NOVEMBER 2025 – Rachel Fairbank is a Houston-based science writer and regular contributor to National Geographic, which is publishing daily reports on health issues. Such articles show up in Nat Geo’s monthly print editions, but also in the Apple News feed. A Nov. 14 report by Fairbank on a new treatment that actually reverses chronic disease – a treatment based on a drug called tirzepatide – captured thousands of readers on Apple News. (Tirzepatide is the active ingredient in Lilly’s Mounjaro.) The report describes the experience of a young patient whose kidney disease has been largely eliminated by the new treatment. This kind of journalism – which delivers technical and scientific details to a broader audience – is often unappreciated, and is recognized only after a larger publication has picked up the story. Since kidney ailments afflict millions, and cures have been slow to emerge, this report is especially compelling. The NYT released a similar news story, a few days before Fairbank’s piece, but it focused on the global rise in chronic kidney disease.
Fairbank’s work has appeared in Texas Monthly and The Houston Chronicle; she has written widely in recent years on the new generation of drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/health/article/chronic-kidney-disease-medical-breakthroughs
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/well/kidney-disease-rise-study.html