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December 18, 2012 State and local officials are rooting for President Obama and Congress to quickly reach a budget deal. They anticipate the fiscal pain that would result from automatic cuts, and know things could even be worse from the negotiated belt-tightening behind any pact. But at this point, they just want some certainty.

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December 18, 2012 On Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health in Maryland is holding a second day of talks about whether and how to continue funding some controversial scientific experiments. Back in January, virologists agreed to temporarily stop research that was creating new forms of bird flu, because critics argued that the work was too dangerous.

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On Morning EditionPlaylist

December 17, 2012 Gin, Jesuit priests, communist bravado — the history of malaria is littered with strange bedfellows, as our video shows. The parasite has proved to be a wily foe, frustrating human efforts to control it time and time again.

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December 17, 2012 The preservative thimerosal keeps vaccines from going bad in places where there is no refrigeration. Anti-vaccine activists say it should be banned because it contains mercury, but public health officials insist it's safe.

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On Morning EditionPlaylist

December 13, 2012 A fresh look at what makes people sick around the world finds that life expectancy has ticked up in the past 20 years. But people aren't necessarily in the best of health during those extra years. Chronic problems, like depression and pain, are on the rise.

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December 12, 2012 In many parts of the world, there aren't enough doctors around to do post-mortems. Answers to a few questions can help a computer deduce what killed someone when an autopsy can't be done. The results can help guide decisions about public health.

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December 10, 2012 About 10 years ago, some nasty bacteria became impervious to some common classes of antibiotics. Scientists have sequenced genome samples of this superbug from all over the world. The results helped them figured out how it emerged in the U.S. and then moved to Europe, Australia and Asia.

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December 6, 2012 Last spring, the Nigerian government pledged millions of dollars to decontaminate a region where hundreds of kids have died from severe lead poisoning. So far, none of the money has been released. The delay in the cleanup puts thousands of kids at risk of getting sick, public health advocates say.

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December 4, 2012 The appearance of an unusual type of poliovirus in Pakistan exposed gaps in vaccination campaigns. When a community isn't well immunized against polio, the weakened virus used in the oral vaccine can mutate and then infect unvaccinated people.

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November 30, 2012 The latest cases represent the oldest known so far. They push the SARS-like virus's timeline back three months from the first reported case involving a 60-year-old man who died in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, last June.

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November 29, 2012 HIV has been declining in many parts of the world over the past decade. Today the U.S. unveiled an ambitious plan to stop most new HIV infections around the world. But some health leaders question whether their goals are realistic, especially with impending budget cuts.

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On All Things ConsideredPlaylist

November 28, 2012 A few months ago health workers discovered a new variety of coronavirus that killed one man and hospitalized another. Now the virus has infected four more people in the Middle East. How they got sick is a question scientists would like to answer.

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November 27, 2012 The number of new HIV infections in the U.S. is relatively stable at about 50,000 people a year. But HIV is on the rise in people under 25, federal data show. The upswing is driven largely by infections among young black men.

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November 21, 2012 Although new HIV infections have dropped by as much as 50 percent in many African countries, the fight against AIDS seems to be losing its footing in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. New infections nearly quadrupled in China between 2007 and 2011.

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November 20, 2012 No one really wants to think about what goes down the drain when you flush. But sometimes, you've got to look to see what your bowels are telling you about your health. Doctors have been decoding our pee and poo since medieval times. They've even developed handy visual guides.

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