Health & Safety

Sherman Silber, a surgeon at the Infertility Center of St. Louis, offers women a procedure that he claims will put their biological clocks on ice.

Health & Safety

Chance To Pause Biological Clock With Ovarian Transplant Stirs Debate

9:34pm December 24, 2012

by Rob Stein

The only women who have gotten pregnant with an ovarian transplant are cancer patients at great risk of losing their fertility. But a handful of doctors are now doing the procedure for patients trying to beat their biological clocks.

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Ronan at 2 years old. "I know Ronan's purpose in life was to shed light on this disease," says his mother, Maya Thompson. "This is why I will continue to fight for childhood cancer for the rest of my life."

Finding New Meaning In The Loss Of A Son

6:00pm December 24, 2012

by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Maya Thompson's son Ronan died of cancer three days before his fourth birthday. During his illness, she began a raw and sometimes angry blog that drew millions of readers. Thompson has since started a foundation and is funding clinical trials to find a cure for childhood cancer.

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A person's DNA can say a lot about a person, but not why someone has committed a horrific crime like mass murder.

Killer's DNA Won't Explain His Crime

9:21pm December 21, 2012

by Jon Hamilton

Sandy Hook and other mass killings have left people wondering how someone could engage in such behavior. Scientists say that genes can indeed predispose a person to mental illness or violence. But genetic variants alone can't explain why someone commits mass murder.

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Health & Safety

Medicare Starts To Reward Quality, Not Quantity, Of Care

11:16am December 21, 2012

by Jordan Rau

The nation's biggest insurer is starting to dole out bonuses and penalties to nearly 3,000 hospitals as it ties almost $1 billion in payments to the quality of care provided to patients.

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Health & Safety

When The Doctor Works For The Insurance Company

11:16am December 21, 2012

by Tracey Samuelson

Big insurance companies are opening their own doctors' offices and clinics — a strategy that has previously met with mixed results.

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Food companies have begun quietly reducing salt in regular foods because low-salt items like these don't sell as well.

Big Food And The Big, Silent Salt Experiment

10:18pm December 20, 2012

by Dan Charles

Food manufacturers have been quietly reducing sodium by tiny amounts in popular foods like crackers for years now. That's because if products are marked "low sodium," consumers won't buy them. But companies are also working on ways to deliver more salt taste with less sodium.

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An employee tidies boxes of medicines displayed in a pharmacy in the city of Caen in western France last month. Beginning in 2013, girls between the ages of 15 and 18 will be able to get birth control free of charge, and without parental notification.

In France, Free Birth Control For Girls At Age 15

3:16pm December 20, 2012

by Eleanor Beardsley

Starting in January, the French government will provide contraceptives for girls ages 15 to 18 — without charge and without parental notification. The measure, which passed parliament without debate, aims to reduce teen pregnancies by increasing access to birth control and education.

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Dr. Aun Pyae Phyo examines a baby at the Whampa malaria clinic on the Thailand-Myanmar border.

A View From The Ground: Thailand Confronts Drug-Resistant Malaria

3:16pm December 20, 2012

Global deaths from malaria have dropped sharply in the past decade, thanks in part to powerful drugs called artemisinins. But on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, doctors are starting to see cracks in artemisinin's armor. The medicine is working more slowly, and sometimes not at all.

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While the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas focused on stopping malaria in the U.S. during War World II, the U.S. Army launched an aggressive campaign to combat the parasite among troops. In 1945, it distributed a monthly pinup calendar to soldiers i

Health & Safety

How The U.S. Stopped Malaria, One Cartoon At A Time

1:28pm December 20, 2012

by Jason Beaubien

With publicity campaigns, radio jingles and pinups, the government helped eliminate the parasitic disease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is still fighting malaria at home and abroad.

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Bali sea salt and a spoonful of Hawaiian red alae salt.

The Paradox And Mystery Of Our Taste For Salt

11:37am December 20, 2012

by Dan Charles

Many health experts say we should eat less salt, but that's not easy. Salt is added to almost everything that we cook or bake. Are we born with a taste for that much salt, or do we just like what we've always eaten? Scientists say it's some of both.

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