Health & Safety

Pharmaceutical distributors — the middle men in the opioid epidemic — have already been paying out millions to federal and state law enforcement officials for the companies' role in the crisis. But a new front in the legal battle against opioids has opened. One personal injury lawyer in small-town West Virginia has come up with a creative legal theory to go after these distributors so that small, ravaged communities can collect too.

Research in epilepsy has found a key to why small pulses of electricity to the brain sometimes help and sometimes hurt a failing memory. Brains hurt by physical trauma or dementia might benefit, too.

Researchers found that a protein in human umbilical cord plasma improved learning and memory in older mice, but there's no indication it would work in people.