Richard Knox
Since he joined NPR in 2000, Knox has covered a broad range of issues and events in public health, medicine, and science. His reports can be heard on NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition, Talk of the Nation, and newscasts.
Among other things, Knox's NPR reports have examined the impact of HIV/AIDS in Africa, North America, and the Caribbean; anthrax terrorism; smallpox and other bioterrorism preparedness issues; the rising cost of medical care; early detection of lung cancer; community caregiving; music and the brain; and the SARS epidemic.
Before joining NPR, Knox covered medicine and health for The Boston Globe. His award-winning 1995 articles on medical errors are considered landmarks in the national movement to prevent medical mistakes. Knox is a graduate of the University of Illinois and Columbia University. He has held yearlong fellowships at Stanford and Harvard Universities, and is the author of a 1993 book on Germany's health care system.
He and his wife Jean, an editor, live in Boston. They have two daughters.
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Heavy drinking can lead to alcohol-induced amnesia. It can be total or it can be spotty. Either way, it can be difficult for a bystander, or even the inebriated person, to know when it has happened.
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The idea is to inject anti-HIV antibodies that would kill the virus when people get exposed. A new study is promising — although it was conducted on monkeys.
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The demands: a U.N. apology for bringing the disease to the island, reparations for victims, repairs to the water system. Meanwhile, a study shows the toll is far worse than previously thought.
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Half of Americans say they've had a major stressful event in the past year, according to a poll by NPR, the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Here's how it hurts.
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Two new drugs for hepatitis C can save lives. They are also wildly expensive, costing $66,000 to $84,000 per person. Insurers face paying billions for treatment, or explicitly rationing vital care.
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As many as 5 million Americans have hepatitis C, and new drugs can cure almost all of them. But patients worry they won't get these expensive treatments in time.
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Updated just last week by the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology, the new guidelines are based on old data, some heart doctors say, and may overestimate the real risk of heart attack and stroke. That could result in overtreatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs.
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The question of how to treat ductal carcinoma in situ is roiling the medical profession, and making for tough choices for women. The condition may never become invasive cancer. But some women choose to have mastectomies rather than live with uncertainty.
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A vaccine against a virus that causes cervical cancer has cut infections among teenage girls by over half in the first four years of use, scientists report. Only about one-third of girls in that age group have received the recommended shots.
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Tuberculosis is much less of a health threat in the United States than it is in other countries. But a family in Boston discovered that even here, no one is immune from this ancient foe. More than a dozen family members were infected with TB, and matriarch Judy Williams died at age 59.