News StoriesExcerpts of Key News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
Today marks 50 years since the end of the American War in Vietnam, which killed an estimated 3.3 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of Cambodians, tens of thousands of Laotians and more than 58,000 U.S. service members. But for many Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian people; Vietnamese Americans; and U.S. Vietnam veterans and their descendants, the impacts of the war never ended. They continue to suffer the devastating consequences of Agent Orange, an herbicide mixture used by the U.S. military that contained dioxin, the deadliest chemical known to humankind. As a result, many people have been born with congenital anomalies – disabling changes in the formation of the spinal cord, limbs, heart, palate, and more. This remains the largest deployment of herbicidal warfare in history. In the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the Nixon administration promised to contribute $3 billion for compensation and postwar reconstruction of Vietnam. But that promise remains unfulfilled. Between 2,100,000 and 4,800,000 Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian people, and tens of thousands of Americans were exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin during the spraying operations. Many other Vietnamese people were or continue to be exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin through contact with the environment and food that was contaminated. Many offspring of those who were exposed have congenital anomalies, developmental disabilities, and other diseases.
Note: Rep. Rashida Tlaib recently introduced The Agent Orange Relief Act of 2025 to attempt to provide relief for some of the victims of this toxic chemical. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and toxic chemicals.
When National Public Data, a company that does online background checks, was breached in 2024, criminals gained the names, addresses, dates of birth and national identification numbers such as Social Security numbers of 170 million people in the U.S., U.K. and Canada. The same year, hackers who targeted Ticketmaster stole the financial information and personal data of more than 560 million customers. In so-called stolen data markets, hackers sell personal information they illegally obtain to others, who then use the data to engage in fraud and theft for profit. Every piece of personal data captured in a data breach – a passport number, Social Security number or login for a shopping service – has inherent value. Offenders can ... assume someone else's identity, make a fraudulent purchase or steal services such as streaming media or music. Some vendors also offer distinct products such as credit reports, Social Security numbers and login details for different paid services. The price for pieces of information varies. A recent analysis found credit card data sold for US$50 on average, while Walmart logins sold for $9. However, the pricing can vary widely across vendors and markets. The rate of return can be exceptional. An offender who buys 100 cards for $500 can recoup costs if only 20 of those cards are active and can be used to make an average purchase of $30. The result is that data breaches are likely to continue as long as there is demand.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
Dan Mancina has been a skateboarder since the age of seven, but when he was 13, he was diagnosed with rhinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative eye disease that rendered him almost completely blind by 22. He hit pause on his skateboarding for a couple of years in his early 20s, but decided to pick it back up again, now using a white cane to shred more confidently. Now almost 38, he's a professional skateboarder, relearning tricks, and even completing the course at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. About seven years ago, he started dreaming of creating the world's first adaptive skatepark right in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. Finally, the park is a reality. Called "The Ranch," the 5,000-square-foot skatepark is completely accessible, allowing both seasoned low-vision boarders to take it for a spin and newcomers to the sport to feel welcome. In a recent video, blind content creator Anthony S. Ferraro, who reviews and documents his experiences in accessible environments ... on TikTok, showed off the park's features. Features include rollers, bank ramps, and ledges, with manual pads and platforms, all designed to be easier to navigate for people with vision impairments or in wheelchairs. Auditory cues are also placed throughout the park in the form of beepers, which warn a skater about a dangerous drop or guide them to a particular obstacle. "Thanks for building this park, Dan, [you're] a true pioneer." Next up, he plans to host workshops and camps for other visually impaired skaters who want to learn how to skate with a white cane. "It's been so inspiring to watch this come to reality. I've never had a place where I can skate with full confidence," Ferraro ends his video.
Note: Watch a deeply inspiring video about how Dan Mancina learned how to skateboard after losing his sight. Explore more positive stories like this on inspiring disabled persons.
