Michael Specter

The defiant group of AIDS activists was itself riven by discord. What can the movement’s legacy, of both ferocity and fragility, teach us?

For many of the world’s poorest children, the death and devastation have only begun.

To ignore any eventual approval made by the Food and Drug Administration is worse than dangerous.

The President’s refusal either to lead or to recognize the leadership of others has made it impossible to develop a national plan to combat the coronavirus.

May 28, 2020 ... Michael Specter writes about the life and legacy of the AIDS activist Larry Kramer, who died this week.

An infectious-disease expert’s long crusade against some of humanity’s most virulent threats.

When public-health programs are successful, they are invisible, and what is invisible is almost always taken for granted. Nobody cheers when they remain untouched by a disease that they hardly knew existed. That makes it easy for shortsighted politicians to deny long-term realities. And that is what they almost always do. Members of Congress hardly made a peep in 2018, when the Trump Administration disbanded the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and B…

Epidemics are not a zero-sum game; you cannot ignore one to defend against another.

Why not work on making vaccines that would protect broadly against this entire class of virus rather than waiting for each one to attack us and then try to fight back?

ANNALS OF MEDICINE about AIDS in India... Writer describes the social campaign of pharmaceuticals businessman Yusuf K. Hamied to bring AIDS drugs to the …

There is a risk that the March for Science will be widely regarded as a manifestation of the great urban-rural divide that helped elect Trump.

This White House, unlike any other, has already crossed the threshold into a space where facts appear to mean nothing.

Asking Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to chair a commission on scientific integrity is like asking Ted Kaczynski to run the United States Postal Service.

Researchers hope to use the powerful biological tool to alter the genetic destiny of species and eliminate diseases.

Trump got a “safe space” to talk—vaguely—about his health, but does Oz genuinely believe that kind of disingenuous consultation serves his millions of viewers?

Biologists are developing a powerful tool that may help eradicate malaria and other serious diseases. But is it worth the risk?

Clinton’s comments caused an outcry. Her subsequent apology, while not nearly as offensive, was also misguided.

The facts of the Zika outbreak have left people terrified. Lies and hysteria about the source of the virus aren’t helping.

Perhaps nobody has done more to alert the world to the dangers of climate change than James Hansen or Ken Caldeira.

A powerful new technology enables us to manipulate our genetic code with ease. How will we use it?