Sarah Zhang
The Fertility Doctor’s Secret
Donald Cline must have thought no one would ever know. Then DNA testing came along.
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Lipskiy / Mad Dog / Shutterstock / The ... Why Anti-vax Doctors Are Ordering 23andMe Tests
Naturopaths have long been obsessed with a gene called MTHFR. Now vaccine skeptics are testing for it too.
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N. D. Mitrofanov / Natural Nidality of Transmissible ... Soviets Tried So, So Hard to Eliminate the Plague
“Literally tens of thousands of people were employed to just spoon poison into the burrows.”
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Ed Herrera / ABC The Trouble With Fathering 114 Kids
A suitor on The Bachelorette says he is a sperm donor with 114 kids—is that too many?
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Alyssa Shukar / The Atlantic A Decades-Old Doctor’s Secret Leads to New Fertility-Fraud Law
In the ’70s and ’80s, Donald Cline fathered more than 50 children by using his own sperm in his patients. A new law makes such actions illegal.
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Jeremy Pettus / Loop / The Atlantic People Are Clamoring to Buy Old Insulin Pumps
How an obsolete medical device with a security flaw became a must-have for some patients with type 1 diabetes
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Mary Stiner / Asikli Hoyuk project photo archive Why Archaeologists Are Studying 10,000-Year-Old Urine
The history of animal domestication might be recorded in ancient pee.
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Oosterhof et al / American Journal of Human ... The Boy Missing an Entire Type of Brain Cell
Microglia make up 10 percent of the brain, and an extremely rare case shows just how important they are.
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CDC / Pete Wardell When Gut Bacteria Betray Their Hosts
Decades after a deadly outbreak, a researcher found a key clue to its cause inside frozen microbes.
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Brian Lasenby / Shutterstock Even Viruses Can Get Infected With Other Viruses
Three tiny, newly described viruses—named Larry, Curly, and Moe—target bigger viruses.
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Reuters pool A DNA Company Wants You to Help Catch Criminals
FamilyTreeDNA was criticized for secretly working with the FBI. Now it’s explicitly asking potential customers to help law enforcement.
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David Gray / Reuters The Tiny Poisonous Toads Taking Over Florida Yards
“It was like a mass exodus of toads.”
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Shelli Jensen / Shutterstock Beware the Medusavirus
A newly discovered giant virus turns its victims to “stone.”
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alexkoral / shutterstock The Cost of Not Knowing a Huntington’s Diagnosis
Some would-be parents who might have inherited the fatal gene want their doctors to keep secrets—even from them.
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MDOT SHA What DNA Hidden in a Plantation Tobacco Pipe Reveals
Archaeologists have started searching for genetic data inside ordinary objects such as pipes, which can contain centuries-old saliva.
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Steven Senne / AP An Abandoned Baby’s DNA Condemns His Mother
Sioux Falls police bring murder charges, based on a technique first used to catch a serial killer, in a 38-year-old case.
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agsandrew / Shutterstock The Twins That Are Neither Identical nor Fraternal
They shared a placenta, but on the ultrasound, one looked like a boy, and the other a girl.
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Lenny Ignelzi / AP The Real Cost of Knowledge
The University of California has broken with one of the world’s largest academic publishers. Is this the end of a very profitable business model?
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pavila / shutterstock Is DNA Left on Envelopes Fair Game for Testing?
The genealogist’s dream of testing old, spit-laced artifacts is coming true—but raising questions about who controls dead people’s DNA.
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Anthony Page The ‘Golden Death’ Bacterium Found in a Rotten Apple
This “spectacular” pathogen dissolves its host from inside out.
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Sergey Zaykov / Shutterstock Why We Think Cats Are Psychopaths
It’s just “resting cat face.”