California has introduced a first-in-the-nation online public platform to help bridge silos. The platform, called Engaged California (EC), enables and encourages the direct engagement of citizens with government and with each other. Engaged California is not glorified polling and is more than a town hall gathering. It is a three-way tool that enables policymakers and administrators to listen at scale to average citizens outside of election cycles and be responsive; it invites citizens to directly voice their concerns and proposals on an ongoing basis; and it is a platform for Californians from all walks of life to interact with each other to find common ground. Audrey Tang ... helped craft California's program ... modeled on the pioneering online deliberative platform she created as Taiwan's first digital minister. Tang's vTaiwan platform engages thousands of citizens at a time to weigh in on social issues or policy propositions. In essence, as each participant formulates a position on an issue, others chime in with their own versions. Extreme positions fall to the margins with minimal support, and more consensus views aggregate in the middle. In turn, legislators, parties and administrators can formulate policies in full knowledge of where the public stands. Housed in the state's Office of Data and Innovation, Engaged California is meant to become a permanent feature of governance going forward that will be used for the public to deliberate a range of concerns and proposals
Note: Read more about how vTaiwan is changing the game. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and technology for good.
Rajabai Sawant used to pick and sort waste on the streets of Pune with a sack on her back. The plastic she collected from a public waste site would be sold for some money that saved her children from begging. Today, dressed in a dark green jacket monogrammed with the acronym Swach (solid waste collection and handling) over a colourful sari, the 53-year-old is one among an organised group of waste collectors and climate educators who teach residents in urban Pune how to segregate and manage waste, based on a PPPP – a pro-poor private public partnership. Swach was set up in 2005 by a trade union of waste pickers, Kagad Kach Patra Kashtakari Panchayat (KKPKP), which was ... envisioned a scheme that enhanced waste collectors' work instead of displacing them. These [PPPP] partnerships are contracts between the state or local authority and a group of private individuals that aim to provide a public service while simultaneously alleviating poverty. Of the waste generated by the city, Swach sorts and recycles about 227 tonnes a day (82,891 tonnes a year) that is diverted away from landfills. It saves the city Ł10m that would have been needed for processing, transportation and human resources. Today, Swach has more than 3,850 self-reliant waste picker members, who provide daily doorstep waste collection services to citizens of Pune who pay a small monthly fee. Under the PPPP, each member is a shareholder and earns about 16,000 rupees (Ł140) a month.
Note: Explore more positive stories on reimagining the economy.
Reports of falling insect numbers around the world are not new. International reviews have estimated annual losses globally of between 1% and 2.5% of total biomass every year. Widespread use of pesticides and fertilisers, light and chemical pollution, loss of habitat and the growth of industrial agriculture have all carved into their numbers. Often, these were deaths of proximity: insects are sensitive creatures, and any nearby source of pollution can send their populations crumbling. But what [scientists Daniel] Janzen and [Winnie] Hallwachs are witnessing is a part of a newer phenomenon: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations in supposedly protected regions of forest. Janzen and Hallwachs join a number of scientists that have recorded huge die-offs of insects in nature reserves around the world. They include in Germany, where flying insects across 63 insect reserves dropped 75% in less than 30 years; the US, where beetle numbers dropped 83% in 45 years; and Puerto Rico, where insect biomass dropped up to 60-fold since the 1970s. These declines are occurring in ecosystems that are otherwise protected from direct human influence. Scientists in the US, Brazil, Ecuador and Panama have now reported the catastrophic declines of birds in "untouched" regions – including reserves inside millions of hectares of pristine forest. In each case, the worst losses were among insectivorous birds.
Note: Read more about the insect apocalypse. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on environmental destruction.
Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by WIRED reveal top lobbyists and representatives of America's agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as an informant for the FBI. The documents ... detail a secretive and long-running collaboration between the FBI's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD)–whose scope today includes Palestinian rights activists and the recent wave of arson targeting Teslas–and the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA), a nonprofit trade group representing the interests of US farmers, ranchers, veterinarians, and others across America's food supply chain. The AAA has been supplying federal agents with intelligence on the activities of animal rights groups ... with records of emails and meetings reflecting the industry's broader mission to convince authorities that activists are the preeminent "bioterrorism" threat to the United States. Spies working for the AAA during its collaboration with the FBI went undercover at activism meetings, obtaining photographs, audio recordings, and other strategic material. The records further show that state authorities have cited protests as a reason to conceal information about disease outbreaks at factory farms from the public.
