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A century ago, the top three causes of death were infectious diseases. More than half of all people dying in the United States died because of germs. Today, they account for a few percent of deaths at most. We owe much of that, of course, to antibiotics. The discovery of prontosil, the first synthetic modern antibiotic, earned Gerhard Domagk the Nobel Prize in 1939. Mass-produced penicillin earned Alexander Fleming, Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Walter Florey one in 1945. It is hard to overstate how much less of a threat infectious diseases pose to us today. But we take antibiotics for granted. We use them inappropriately and indiscriminately. This has led many to worry that our days of receiving benefits from them are numbered. (Aaron E. Carroll, 3/7)

There is a serious disease outbreak in Brazil right now. And then there is the Great Zika Freakout, the part of this outbreak that is offering some interesting lessons about the emotional nature of risk perception and how our fears so often don’t match the facts. (David Ropeik, 3/7)

Well before pot became legal, the nation’s first needle exchange opened in these parts in 1988. The 1811 Eastlake housing project, which allows alcoholics to keep drinking, helped make Seattle’s “Housing First” model official federal policy. And a Seattle police social-services diversion for low-level drug dealers is being copied around the country. The next big idea is called a safe-injection site. (3/7)

The horrendous effects of heroin addiction can be felt everywhere, from homeless encampments under bridges and on the streets of glittering downtown Seattle to rural communities throughout the state ... The only way to address this public health crisis — and to end the death spiral for some — is to acknowledge the scope of the problem and to be open to exploring new approaches to treatment. (3/7)

Tina Wardzala lies awake nights wondering and fearing what will happen to her and her sons if she loses the therapy and psychiatric medication she needs. “I have to be well to take care of my children,” she told me recently. I first wrote about Wardzala, 50, late last September. She has been a client at the Family Service and Mental Health Center of Cicero for 10 years. Men her mother invited into their home abused her as a child. As an adult many years ago, she was raped in the hallway of an apartment building when she was trying to deliver food to an elderly woman. It took seven years for her to muster the courage to tell her therapist about that. Wardzala has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, agoraphobia and bipolar disorder. (Madeleine Doubek, 3/7)

Cleveland Clinic surgeons performed the nation’s first uterus transplant last week; nine more are planned as part of a clinical trial. The goal is to make it possible for a woman with a damaged or missing uterus to become pregnant. This is innovative, skilled surgery. But it does not represent real progress for infertile women. (Josephine Johnston and Eric Trump, 3/7)