freelance science journalist and author
Medical reporting
From Nature, 25 August 2021: “Dealing with pain is messy,” says John Roberts, an oncologist at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. It can’t be measured objectively through biomarkers or visualized on a scan, the experience of it varies enormously from person to person, and it can be fiendishly difficult to treat. … Continue reading Why severe sickle-cell pain has been neglected
From The Medical Republic, 2 August 2021: At the start of this year, the covid situation in India was looking relatively good. As the pandemic raged in other parts of the world, India was reporting around 10,000 new cases each day1 – nothing like the hundreds of thousands being diagnosed in the United States. A … Continue reading Delta: a deep dive
From The Scientist, 31 August 2021: hen SARS-CoV-2 first began rampaging around the world, it was thought to primarily affect the respiratory system. It soon became clear that the virus had more far-reaching effects, including on the gastrointestinal system and its bacterial symbionts. This came as no surprise to Siew Ng, a gastroenterologist in the … Continue reading Gut microbiome may help or hinder defenses against SARS-CoV-2
From The Scientist, 20 July 2021: iomedical researchers across Australia are reeling in shock from the sudden news that the biggest supplier of laboratory mice and rats in the country—the Animal Resources Centre—will close its doors in around a year, with no plans in place to ensure a continued supply of animals to researchers. Malcolm … Continue reading Australian research faces impending scarcity of lab rodents
From Nature, 30 June 2021: Ever since 1796, when English scientist and physician Edward Jenner successfully inoculated an eight-year-old boy with cowpox to protect him from smallpox, vaccines have been a key tool for preventing disease. From smallpox to polio, diphtheria to COVID-19, vaccines have prevented more deaths from infectious disease than any other medical … Continue reading How nanotechnology can flick the immunity switch
From Nature News, 7 July 2021: Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik, has been the subject of fascination and controversy since the Russian government authorized its use last year, before early-stage trial results were published. Evidence from Russia and many other countries now suggests it is safe and effective — but questions remain about the quality of … Continue reading Mounting evidence suggests Sputnik COVID vaccine is safe and effective
From The Medical Republic, 10 June 2021: “[Society] has placed the workers under conditions in which they can neither retain health nor live long … society knows how injurious such conditions are to the health and the life of the workers, and yet does nothing to improve these conditions. That it knows the consequences of … Continue reading Is this what social murder looks like?
From Nature, 9 June 2021: For preventive cardiologist Michele Mietus-Snyder, the quest to understand and address the early causes of heart disease is like going down the rabbit hole in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. “When I’m seeing my adolescent patients, I’m not just trying to prevent heart disease for that child, but for … Continue reading How a child’s heart health could be decided before birth
From The Griffith Review, 3 May 2021: ‘IT’S MY HORMONES, doc. It’s my hormones, and no one’s listened to that.’ It was the late 1980s, in what was once Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital in inner-city Melbourne. A brash young registrar doing her training in psychiatry had arrived at her first hospital placement, full of ideas … Continue reading The chemical question
From The Medical Republic, 8 April 2020: “I’m one of those public health people who love silver bullets.” As editor-in-chief of BMJ Global Health, and a health systems expert at the University of Sydney, Dr Seye Abimbola is well acquainted with the damage that SARS-CoV-2 has wrought around the world. So he’s understandably excited about … Continue reading So we have vaccines. What happens now?