Note: Read more about how animal rights activists are being targeted as terrorists. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in factory farming and in the intelligence community.
Tens of thousands of bogus research papers are being published in journals in an international scandal that is worsening every year, scientists have warned. Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised thanks to a global wave of sham science that is sweeping laboratories and universities. Last year the annual number of papers retracted by research journals topped 10,000 for the first time. Most analysts believe the figure is only the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud. The startling rise in the publication of sham science papers has its roots in China, where young doctors and scientists seeking promotion were required to have published scientific papers. Shadow organisations – known as "paper mills" – began to supply fabricated work for publication in journals there. The practice has since spread to India, Iran, Russia, former Soviet Union states and eastern Europe, with paper mills supplying fabricated studies to more and more journals as increasing numbers of young scientists try to boost their careers by claiming false research experience. In some cases, journal editors have been bribed to accept articles, while paper mills have managed to establish their own agents as guest editors who then allow reams of falsified work to be published. One study, by Nature, revealed that in 2013 there were just over 1,000 retractions. In 2022, the figure topped 4,000 before jumping to more than 10,000 last year.
Note: According to The Lancet, half of all scientific literature may simply be untrue. "Trust the science" sounds noble–until you realize that even top editors of world-renowned journals have warned that much of published medical research is unreliable, distorted by fraud, corporate influence, and conflicts of interest. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science.
Palantir has long been connected to government surveillance. It was founded in part with CIA money, it has served as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractor since 2011, and it's been used for everything from local law enforcement to COVID-19 efforts. But the prominence of Palantir tools in federal agencies seems to be growing under President Trump. "The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon," reports The New York Times, noting that this figure "does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent." Palantir technology has largely been used by the military, the intelligence agencies, the immigration enforcers, and the police. But its uses could be expanding. Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies–the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service. Along with the Trump administration's efforts to share more data across federal agencies, this signals that Palantir's huge data analysis capabilities could wind up being wielded against all Americans. Right now, the Trump administration is using Palantir tools for immigration enforcement, but those tools could easily be applied to other ... targets.
Note: Read about Palantir's recent, first-ever AI warfare conference. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and intelligence agency corruption.
Dave Crete adds another name to a growing memorial list, now more than 400 in total – men and women he says he served with on a secretive range in the Nevada desert that encompasses Area 51. Crete and his fellow veterans were hand-picked and tasked with top-secret work. They couldn't even tell their wives what they did every day. Many are developing serious health issues, multiple tumors and, in too many cases, deadly cancers. A group of these veterans are exclusively telling NewsNation's Natasha Zouves that they are unable to get the care and benefits they need because the Department of Defense refuses to acknowledge they were ever stationed in the desert. The DOD records sent to Veterans Affairs lists the same two words between asterisks in black and white: "DATA MASKED." "They keep us classified to protect themselves," said Crete. A 2016 reunion barbecue at Crete's Las Vegas home was supposed to be a chance for Air Force buddies to reminisce. The veterans discovered that out of the eight men sitting around that circle, six of them had developed tumors. The seventh man said, "I don't have any, but my son was born with one." "There was an issue where we were. That's the one common denominator. We were all there," said Groves. "There" was the Nevada Test and Training Range (NTTR), an area encompassing the infamous Area 51. Nuclear weapons tests were conducted in the area ... from the 1950s to the early 1990s.
Note: The existence of Area 51 was denied for years. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on UFOs and military corruption.
