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.
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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?
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Octavio Jones / Getty The COVID Strategy America Hasn’t Really Tried
The clearest way to reduce deaths is to push to vaccinate more of the elderly—yes, still!
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Getty; The Atlantic The Coronavirus Will Surprise Us Again
The variant after Omicron could look very different from any yet.
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Heritage Images / Getty; The Atlantic How a Rare Brain Mutation Spread Across America
The Bowlin family knew they had a history of malformations in the brain. But they had no idea how far back it went.
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Getty; The Atlantic Omicron Is Forcing Us to Rethink Mild COVID
The staggering number of infections among the vaccinated is changing Americans’ pandemic mindset.
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Getty; The Atlantic Omicron Is Pushing America Into Soft Lockdown
Nobody wants to mandate business closures, but so many people are getting sick that businesses are closing anyway.
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Tom Bingham You Have No Idea How Hard It Is to Get a Hamster Drunk
“You just put a bottle of unsweetened Everclear on the cage and they love it.”
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Ben Hickey Omicron Is Our Past Pandemic Mistakes on Fast-Forward
We’ve been making the same errors for nearly two years now.
