Rob Stein

In a unanimous vote, 17-0, a panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration recommended that the agency approve the first over-the-counter birth control pill.

The Food and Drug Administration is weighing whether to allow a birth control pill to be sold over the counter for the first time. An advisory committee opens a two-day hearing Tuesday.

The CDC says the coming end of the public health emergency means the agency will be scaling back the data it routinely collects and releases about the pandemic.

The FDA is considering greenlighting the experimental treatment under its accelerated approvals program. Some critics point out the therapy isn't yet proven to work and may be costly.

The chances of developing lingering symptoms after COVID appears to fall sharply from the first to the second time someone gets sick, new research finds. The risk is still significant.

The Food and Drug Administration appears poised to make available the COVID-19 vaccines that target omicron as a second booster for people with weak immune systems and those ages 65 and older.

The Food and Drug Administration appears ready to authorize that some people — such as those with weak immune systems — get yet another booster with one of the newest COVID-19 vaccines.

A Mississippi woman's life has been transformed by a treatment for sickle cell disease with the gene-editing technique CRISPR. All her symptoms from a disease once thought incurable have disappeared.

The Third International Summit on Genome Editing concluded Monday with ethicists warning scientists to slow down efforts to use gene-editing to enhance the health of embryos.

Victoria Gray's life has been transformed by her treatment for sickle cell disease with the gene-editing technique called CRISPR. She's in London telling her story at a scientific summit.

The last time this summit convened in 2018, the world was shocked to hear a scientist had created the first gene-edited babies. He was condemned, but gene-editing has continued, with some success.

After three years, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center is ceasing operations. Its data dashboards and maps became go-to sources for information from the early days of the pandemic.

The main reason the surge is ebbing now, pandemic experts suspect, is the significant immunity many people in the U.S. have acquired from prior infections and COVID vaccinations many received.

The Food and Drug Administration proposes easing many restrictions on gay and bisexual men donating blood.

Long criticized as discriminatory, the policy has prevented many gay and bisexual men from donating blood. The Food and Drug Administration revealed a draft of its new approach on Friday.

FDA advisers debate the agency's controversial proposal to start handling the COVID vaccines like the flu shots — updating them annually to target the most likely strain to be dominant each winter.

The new approach would simplify vaccination guidance so that, every fall, people would get a new shot, updated to try to match whatever variant is dominant.

And what about a cold or RSV? With all the illness spreading, it's virus soup out there these days. Some people feel so sick they're wondering if they're fighting more than one germ at once.

It would make more sense to screen a plane's wastewater to look for new variants than to screen individual passenger volunteers, some researchers say. Others say any information is helpful.

The CDC has expanded screening of incoming international air travelers to try to more quickly spot any new variants that might emerge from China's massive COVID outbreak.