U.S. and Chinese government officials knew as early as February 2020 that the emerging novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 had already been well-adapted to humans – an early signal not only that it would spread efficiently, but also that it may not have emerged at the Wuhan wet market. Recently released chat messages indicate that former National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci was informed by early February 2020 by then-China Center for Disease for Disease Control and Prevention Director George Gao that the emerging novel coronavirus had already "adapted to human hosts well." It was not until approximately three months later, on May 21, 2020, that this alarming characteristic of the novel coronavirus, starkly different than the SARS virus that circulated from 2002-2004, first generated widespread discussion and debate in the U.S. Critics included authors of an earlier March 2020 publication in Nature Medicine titled "The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2." While this paper acknowledged the virus was well adapted to humans, it described this feature as assuredly natural. The paper was viewed millions of times within days and made the authors go-to experts in the media on the novel coronavirus. It wasn't until Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits revealed Fauci's emails that the public became aware of his involvement with the conception of that paper. "It is indeed striking that this virus is so closely related to SARS yet is behaving so differently. It seems to have been preadapted for human spread since the get go," coauthor University of Sydney virologist Eddie Holmes said in a message on February 10, 2020.
Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief on the cover-up of COVID origins. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on biotech dangers.
As a sales rep for drug manufacturers Questcor, Lisa Pratta always suspected the company's business practices weren't just immoral but illegal, too, as she explains in "False Claims – One Insider's Impossible Battle Against Big Pharma Corruption." Pratta began working for Questcor in 2010 as the sales rep in the Northeast region for Acthar, a drug which helped relieve autoimmune and inflammatory disorders. "If prescribed correctly, Acthar could help people walk again. And talk again," writes Pratta. But, she adds, "Questcor made more money when it was prescribed incorrectly." They would do anything to sell Acthar. From paying doctors to prescribe it to using bogus research studies proclaiming its miraculous efficacy, they were so successful that Achtar's price rose from $40 per vial in 2000 to nearly $39,000 in 2019 – an increase of 97,000%. Some sales reps were making up to $4 million a year and, in turn, kept the physicians doing their bidding in a life of luxury. "They took them on scuba diving trips and bought clothes and shoes for their wives. One guy bought his doctor a brand new Armani suit and expensed it to Questcor," she recalls. In March 2019, the Department of Justice served a 100-page lawsuit against Mallinckrodt, alleging illegal marketing of Acthar, bribing doctors to boost sales and defrauding government health care programs. It also mentioned Pratta's role in the case, meaning her long-held anonymity was now public knowledge.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in science and Big Pharma profiteering.
I had to pay a student to go island hopping to find basic records in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The territory's opaque laws and corruption makes it a haven for misdeeds. Albert Bryan Jr., the current governor, used his position to curry favor for Jeffrey Epstein for years. He helped bestow tax exemptions on Epstein's shadowy businesses and pushed for waivers allowing the former financier to dodge USVI sex offender laws. Bryan, whose hand-selected Attorney General swiftly ended the J.P. Morgan lawsuit that revealed a gusher of damning documents about Epstein's network, is now tapping Epstein victim settlement funds ... to pay for various earmarks and unrelated government debts. Former Attorney General Denise George led a series of lawsuits against Epstein's estate and former associates. Bryan fired her. In 2024, Bryan named a new Attorney General–none other than Gordon Rhea, a private practice attorney who previously defended Richard Kahn during the Epstein estate lawsuit. Not long ago, Kahn and Indyke were described by the U.S. Virgin Islands as "indispensable captains" of Epstein's alleged criminal human trafficking enterprise. We still have many unanswered questions. Why did U.S. Virgin Islands police and customs agents never act to protect the young girls they saw taken to Epstein's islands? What is clear, however, is that an attorney who worked to protect Epstein's estate is now the chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
Jeffrey Epstein, the registered sex offender, met with many powerful people in finance and business during his career, but the financier invested with only a few of them. One of those people was Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire. In 2015 and 2016, Mr. Epstein put $40 million into two funds managed by Valar Ventures, a New York firm that was co-founded by Mr. Thiel. Today that investment is worth nearly $170 million. The investment in Valar, which specializes in providing start-up capital to financial services tech companies, is the largest asset still held by Mr. Epstein's estate. There's a good chance much of the windfall will not go to any of the roughly 200 victims whom the disgraced financier abused when they were teenagers or young women. Those victims have already received monetary settlements from the estate, which required them to sign broad releases that gave up the right to bring future claims against it or individuals associated with it. The money is more likely to be distributed to one of Mr. Epstein's former girlfriends and two of his long-term advisers, who have been named the beneficiaries of his estate. Just one major federal civil lawsuit remains pending against the executors of the estate, a potential class action filed on behalf victims who haven't yet settled with the estate. In the past, victims have received settlements ranging from $500,000 to $2 million.
