
Top Stories 
Published On July 23, 2007
TECHNOLOGY
Child's Play
A solution to a sub-Saharan public health crisis is also…a merry-go-round.
Child's play is the unlikely solution to a sub-Saharan public health crisis: the high incidence of disease transmitted by dirty water. With each rotation of a PlayPump’s colorful merry-go-round, children draw clean water from 330-foot-deep wells into 660-gallon storage tanks that feature space for advertisements and public health messages about such concerns as HIV/AIDS prevention and proper hand-washing. The ad revenues fund the maintenance of the $14,000 system.
Dispatches

Podcast: Can AI Save Us from Despair? Psychiatry is finding its footing with machine intelligence. New tools may dramatically help those who need it the most.

Medicine and the Makers Roderic Pettigrew is training a new hybrid specialty—half physician, half engineer.

Sins of the Past The California Death Certificate Project is finding the physicians associated with opioid overdoses. Is it justice or a witch hunt?

Prohibition at 100 The 18th Amendment launched the most sweeping health experiment in U.S. history. Physicians—then and now—have debated its complex legacy.

Where Have All the Microbes Gone? Internist and researcher Martin Blaser believes that disturbances in the gut may underlie several modern maladies.

A New Iron Age As more bacteria gain resistance to standard treatments, is the answer a return to therapeutic metals?

The Pharmacist Will See You Now As the role of the pharmacist changes, one program explores how it can help people with heart disease and other conditions.
