Richard Knox

Credit Jacques Coughlin

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.

Monkey Experiments Boost Hope For Human AIDS Vaccine

Credit Wikimedia Commons

A rendering of a key protein the simian immunodeficiency virus uses to reproduce.

By Richard Knox

Researchers trudging down the long and twisted path toward an AIDS vaccine are encouraged by new studies that show an experimental vaccine protects monkeys against infection with a virus that is very similar to HIV.

11:10 am

Wed January 4, 2012

In US, Hospital Round Trips More Common For Heart Attack Patients

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In the U.S., hospitalized heart attack patients go home sooner than in other countries. They are more likely to return to the hospital within a month of being discharged.

By Richard Knox

If a heart attack sends you to an American hospital, you'll probably go home after only two or three nights. That's faster than virtually anyplace else in the world.

But your chances of needing to go back into the hospital within the next month are also higher than they are for heart attack patients in 16 other countries. That's the finding from a Duke University-led study in this week's JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

11:01 pm

Tue December 27, 2011

Antiviral Drugs Sparkle In The Race To End AIDS

Credit Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images

Eric Goosby, United States Global AIDS coordinator, says field testing is necessary and urgent to determine if HIV testing-and-treating services are feasible.

By Richard Knox

2011 has been a momentous year in the 30-year-old AIDS pandemic.

The big breakthrough was the discovery that antiviral drugs can prevent someone who's infected with HIV from passing the virus to others. It's nearly 100 percent effective. That led President Obama to declare earlier this month that the U.S. will expand HIV treatment in hard-hit countries by 50 percent.

11:01 pm

Sun December 25, 2011

Singing Therapy Helps Stroke Patients Speak Again

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Credit Ellen Webber for NPR

Laurel Fontaine, left and her twin sister Heather pose for a portrait at North Attleboro High School in North Attleboro, Mass., on Friday, December 23, 2011.

Credit Richard Knox / NPR

Debra Meyerson participates in a singing therapy at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA. Meyerson suffered a stroke 15 months ago and is now beginning to talk again.

Credit Ellen Webber for NPR

Laurel Fontaine, left and her twin sister Heather bake together at their home in North Attleboro, Mass., on Friday, December 23, 2011.

By Richard Knox

Debra Meyerson was hiking near Lake Tahoe 15 months ago when a stroke destroyed part of the left side of her brain, leaving her literally speechless. It happens to more than 150,000 Americans a year.

But now Meyerson is learning to talk again through an approach that trains the undamaged right side of her brain to "speak." Specifically, it's a region that controls singing.

For more than 100 years, it's been known that people who can't speak after injury to the speech centers on the left side of the brain can sing.

5:33 pm

Tue December 20, 2011

Many Police Officers Are Sleep Deprived, Risky For Them And Us

Credit Sean Locke / iStockphoto

Sleepy police were likelier to fall asleep while driving, a new survey of nearly 5,000 officers in the U.S. and Canada finds. About 40 percent of officers surveyed reported sleep disorders, with various health implications.

By Richard Knox

Harvard researchers say they've uncovered a big problem among the nation's 700,000 police officers: a serious lack of sleep.

In what's believed to be the first study of its kind, the researchers queried nearly 5,000 municipal and state police officers in the U.S. and Canada about their sleep habits and symptoms of possible sleep disorders. Then they assessed their on-duty performance for two years.

Forty percent had sleep disorders, and the vast majority of these were undiagnosed before.

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5:50 am

Fri January 6, 2012