go to medical school, and for about four years he worked to treat the sick and injured in Somalia, Sudan and Kenya.

But Moh