Benjamin Ryan

I am an independent journalist, specializing in science and health care coverage. I contribute to The New York Times, The Guardian, NBC News and The New York Sun. I have also written for the Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, Thomson Reuters Foundation, New York, The Marshall Project, PBS, The Village Voice, The New York Observer, the New York Post, Money, Men's Journal, City & State, Quartz, Out and The Advocate. 

​I am particularly interested in public health, medicine and psychology and how the science of each field intersects with public policy. More recently, I have been covering pediatric gender medicine intensively, particularly as the field intersects with litigation.

In my investigative work, I exposed in The Guardian Gov. Rick Scott's administration for overseeing the effective blocking of $70 million to combat Florida's HIV crisis, and, for NBC News, how right-wing scrutiny of transgender care in Tennessee led Gov. Rick Lee to ax $8.3 million in federal HIV funds. I also broke new ground in the narrative behind Harvey Weinstein's questionable financial dealings with the HIV charity amfAR. And I assisted with a Times investigation into nursing homes that are hotbeds of a highly fatal drug-resistant fungal infection.

I graduated cum laude (top quarter of the class) from Columbia University.

I received the 2023 Occupational and Environmental Medicine Media Excellence Award for written journalism for my article in The Atlantic, Whatever Happened to Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? My work has also received multiple awards from NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists. This includes the Excellence in HIV/AIDS Coverage Award, once for a 2014 article in POZ about pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against HIV, and then for my 2019 Rick Scott investigation; and an Excellence in Profile Writing Award for my 2020 article in The Guardian about how the HIV epidemic prepared Dr. Anthony Fauci to battle Covid-19. 
 
I am often a guest on Sirius Satellite Radio and have also spoken with NPR, iHeart Radio's Daily Dive podcast, Dan Savage's Savage Love podcast and Owen Jones' podcast. I have appeared on Al Jazeera and make regular appearances on NBC News Now.

The son of a general surgeon and an English teacher, I grew up in the heart of Seattle, where I had the unusual experience of attending the same small school, The Bush School, K–12. I have called New York City home since my Columbia days, but also did short stints in Paris and Los Angeles.

I am a recent cancer survivor, having battled what was first a Stage Ib and then a Stage IIb seminoma beginning in December 2021. Following four cycles of chemotherapy that spanned the summer of 2022, I was cleared of cancer in late August 2022. I was determined not to let the unpleasantness of cancer treatment stop me from reporting about the monkeypox outbreak.

I encourage you to follow me on Twitter. Check out my website, which has my full reporting archives: benryan.net.