Jon Hamilton
Jon Hamilton is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. Currently he focuses on neuroscience and health risks.
In 2014, Hamilton went to Liberia as part of the NPR team that covered Ebola. The team received a Peabody Award for its coverage.
Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Hamilton was part of NPR's team of science reporters and editors who went to Japan to cover the crisis at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.
Hamilton contributed several pieces to the Science Desk series "The Human Edge," which looked at what makes people the most versatile and powerful species on Earth. His reporting explained how humans use stories, how the highly evolved human brain is made from primitive parts, and what autism reveals about humans' social brains.
In 2009, Hamilton received the Michael E. DeBakey Journalism Award for his piece on the neuroscience behind treating autism.
Before joining NPR in 1998, Hamilton was a media fellow with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation studying health policy issues. He reported on states that have improved their Medicaid programs for the poor by enrolling beneficiaries in private HMOs.
From 1995-1997, Hamilton wrote on health and medical topics as a freelance writer, after having been a medical reporter for both The Commercial Appeal and Physician's Weekly.
Hamilton graduated with honors from Oberlin College in Ohio with a Bachelor of Arts in English. As a student, he was the editor of the Oberlin Review student newspaper. He earned his master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, where he graduated with honors. During his time at Columbia, Hamilton was awarded the Baker Prize for magazine writing and earned a Sherwood traveling fellowship.
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Two new human studies back earlier hints that vaccines designed to prevent respiratory infections might also provide some protection against Alzheimer's disease.
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Structures inside healthy brain cells nimbly move from one state to the next to perform different functions. But in certain degenerative brain diseases, scientists now think, that process gets stuck.
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A coronavirus vaccine could become ineffective if the virus were to undergo certain genetic changes. But so far, so good: Scientists see no evidence that's happening.
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After a decade of failure in treating Alzheimer's with drugs, the National Institutes of Health is funding a five-year effort in Seattle to learn more about how the disease starts in the brain.
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A neurologist who wanted to know how the brain changes in response to a physical disability put his arm in a pink cast for two weeks to find out.
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Tests for the immune response to the coronavirus are revealing thousands of people who were infected but never got severely ill. The findings suggest the virus is less deadly than it first appeared.
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Early reports found death rates as high as 90% among COVID-19 patients on ventilators. But some hospitals are now reporting mortality lower than 30%.
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With COVID-19 becoming a critical focus in hospital intensive care units, nurses, doctors and other caregivers have had to shift gears to protect staff and save patients.
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COVID-19 appears to thicken the blood of many patients, making them vulnerable to clots that can damage the lungs, kidneys and brain.
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David Williams, 54, spent eight days on a ventilator after he got COVID-19. Weeks after being discharged from the hospital, he still needs an oxygen tube and a walker.