Deepali Misra-SharpThis is the fifth feature in a six-part series that is looking at how AI is changing medical research and treatments.

Medical historians say that the phrase “Make America Healthy Again” obscures a past during which this country’s people ate, smoked and drank things that mostly left them unwell.“We will make Americans healthy again,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has declared. A political action committee that has promoted Mr. Kennedy, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for health and human services secretary, says his movement is “igniting a health revolution in America.”But the word “again” presumes a time in the country’s past when Americans were in better health. Was there ever really a time when America was healthier?For historians of medicine, there is a short answer.“No,” said Nancy Tomes, a historian at Stony Brook University.John Harley Warner, a historian at Yale, said, “It’s hard for me to think of a time when America, with all the real health disparities that characterize our system, was healthier.”Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, asked: “Which particular era does R.F.K. want to take us back to?”Probably not the 19th and early 20th century.Rich men smoked cigarettes and cigars, the poor chewed tobacco. Heavy drinking was the norm.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A man has been charged with attempted murder after a nurse was stabbed at a hospital and left with life-changing injuries.

By 2060, new dementia cases per year could double to one million because of the growing population of older Americans, a study predicts.The number of people in the United States who develop dementia each year will double over the next 35 years to about one million annually by 2060, a new study estimates, and the number of new cases per year among Black Americans will triple.The increase will primarily be due to the growing aging population, as many Americans are living longer than previous generations. By 2060, some of the youngest baby boomers will be in their 90s and many millennials will be in their 70s. Older age is the biggest risk factor for dementia. The study found that the vast majority of dementia risk occurred after age 75, increasing further as people reached age 95.The study, published Monday in Nature Medicine, found that adults over 55 had a 42 percent lifetime risk of developing dementia. That is considerably higher than previous lifetime risk estimates, a result the authors attributed to updated information about Americans’ health and longevity and the fact that their study population was more diverse than that of previous studies, which have had primarily white participants.Some experts said the new lifetime risk estimate and projected increase in yearly cases could be overly high, but they agreed that dementia cases would soar in the coming decades.“Even if the rate is significantly lower than that, we’re still going to have a big increase in the number of people and the family and societal burden of dementia because of just the growth in the number of older people, both in the United States and around the world,” said Dr. Kenneth Langa, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan, who has researched dementia risk and was not involved in the new study.Dementia already takes an enormous toll on American families and the country’s health care system. More than six million Americans currently have dementia, nearly 10 percent of people 65 and older, research has found. Experts say that each year in the United States, dementia causes more than 100,000 deaths and accounts for more than $600 billion in caregiving and other costs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

After years of holding steady, American vaccination rates against once-common childhood diseases have been dropping. Share of U.S. kindergartners vaccinated […]

In its original form, the virus survives in just two countries. But a type linked to an oral vaccine used in other nations has already turned up in the West.Most American parents hardly give thought to polio beyond the instant their child is immunized against the disease. But there was a time in this country when polio paralyzed 20,000 people in a year, killing many of them.Vaccines turned the tide against the virus. Over the past decade, there has been only one case in the United States, related to international travel.That could change very quickly if polio vaccination rates dropped or the vaccine were to become less accessible.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic who may become the secretary of health and human services, has said the idea that vaccination has nearly eradicated polio is “a mythology.”And while Mr. Kennedy has said he’s not planning to take vaccines away from Americans, he has long contended that they are not as safe and effective as claimed.As recently as 2023, he said batches of an early version of the polio vaccine, contaminated with a virus, caused cancers “that killed many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.” The contamination was real, but research never bore out a link to cancer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Outbreaks among the unvaccinated are a predictable consequence of falling immunization rates. But even vaccinated adults may be vulnerable to some illnesses.There were more than more than 32,000 cases of whooping cough in 2024, the highest tally in a decade. In California alone, the disease struck 2,000 people between January and October last year.More than 60 infants younger than 4 months were hospitalized in the state. One died.Whooping cough, or pertussis, is just the most stark example of what happens when vaccination rates decline. But it is far from the only one.The pandemic interrupted childhood immunizations across the country, and rates have not yet recovered. As a result, hundreds of thousands of children are increasingly vulnerable to diseases once largely relegated to history books.Most of them predominantly affect young children, like measles, mumps and rubella. But if immunizations continue to fall over the next few years — because of rising distrust, or more restrictive federal policies — preventable infectious diseases will resurface in all age groups, experts say.“It might take a year or two, but there’s no question,” said Pejman Rohani, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Georgia.“We will have outbreaks,” he said.It’s not just the unvaccinated who will have to worry. Even adults who were vaccinated decades ago may find themselves vulnerable to what are now considered childhood diseases.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Azara Ballet in Florida is a place where performers can just be themselves.At Azara Ballet, dancers aren’t expected to make eye contact with the directors and choreographers. If company members need an impromptu break from the harsh stage lights during rehearsal, they take one. They also receive clear directions about hair and makeup well in advance of performances.The priority at Azara is dancers’ health. Founded in 2022 by the dancers Kate Flowers and Martin Roosaare, who are both autistic (and are a married couple), the company, which is based in Sarasota and Bradenton, Fla., is a haven for neurodivergent performers. (The company is made up of 10 dancers, not all of whom are neurodivergent.)“When I am dancing,” Flowers said, “as long as it’s in a good environment and a safe space, the expression through nonverbal movement is something that helps me a lot.”Azara addresses a gap in the dance world: the need for spaces where people who have autism, A.D.H.D. or other conditions that fall under the broad term “neurodivergent” can freely experience the art form. Evidence, both anecdotal and empirical, suggests that there’s a deep connection between dance and these neurological conditions. This relationship has become an area of increased focus for researchers, artists and performing arts organizations in recent years.In November, Azara gathered for a run-through of its program “Voices of Azara” in the black box theater where the show would soon take place. The atmosphere in the theater felt both active — the dancers warmed up, reviewed steps, chatted — and calm: There was tempered lighting, pleasantly cool air and, among the performers, a seemingly innate awareness of the volume of their voices.To begin the rehearsal, Roosaare gave the dancers a rundown of the schedule for the next three hours. Then, they went through the four pieces — all by company members — before receiving notes. As the dancers performed, the music was never overwhelmingly loud, and corrections were never shouted.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

BBCRay, 62 from south London, became one of the first patients to receive the weight-loss jab Wegovy on the NHS last year and has lost 14kg (just over two stone) in five months.

Geograph/David DixonA man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a nurse was seriously injured in a stabbing at a hospital.