As officials struggle to fight the opioid epidemic that is plaguing the country, some big cities are considering creating "safe injection" sites. Addicts would be able to use their drugs under the watch of medical professionals, and they would be provided clean needles. While no city has submitted a formal plan, the idea is already stirring up controversy.
Dina Fine Maron, Health & Medicine Editor at Scientific American, explains the science behind safe injection sites. Allowing addicts to use drugs under supervision and with clean needles helps to reduce diseases associated with intravenous drug use such as HIV.
While no city in the United States has a "safe injection" site, Fine Maron says existing sites in Europe and Canada have proven to be a success. Data shows that opening these sites helps reduce opioid-related deaths and problems.
Pfizer says a booster dose of its COVID-19 vaccine appears to offer important protection against the new omicron variant.
A Japanese billionaire and his producer rocketed to space on Wednesday and reached the International Space Station several hours later.
Hawaii Flooding, Beijing Boycott & Disrupting Death
With rising numbers of COVID-19 cases predicted this winter, President Joe Biden is appealing for Americans to get their boosters and get behind his plan to tackle the new omicron variant through wider availability of vaccines and shots.
The U.S. identified its first known case of the omicron variant Wednesday — in a vaccinated traveler returning to California from South Africa — as scientists around the world raced to establish whether the new, mutant version of the coronavirus is more dangerous than the previous ones.
A person in California has become the first in the U.S. to have an identified case of the omicron variant of COVID-19.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority is signaling it will uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban on abortion — and may go much further to overturn the nationwide right to abortion that has existed for nearly 50 years.
The world is confronting a new coronavirus variant, and officials have named it “omicron." A World Health Organization panel has classified it as a highly transmissible virus of concern.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is spawning in an explosion of color as the World Heritage-listed natural wonder recovers from life-threatening coral bleaching episodes.
Climate change that may have contributed to a lobster boom in Maine could soon lead to a bust. Chloe Aiello reports.
