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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The typical first-time mother takes 6 1/2 hours to give birth these days. Her counterpart 50 years ago labored for barely four hours. That's a finding with big implications for current rates of cesarean sections. -
The biggest comparison yet of surgery and stents for stable heart disease gives the nod to bypass operations. Fewer patients who had surgery died four years afterward. -
Cholera has killed nearly 7,000 Haitians since October 2010 and sickened well over a half-million. A program to vaccinate 100,000 Haitians was supposed to have kicked off by now — before the spring rains once again help spread the disease. But the campaign is bogged down in red tape. -
When researchers compared the cost of condoms for women with the cost of HIV infections it prevented, they found the relatively new condoms saved between $15 and $20 for every dollar spent on distributing them in Washington. -
Shavings of metal can flake off of the artificial joints and cause serious pain and medical problems in the hip. About a half-million Americans have this type of implant, and though most patients won't have a problem, one doctor called the failure rate "unacceptably high." -
There's enough vaccine to treat the 100,000 Haitians who have signed up for it. But a government mix-up and a local radio station's incendiary report put the project on hold just a few weeks before the earthquake-ravaged nation's rainy season begins. -
Researchers have shown how a bacterium resistant to antibiotic treatment passed from humans to pigs to humans. And now the new resistant human bug appears to be spreading beyond people with direct exposure to livestock. -
Many hospitals around the nation are perilously close to running out of a form of the old standby cancer drug methotrexate. The reason: a principal supplier of injectable methotrexate shut down in November after it flunked an FDA inspection. -
Counterfeit versions of diet drugs, Lipitor and a flu medication called Tamiflu have been found in this country before. But so far fake cancer medicines have been rare. -
When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he made universal health care law. But the 2006 law didn't do anything about controlling costs, which were already among the nation's highest. So now the conversation has turned to cost control, and some very interesting things are beginning to happen.
