Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
Each week, KFF Health News finds longer stories for you to enjoy. Today's selections are on terminal cancer, NIH cuts, PFAS, aging, the Slim-Fast founder, and more. Happy July Fourth weekend!
The Washington Post:
Hundreds Of Neighbors Rally To Give A Girl With Cancer One Last Christmas
The days leading up to the Saturday night event were hot and humid but that didn’t stop the community from decorating miles of houses for Kasey Zachmann, who has terminal brain cancer. (Lang and Barrie, 6/29)
Undark:
The Impact Of NIH Cuts Ripples Beyond U.S. Borders
Rory De Vries, an associate professor of virology in the Netherlands, was lifting weights at the gym when he noticed a WhatsApp message from his research partners at Columbia University, telling him his research funding had been cancelled. De Vries was disappointed, though not surprised — his team knew this might happen under the new Trump administration. His projects focused on immune responses and a new antiviral treatment for respiratory viruses like Covid-19. (Klotz, 6/30)
ProPublica:
Trump’s First EPA Promised to Crack Down on Forever Chemicals. His Second EPA Is Pulling Back.
The agency has delayed enforcement of its standards, slashed its staff and terminated over $15 million in PFAS research grants. (Clark, 7/2)
The Washington Post:
After Lahaina Fires, Prefab Homes Are An Emergency Housing Experiment
An experiment in Lahaina, Maui, is providing prefabricated homes to those affected by the wildfires almost two years ago. (Siegel, 6/28)
The New York Times:
A Common Assumption About Aging May Be Wrong, Study Suggests
A new analysis of data gathered from a small Indigenous population in the Bolivian Amazon suggests some of our basic assumptions about the biological process of aging might be wrong. New data raises the question of whether inflammation is directly linked to aging at all, or if it’s linked to a person’s lifestyle or environment instead. (Ravindranath, 6/30)
The Washington Post:
What 4,000-Year-Old DNA Revealed About How Ancient Societies Interacted
For the first time, scientists have sequenced a complete DNA set from an ancient Egyptian man, the oldest studied sequence, dating to when the pyramids were first constructed. (Patel, 7/2)
In obituaries —
The Washington Post:
S. Daniel Abraham, Slim-Fast Founder And Political Donor, Dies At 100
Slim-Fast roared into the weight-loss market in the 1970s, and Mr. Abraham used his fortune to back Democratic candidates and push for Mideast peace. (Murphy, 7/2)