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
When Jeffrey Epstein purchased Little Saint James, the teardrop-shaped island southeast of St. Thomas, in the late 1990s ... he told U.S. Virgin Islands officials that he was seeking privacy. He also appears to have purchased impunity. Investigators accuse him of raping and sexually abusing girls as young as eleven at his island compound where he also hosted many A-list politicians, business leaders and celebrities. One 15-year-old, whom Epstein allegedly forced into sex acts, attempted to escape by swimming away from the island. She was caught and her passport was taken away. While Epstein was alive, Virgin Islands officials appear to have shielded him from scrutiny. After his death in 2019, other officials who aided Epstein began profiting from continued secrecy and a string of legal settlements ... that put hundreds of millions of dollars under the government's control. No one appears to have benefited more than Albert Bryan Jr., the governor of the territory. Bryan has tapped the Epstein settlement funds to pay for a variety of his domestic political agenda items. The proceeds were promised to assist victims of sexual assault, human trafficking, sexual misconduct, and child sexual abuse. In late April, Bryan ... announced the allocation of $22 million in retroactive wages to government workers. Bryan [also] applied the Epstein funds for vendor payments and sought to use the money for a variety of other earmarks, such as a $25 million makeover for the Justice Building on St. Croix.
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring.
For 4.4 billion people, the only water available is unsafe to drink. In the early 1990s, I was working as a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ("Berkeley Lab") when I heard about a devastating cholera outbreak in my home country. I started to study waterborne pathogens with the aim to develop a new way to make water drinkable that would be affordable and effective in rural areas of low income countries. In a short few years, and later on with funding support from the Energy Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, I came up with an invention – the UV Waterworks – that met all my goals. It was inexpensive, efficient, portable and effective. Roughly the size of a microwave, the device sanitizes water using UV light to kill harmful bacteria, viruses and molds. It can purify approximately four gallons of water per minute and provide a year's worth of potable drinking water for just seven cents per person. The University of California, which runs the lab, filed the initial patent. I helped found WaterHealth International, which exclusively licensed the UV Waterworks technology from the university in 1996. In the time since, the invention has benefited tens of million people across India and Africa. Roughly 80% of our customers live below the poverty line in their home countries.
Note: Read about the ecologist who used sunlight, plants, and pond life to turn toxic sewage into clean drinking water–proving that nature can heal what industry has broken. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.
Within sight of northern Germany's windswept beaches, specialized clearance teams have been trawling the seafloor for the kind of catch that fishermen in these parts usually avoid–discarded naval mines, torpedoes, stacks of artillery shells, and heavy aerial bombs, all of which have been rusting away for nearly 80 years. For much of September and October 2024, underwater vehicles, fitted with cameras, powerful lights, and sensors, have been hunting for World War II–era explosives purposefully sunk in this region of the Baltic Sea. Tons upon tons of German munitions were hastily dumped at sea under orders from the Allied powers at the end of World War II, who sought to dispose of the Nazis' arsenal. The clearance work last year was part of a first-of-its-kind project to explore ways to clear up this toxic legacy of war. "Conventional munitions are carcinogenic, and the chemical munitions are mutagenic, and also they disrupt enzymes and whatnot–so they are definitely affecting organisms," says Jacek BeĹ‚dowski, a leading expert on underwater munitions dumps. The next stage of the pilot project, also now underway, is building a floating munitions-disposal facility that could incinerate the aging explosives near the dump sites. That would eliminate the need to bring the ordnance above water ... and ship it overland. Longer term, the dream is to have unmanned underwater vehicles map, scan, and magnetically image the seabed to get a sense of what lies where.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine and technology for good.
