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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More than three-quarters of women who opt for double mastectomies are not getting any benefit because their risk of cancer developing in the healthy breast is no greater than in women without cancer.
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The last three decades have seen a dramatic increase in early-stage, but not late-stage, breast cancers, as mammography has become routine. Some researchers are concerned that women are being treated for cancers that would never turn deadly. -
An experimental vaccine for malaria reduces infants' risk of the disease by about a third. That's less than researchers had hoped for, given the vaccine's effectiveness in toddlers, but doctors say it's enough to prevent many high fevers, seizures and deaths in a lot of African children. -
Two new types of fungal infection are emerging among people exposed to contaminated medication from a Massachusetts pharmacy. One involves abscesses around the spine. The other is inflammation of tissue around the nerve roots coming out of the spine.
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Remarkably, home care providers in the storm's wake say they know of no patients who lacked for needed care. Resourceful nurses, physical therapists, aides and other personnel somehow surmounted flood, impassable roads, downed trees and dwindling gasoline to get to their patients. -
Haiti had documented 54 deaths caused by Sandy — most in the nation's southern peninsula, which points toward Jamaica. Another 21 Haitians were still counted as missing, and many fear the death toll will rise as officials reach affected areas isolated by impassable roads and ruined bridges. -
FDA officials say the New England Compounding Center's own environmental monitoring showed multiple instances of contamination going back nearly nine months before an outbreak of meningitis linked to one the company's drugs. The company's knowledge of contamination problems and its failure to act are among the most damning findings to come out investigations of the pharmacy. -
Public health officials are trying to strike a balance between alerting, diagnosing and treating patients who might be at risk of fungal infections — and not overdiagnosing and overtreating those who aren't at risk. The caution is warranted. This type of infection can smolder for weeks before exploding into meningitis or causing massive strokes. -
The mold is so rare as a cause of human illness that nobody knows its incubation period. That makes it hard to predict when the outbreak will be over. -
Adding a 12-year-old antibiotic to the regimen of patients with highly drug-resistant tuberculosis cured nearly 90 percent of patients in a study involving about 40 people in South Korea. The study, though small, suggests that the battle against the ancient scourge is far from lost.
