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.
Scientists at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History joined Cheddar to discuss the possibility that the world is undergoing its sixth mass extinction event.
World leaders are promising to protect the world’s forests, cut methane emissions and help South Africa wean itself off coal at the U.N. climate summit.
President Joe Biden is taking a markedly more humble tone for a U.S. leader on climate change.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has opened a global climate summit, saying the world is strapped to a “doomsday device.”
A new study found a cheap antidepressant reduced the need for hospitalization among high-risk adults with COVID-19.
A group of prominent academics and activists are calling on banks and insurers to avoid the kind of systemic collapse that crippled the world economy back in 2008.
SpaceX is resolving toilet spills in its capsules before it launches another crew for NASA. Liftoff is currently set for early Sunday from Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
U.S. health advisers have endorsed kid-size doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for younger children.
Last spring, as false claims about vaccine safety threatened to undermine the world's response to COVID-19, researchers at Facebook found they could reduce vaccine misinformation by tweaking how vaccine posts show up on users' newsfeeds.
New York City's first immersive cannabis experience, The Stone Age, is seeking to change the narrative about cannabis, just in time for legalization.
