The devastation wrought by opioids in recent years is only part of a much larger drug crisis in the United States that stretches back four decades, according to a new study published Thursday in Science. Since 1979, the study found, the overdose death rate has been exponentially climbing, even as the deadly drugs of…
A daily low dose of aspirin won’t help healthy older people stay alive any longer, suggests new research published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. It might even raise their risk of dying early of certain things, like cancer.
Not everyone who is close to death—or thinks they are, at least—has a “near-death experience.” But those who do often hallucinate that they leave their bodies, meet otherworldly beings, see bright flashes and tunnels of light, and more. Those who take the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine, or DMT— a compound found…
More people are dying from drug overdoses in the U.S. than ever before, according to a new preliminary report released Wednesday by the federal government. There were an estimated 72,287 drug overdose deaths last year, the report found, with the majority caused by opioids. The toll is yet another record high.
A team of Russian scientists is lining themselves up to be the opening cast of a John Carpenter film. Earlier this month, in the journal Doklady Biological Sciences, they announced they had apparently discovered ancient nematode worms that were able to resurrect themselves after spending at least 32,000 years buried…
You may not have heard of him, but his work is far more influential than you realize.
The older we get, the greater our likelihood of dying. Or at least that’s what we thought. New research suggests mortality rates level off after we turn 105, and that no upper limit exists for the human lifespan. It’s an extraordinary conclusion—one that’s not going over very well with other aging researchers.
The death toll of the US opioid crisis has been seriously lowballed, suggests a new study published Wednesday in Public Health Reports. It found that many states have failed to identify fatal drug overdoses specifically caused by opioid use over the past two decades. Since 1999, there might have been as many as 70,000…
Since 2016, at least 12 people have died worldwide soon after receiving a intragastric balloon, a new noninvasive procedure meant to help people lose weight, according to an alert released Monday by the Food and Drug Administration. Seven of the patients were in the US. In response, the FDA has approved new warning…
The US likely experienced its third consecutive year of a sagging life expectancy in 2017, based on preliminary data published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Increased deaths from suicide and drug overdose probably played a role in the decline.
I never thought I’d see the day, but vaping—the bejeweled fedora of nicotine delivery methods—is starting to seem a lot less ridiculous. Or, at least, somewhat less ridiculous. Juuling teens are still reliably funny. But at the same time, there are real, credentialed doctors out there making a case for vaping as a…
Animals fatally maul, sting, trample, and chew about a million humans per year. Pretty nice of them, given the numbers on our side—the average of 750 million chickens we kill in the U.S. every month, for instance. In an ideal world, no one would ever get mauled by a bear, or contract rabies from a feral squirrel. But…
Night owls may be more fun at parties, but a preference for staying out late may come with some serious drawbacks, suggests a new study published this week in Chronobiology International. Namely, it might increase your chances of dying early.
Living creatures do amazing things. They grow toward the sun, build cities, lay eggs, and some even bone. But living things must die, and when they do, they tend to get smelly and mushy pretty quickly. But the moments after death, before decomposition, can be amazing in their own right. Scientists have just learned a…
Peter Madsen, an eccentric inventor who gained notoriety for his DIY submarine and mini-rocket projects, has been charged with the murder of Kim Wall, a young journalist that was writing a story about him. After months of shifting stories, prosecutors believe that Madsen intentionally killed Wall and that the act was…
“On an average day, visitors might encounter Dr. Couney’s Infant Incubators, where premature babies were kept alive by novel technology that had yet to be adopted by hospitals,” writes Joanna Ebenstein of the medical miracles once tucked away inside New York City’s most famous amusement park in her new book, Death: A…
Even though Thanos has been trying his damnedest to get her attention for eons, Marvel’s abstract concept of Death’s been spending the bulk of her time lately hanging out with Ben Reilly, Spider-Man’s clone. In this week’s Scarlet Spider, Death visited Ben for a friendly chat about her involvement in the 2016 World…
In a grisly tale, The New York Times reports Takahiro Shiraishi, 27, was arrested in Zama prefecture, Japan, 30 miles outside of Tokyo, after police found nine severed heads in coolers in his apartment. Shiraishi reportedly used Twitter to find women who’d expressed suicidal thoughts over the service, murdering and…
Do not lose sleep tonight, the world will not end as the result of some enormous supervolcano eruption in Yellowstone National Park any time soon. But there is a whole lot of other interesting stuff going on there—so maybe it’s worth losing sleep by getting excited about science. Nerd.
Harry Dean Stanton, an instantly recognizable character actor whose career spanned seven decades, died of natural causes in Los Angeles today. He was 91 years old.
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