Sarah Zhang
In 2021, she was a Livingston Award finalist for her reporting on Down syndrome. Before joining The Atlantic, she was a staff writer at Wired. She covers science and health.
The Myopia Generation
Why do so many kids need glasses now?
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Caroline Tompkins for The Atlantic How Much Would You Pay to Save Your Cat’s Life?
For $15,000, you can get your pet a new kidney.
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The Atlantic / Getty What Europe’s COVID Wave Means for the U.S.
New variants are coming. How worried should we be?
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The Atlantic Don’t Pay for Cord-Blood Banking
Umbilical blood can be a valuable treatment for rare diseases. But that doesn’t mean you need to pay thousands of dollars to bank your baby’s.
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Tyler Comrie / The Atlantic The ‘End’ of COVID Is Still Far Worse Than We Imagined
Even now, the coronavirus is killing three times as many people as the flu.
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Christopher Furlong / Getty What They Aren’t Telling You About Hypoallergenic Dogs
There’s no such thing as a dog that can’t cause allergies.
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Rolf Nussbaumer / Alamy America Has a Rabid-Raccoon Problem
For decades, the government has been carrying out an ambitious plan to mass vaccinate the wild animals by airplane.
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Getty; The Atlantic No One Knows What’s Inside the Smallpox Vaccine
The key ingredient in our oldest vaccine is a mystery that goes back 200 years.
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Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Does DNA Prove These Wild Horses Came From a Spanish Shipwreck?
A newly discovered tooth hints at how the Chincoteague ponies got to America.
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John J. Custer / The Atlantic How Long Can the Coronavirus Keep Reinfecting Us?
No one knows exactly what this will look like—only that it’s guaranteed to keep happening.
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Erik Freeland / Corbis / Getty The Great Veterinary Shortage
There are not enough humans to take care of all the animals.
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Caitlin Ochs / Reuters The Abortion Pill Can Be Used Later Than the FDA Says
The medication is approved until week 10 of pregnancy in the U.S. But the WHO says it can be safely used until 12 weeks, and activists have used it even later.
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Adam Maida / The Atlantic Side Effects May Include … A Completely New Hair Color?
An experimental therapy helped patients with a rare disease feel better. It also led to an accidental makeover.
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Getty; The Atlantic We Should Have Seen Monkeypox Coming
Five years ago, monkeypox made a leap—and most of the world ignored it.
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Katie Martin / The Atlantic; Getty How the End of Roe Would Change Prenatal Care
Genetic testing is a routine part of pregnancy. Abortion restrictions are already shifting how doctors talk about the results.
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The Atlantic ; Getty Is a Common Virus Suddenly Causing Liver Failure in Kids?
No one knows exactly why hundreds of kids have shown up with hepatitis, but investigators have some ideas.
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Getty; The Atlantic A Tick Bite Made Them Allergic to Meat
And an organ-transplant company has an unexpected solution.
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The Atlantic Why Can’t We Just Call BA.2 Omicron?
Whatever happened to the simpler Greek-letter naming system?
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Getty; The Atlantic Tuberculosis Got to South America Through … Seals?
Ancient DNA reveals unexpected twists in the history of this deadly disease.
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Matthias Bein/Getty; H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Getty Vaccinating Kids Has Never Been Easy
Uptake of COVID vaccines for kids has been slow, but it has been slow for other vaccines too.
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The Atlantic The Puzzling Virus That Infects Almost Everyone
For many people, Epstein-Barr virus causes mild initial infection, but it is also linked to cancers and multiple sclerosis. What do we do about it?
