Medicine & Health

Journalist Katie Engelhart explores the "right to die" movement in her new book, The Inevitable. Engelhart says individuals seeking death on their own terms sometimes resort to ordering lethal veterinary drugs from Mexico or China.

Dr. Peter Hotez is co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital, and says that a vaccine release could begin for selected populations by the middle of December — and that a broader vaccination effort could soon follow.

We listen to a 1983 interview with psychologist Timothy Leary, a 1990 interview with spiritual leader Ram Dass and a 2018 interview with How to Change Your Mind author Michael Pollan.

"Republicans have been trying to drive a stake into the heart of Obamacare pretty much since it was passed — both through legislation and litigation," New York Times reporter Sarah Kliff says.

A new documentary, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, chronicles the late neurologist's efforts to understand perception, memory and consciousness. Sacks spoke to Fresh Air in 2012.

In her new book, Waiting for an Echo: The Madness of American Incarceration, Christine Montross writes that in the U.S., people with serious mental illnesses are far more likely to be incarcerated than they are to be treated in a psychiatric hospital — despite the fact that incarceration often makes mentally ill people worse.

In psychiatrist Julie Holland's new book, Good Chemistry, she explores how psychedelic drugs, including LSD, psilocybin, MDMA and marijuana, might be used more widely in psychiatry to make treatment more efficient and effective.

"Since the very first day of this pandemic, I don't think [we've been] in a more confused position about what's happening," epidemiologist Michael Osterholm says. "We just aren't quite sure what [the coronavirus is] going to do next."
Osterholm is the founder and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

In The Turnaway Study, Diana Greene Foster shares research conducted over 10 years with about 1,000 women who had or were denied abortions, tracking impacts on mental, physical and economic health.