It's Not the Economy. It's the Pandemic.
Richard A. Friedman
America is in a funk, and no one seems to know why. Unemployment rates are lower than they've been in half a century and the stock market is sky-high, but poll after poll shows that voters are disgruntled. President Joe Biden's approval rating has been hovering in the high 30s. Americans' satisfaction with their personal lives--a measure that usually dips in times of economic uncertainty--is at a near-record low, according to Gallup polling. And nearly half of Americans surveyed in January said the...
The Mothers Who Aren't Waiting to Give Their Children Cystic-Fibrosis Drugs
Sarah Zhang
At six months pregnant, Sonja Lee Finnegan flew from Switzerland to France to buy $20,000 worth of drugs from a person she had never met. The drug she was after, Trikafta, is legal in Switzerland and approved for cystic fibrosis, a rare genetic disease that fills the lungs with thick mucus. Finnegan could not get it from a doctor, because she herself does not have cystic fibrosis. But the baby she was carrying inside her does, and she wanted to start him on the Trikafta as early as possible--befor...
DNA Tests Are Uncovering the True Prevalence of Incest
Sarah Zhang
When Steve Edsel was a boy, his adoptive parents kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings in their bedroom closet. He would ask for it sometimes, poring over the headlines about his birth. Headlines like this: "Mother Deserts Son, Flees From Hospital," Winston-Salem Journal, December 30, 1973.The mother in question was 14 years old, "5 feet 6 with reddish brown hair," and she had come to the hospital early one morning with her own parents. They gave names that all turned out to be fake. And by 8 o...