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A hot new product has been sending parents of newborns on a wild goose chase this holiday season. Message boards are filled with chatter about how to find it. It could take hours on the phone to track down. No, it’s not a Furby or a Barbie Dreamhouse. It’s a new protective treatment for RSV, the respiratory virus that sends up to 80,000 babies and toddlers to the hospital each year. (Lisa Jarvis, 11/9)

For 39 years, I have lived with sickle cell disease. As of late, the sickle cell community has heard a lot of excitement about gene therapy’s potential to be the cure we’ve all been waiting for. That potential took a step toward fulfillment Friday when the Food and Drug Administration approved Casgevy from Vertex Pharmaceuticals’ and Lyfgenia from Bluebird Bio, both gene therapy treatments for people with sickle cell. Yet I find myself teetering between excitement and skepticism. (Jennifer Fields, 12/8)

I wrote about long Covid in June 2020. In the following days, I got more than 100 emails from people who thought they were going mad — or had been told as much — and felt validated to see their reality reflected. That story was the first of an octet; those responses were the vanguards of thousands more. (Ed Yong, 12/11)

On Sunday, professor Katalin Karikó will receive a Nobel Prize for her research on mRNA that led to the rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines and saved millions of lives. Though most Nobel laureates remain little known, Karikó’s story is famous for the way she and her work were dismissed by colleagues and her university for decades. (Dr. Andrew Lam, 12/10)

Oliver McGowan was 18 years old when he was hospitalized in England with recurrent seizures and pneumonia. He was autistic, and he and his parents had one specific request for the medical team: no antipsychotic medications. When he had taken them in the past, they made his seizures worse and had devastating effects on his mood. Despite the family’s vehement protests, doctors gave him an antipsychotic. A few days later, Oliver suffered a lethal neurological side effect. A week later, he was taken off life support. An inquest into his death found that the drug had led to the rapid deterioration. (Romila Santra, 12/11)

If you ask most women, they can tell you about a friend, family member, or how they themselves have experienced such debilitating pain once a month that it renders them incapacitated. For those living with endometriosis (a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus) — 11% of American women between ages 15-44 according to the Office on Women’s Health — debilitating menstrual cramps, chronic pain in the lower back and pelvis, intestinal pain, and painful bowel movements or pain when urinating are common symptoms of the disease. For many individuals with endometriosis, this excruciating pain interferes with their ability to work. (Jillian Gilchrest, 12/11)