This archive covers progress stories from North and Central America, spanning the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the nations of Central America. Readers will find reporting on health, environment, community resilience, and policy advances across the region.
In tests performed on rats at the University of Houston, the vaccine was shown to be effective at keeping one of the deadliest street drugs from reaching the brain, while not producing any significant side effects.
Colorado’s Natural Medicine Health Act goes further than any previous U.S. state psychedelic law, removing criminal penalties for personal use of psilocybin, DMT, ibogaine, and mescaline — and building a licensed therapy clinic system alongside it. The FDA has already granted psilocybin “breakthrough therapy” status for treatment-resistant depression, giving this reform unusual clinical credibility. Colorado helped pioneer cannabis legalization in 2012, and advocates are watching to see whether psychedelic reform follows a similar path outward. For people who haven’t found relief through conventional treatments, this law opens a genuinely new door.
The age-adjusted prevalence of dementia declined from 12.2 percent of people over age 65 in 2000 to 8.5 percent of people over age 65 in 2016—a nearly one-third drop from the 2000 level, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
Maternal vaccination reduced rates of severe medically attended lower respiratory tract illness due to RSV by 81.8% across the first three months of life.
The Social Security Administration has announced that it is now possible to self-select sex on Social Security records without the need to provide any legal or medical proof of a gender change.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest diseases medicine has ever faced, and a new implant from Duke University is producing results that researchers say have no match in the existing scientific record. The device injects a radioactive gel directly into tumors, trapping iodine-131 so it radiates from the inside out before safely dissolving into harmless amino acids. Combined with chemotherapy, it eliminated tumors in the majority of mouse models tested. Human trials remain ahead, but for a disease where survival gains have been painfully slow, this early signal is genuinely remarkable.
In a 23 to 12 vote (with two abstentions), Tamaulipas became the 32nd state to legalize same-sex marriage, after the state of Guerrero did so just the day before.
Governor Newsom signed a new bill into law that will ban single-use plastic produce bags starting in 2025. The law requires that all such bags be replaced by recycled paper bags or compostable ones.
Regulations prohibiting the sale, purchase or transfer of handguns within Canada have now taken effect, building on earlier efforts banning handgun imports.
The money will be used to help implement the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s strategy through 2026 and will be focused particularly on Pakistan and Afghanistan.