What if your heating and cooling worked during power outages, and you could count on it becoming more efficient and climate-friendly over time? That's the promise of district heating and cooling or district energy, where entire communities share a heating and cooling system. That allows them to tap into many low-carbon energy sources they couldn't before, more efficiently than any individual building could. As governments look to tackle carbon emissions from buildings – the third largest source in Canada behind the oil and gas industry and transportation – it's an idea that more of them are considering and implementing. Peter Ronson is chief operating officer for Markham District Energy (MDE), a network in a Toronto suburb that heats and cools 14 million square feet in more than 200 buildings, including condo buildings up to 44 storeys tall, a hospital, data centres, hotels and two schools. Some, like the data centres, produce a lot of heat, while others may use lots of hot water. "We got all sorts of stuff on the system," Ronson said. "When [some are] throwing away energy, I can recover and give it to somebody else." That kind of heat-sharing is efficient. Excess heat in the system can also be stored (underground in water or rock, for example) ... and much more cheaply than electricity. All that means converting buildings that burn fossil fuels to district energy can potentially put less strain on the grid than electrifying individual buildings using heat pumps or baseboard heating.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.
Too many people are being prescribed antidepressants to deal with stressful life events or social problems, according to a growing chorus of doctors and researchers. More than 14% of Australians are currently taking antidepressants, one of the highest rates in the world. Dr Matt Fisher, who researches wellbeing and the impact of stress, says while he has heard health workers talk about this "as a good thing, because it means more people are getting access to help", he doesn't see it as a success story. Fisher ... is concerned Australia's high use of antidepressants "constitutes a failed attempt to medicate away what are, in fact, social problems". He says while "antidepressants may be of benefit to some people suffering persistent psychosocial distress," they should not be the default, first response. Chronic stress, where people are exposed to an ongoing, recurrent stressor without any easy or accessible way to resolve it – increasing the risk of isolation, exclusion, humiliation and harm – is a significant driver of mental distress in Australia. The common causes of chronic stress include things such as being in debt, having a low income, poor working conditions, or being exposed to racism or domestic violence. "Governments evade the problem by persisting with individualised, medicalised, drug-based strategies," he says. "These strategies aren't reducing high rates of mental distress, sometimes do harm, and marginalise attention on social causes."
Note: The UK's medicines regulator is launching a review of over 30 commonly prescribed antidepressants, including Prozac, amid rising concerns about links to suicide, self-harm, and long-term side effects like persistent sexual dysfunction–especially in children. Our latest Substack, Lonely World, Failing Systems: Inspiring Stories Reveal What Sustains Us, dives into the loneliness crisis exacerbated by the digital world and polarizing media narratives, along with inspiring solutions and remedies that remind us of the true democratic values that bring us all together.
Joan Doyle trusts her doctors. Between her husband's epilepsy and diabetes, her daughter's Down syndrome and her own car accident years ago, the 65-year-old Sharonville resident and her family have relied on a whole host of doctors to guide them through new diagnoses and prescriptions. So when she searched her family's doctors in Open Payments, a public database that shows which doctors have received money from Big Pharma, Doyle was curious about what she'd find. "Certainly none of my doctors are on this list," she remembered thinking before searching the database. She was surprised. "Every single one of them," Doyle said. "Everybody from our dentist to our family doctor to all of our ologists." All 12 of the doctors Doyle searched accepted payments or in-kind forms of compensation from pharma or medical device companies between 2017 and 2023. The total sum varied widely, from less than $300 for her OB-GYN to more than $150,000 for her husband's oncologist. Payments like these are pervasive: A 2024 analysis found that more than half of doctors in the U.S. accepted a payment from a pharmaceutical or medical device company over the past decade. Most don't earn millions of dollars ... but research shows that when a doctor was bought a single meal of less than $20 by a drug company, they were up to twice as likely to prescribe the medication the company was marketing.
Note: 60% of U.S. doctors who shaped the DSM-5-TR–the "bible" of psychiatric diagnosis–received $14.2 million from the drug industry, raising concerns over conflicts of interest in psychiatric guidelines. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and Big Pharma profiteering.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.