Health & Safety

Debbie Ziegler holds a photo of her late daughter, Brittany Maynard, after the California State Assembly approved a right-to-die measure on Sept. 9. Maynard died on Nov. 1, 2014.

California Governor Signs Landmark Right-To-Die Law

5:18pm October 06, 2015

by April Dembosky

After months of impassioned debate over the ethics of physician-assisted suicide, California will become the fifth state to allow people who are terminally ill to hasten death with lethal drugs.

Health workers at an Ebola treatment center, run by Doctors Without Borders, greet a man whose family brought him in by wheelbarrow. They suspected that he had the virus. The center is in Foya, Liberia.

Doctors Without Borders Has Mixed Feelings About Award For Ebola Work

4:55pm October 06, 2015

by Anders Kelto

Lasker Award recipients include the medical aid group that fought the virus on the front line. Dr. Deane Marchbein shares her thoughts about the honor — and why it makes her a bit uncomfortable.

Modern, domesticated rice comes in a range of colors, usually described as white, red and black. But collectors have never found black grains in more than a thousand samples of wild rice stored in gene banks. Now geneticists have traced this rare grain's

How 'Forbidden' Black Rice Flourished For Millennia

12:36pm October 06, 2015

by Jeremy Cherfas

Once reserved for the exclusive use of Chinese royalty, black rice these days has become the darling of gourmets seeking superior nutrition. Now geneticists have traced where this rare rice came from.

3 Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize In Physiology Or Medicine

11:30am October 06, 2015

by Jason Beaubien

The scientists from the U.S., Japan and China were awarded the Nobel Prize Monday for discovering drugs to treat parasitic diseases such as malaria, river blindness and elephantiasis.

Queue Listen Now

California Governor Signs Physician-Assisted-Suicide Bill Into Law

8:23pm October 05, 2015

by Brakkton Booker

California Gov. Jerry Brown: "I do not know what I would do if I were dying in prolonged and excruciating pain."

Promo image for Malaria Animation video post.

On Orders From Mao, Researchers Set Off On Nobel-Winning Drug Work

7:34pm October 05, 2015

by Adam Cole

In the 1960s, Chairman Mao Zedong ordered scientists to find a malaria antidote to help ailing soldiers in North Vietnam. Today's Nobel Prize for medicine went to one of those researchers.

Queue Listen Now

David Feifel, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Diego, has treated about 100 people with ketamine.

Club Drug Ketamine Gains Traction As A Treatment For Depression

7:03pm October 05, 2015

by Jon Hamilton

Doctors and patients are using ketamine to treat severe depression, even though the anesthetic and psychedelic club drug has not been approved by the FDA for that purpose. It's not without risks.

Queue Listen Now

New York City's health department launched the "Maybe the IUD" campaign this week, aimed at increasing awareness about the IUD as a highly effective and low-maintenance option for birth control.

Ladies, New York City Wants You To Consider An IUD

5:40pm October 05, 2015

by Lynne Shallcross

Bet you never thought you'd see IUDs promoted on cheery subway posters. New York City's health department wants women to realize that the long-term birth control is a good choice for many.

Employers are gathering detailed health and wellness information about their workers. Are confidentiality safeguards up to the task?

Health & Safety

7 Questions To Ask Your Boss About Wellness Privacy

5:40pm October 05, 2015

More employers than ever are nudging workers toward plans that screen them for risks, monitor their activity and encourage them to make healthful choices. Can you trust the boss to keep the data safe?

A video still from a Save the Children television fundraising advertisement.

At What Point Does A Fundraising Ad Go Too Far?

4:31pm October 05, 2015

by Malaka Gharib

Images of the "starving child" were popular in 1980s campaigns. Critics didn't like the depiction of the developing world as a place of helpless victims. Such ads faded away, but now they're back.