Rae Ellen Bichell
Rae Ellen Bichell is a reporter for NPR's Science Desk. She first came to NPR in 2013 as a Kroc fellow and has since reported Web and radio stories on biomedical research, global health, and basic science. She won a 2016 Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award from the Foundation for Biomedical Research. After graduating from Yale University, she spent two years in Helsinki, Finland, as a freelance reporter and Fulbright grantee.
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Flint, Mich., brought the risk of lead pipes to many people's attention, but the problems go further. Find out if lead pipes could be affecting your drinking water.
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U.S. health officials say they are now convinced that Zika virus can target the developing brain before birth, leading to a severe type of microcephaly and other brain abnormalities.
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Evidence has ping-ponged over the decades on the effects of hormone therapy on a woman's arteries. The latest study suggests a brief stint on hormones might be helpful — if given at the right time.
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Getting an accurate diagnosis is a big hurdle in the current outbreak of Zika virus. There are three kinds of tests for Zika, and each has problems. Scientists are working hard to improve diagnosis.
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Fewer people are having strokes now than decades ago. But that improvement seems to be mostly among the elderly. Young people are actually having more strokes, partly because of the rise in obesity.
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A report from doctors in Argentina raises the possibility that a mosquito pesticide could be responsible for an increase in microcephaly in Brazil. But many top scientists strongly disagree.
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Women report more bad side effects from medicines than men do. Researchers say the discrepancy may stem in part from how biomedical research is conducted at its earliest stages in animals.
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Despite striking ethnic disparities in the incidence and mortality of diseases like cancer and respiratory disease, minorities are not well represented in clinical trials. A paper out in the journal PLOS Medicine says two main barriers to achieving diverse clinical trials are the expense of recruiting minority subjects, and fears of exploitation in medical research.
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It typically causes fever and joint pain. A new study looks at a possible link to encephalitis, a brain infection.
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He came into the hospital in bad shape. In addition to being HIV-positive, he had what looked like a malignant tumor. The tumor, it turned out, was not human.