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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Pockets of malaria that are resistant to the frontline drug have recently emerged in Southeast Asia. Health workers worry the problem could spread to Africa. To stay ahead of the parasite, scientists have developed a fast way to detect resistant malaria and map its spread through a community. -
Preventive treatment of partially blocked arteries in patients suffering a particular kind of severe heart attack reduces future heart attacks, cardiac deaths and cases of recurrent chest pain by about two-thirds. -
Disability and illness caused by opioids, amphetamines, cocaine and cannabis increased by more than 50 percent over the two decades prior to 2010. Opioid dependence in particular has become much more common. -
Since the rollout the rotavirus vaccine for infants in 2006, the spillover benefits to children and adults who weren't immunized have been enormous. Hospitalizations due to the stomach virus have dramatically declined in those populations, too. -
Many stroke patients are getting treatment with a drug that dissolves blood clots. The approach was once controversial. But giving the drug to eligible patients within a few hours of a stroke's first symptoms can prevent disability. -
The study randomly assigns preemies to one group that will get blood transfusions when their anemia is relatively mild or another that won't get them until the anemia is severe. Researchers want to see which approach is better at reducing deaths and brain damage. Critics say the doctors haven't leveled with parents about the risks. -
Most people get diagnosed with lung cancer when it's too late to effectively treat it. A federal panel is trying to improve the odds by saying that longtime smokers and former smokers should get annual CT scans to check for lung cancer. -
An experimental drug rescued three out of seven monkeys from lethal doses of Ebola. The study marks the first time researchers have shown that a drug can successfully treat Ebola in animals even after the infection is well underway. -
Fewer than 30,000 cases of the tick-borne illness are reported each year. But the CDC says surveys of labs that test for the disease, six years of insurance claims and other surveillance methods suggest that the number of infections is actually 10 times higher. -
Doctors have debated for years whether a drug that curbed the growth of some prostate cancers caused more serious ones to grow faster. Now, a long-term study calms those fears and raises the possibility that a cheap, generic pill could be used reduce prostate cancer risk.
