Michaeleen Doucleff
Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, is a correspondent for NPR's Science Desk. For nearly a decade, she has been reporting for the radio and the web for NPR's global health outlet, Goats and Soda. Doucleff focuses on disease outbreaks, cross-cultural parenting, and women and children's health.
In 2014, Doucleff was part of the team that earned a George Foster Peabody award for its coverage of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. For the series, Doucleff reported on how the epidemic ravaged maternal health and how the virus spreads through the air. In 2019, Doucleff and Senior Producer Jane Greenhalgh produced a story about how Inuit parents teach children to control their anger. That story was the most popular one on NPR.org for the year; altogether readers have spent more than 16 years worth of time reading it.
In 2021, Doucleff published a book, called Hunt, Gather, Parent, stemming from her reporting at NPR. That book became a New York Times bestseller.
Before coming to NPR in 2012, Doucleff was an editor at the journal Cell, where she wrote about the science behind pop culture. Doucleff has a bachelor degree in biology from Caltech, a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Berkeley, California, and a master's degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis.
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So sweat doesn't really smell bad at all. But when bacteria eat the sweat — nostrils, look out! Only it turns out that these sweat-eating critters are responsible for a big health benefit. -
It's basically the same vaccine used against smallpox. Here's how it works — and whether researchers think it's playing a role in the fact that the current outbreak is starting to slow down. -
Is it a sexually transmitted disease? Can you get it on a crowded bus? Trying on clothes? We talk to specialists about how this virus is transmitted and what kinds of precautions are warranted. -
Dr. Dimie Ogoina detected monkeypox in an 11-year-old patient in 2017 and saw many other cases since. He's tried to warn health officials that the virus has changed the way it spreads — to no avail. -
The testing system set up by the CDC actually deters doctors from ordering a monkeypox test, and many physicians aren't familiar with the disease, resulting in too few tests and little tracking. -
Scientists in Britain have detected multiple versions of the virus in wastewater. Officials say the risk to the public is extremely low and urge people to ensure their polio vaccines are up to date. -
Symptoms that doctors were taught about in medical school are not necessarily indicative of the cases of 2022. It can be much more subtle — and look a lot like other diseases. -
Their prediction stemmed from the eradication of smallpox. Here's what they said more than three decades ago — and how it foreshadowed events of 2022. -
Click to see how restrictive or liberal local abortion laws are — and to look at the rate of abortion. The data offers a sense of whether stricter abortion laws reduce the number of abortions.
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The cases point to possible sexual transmission of this cousin of smallpox — a previously unknown method of spread for monkeypox.
