On Aging

Katie Roiphe's The Violet Hour is a meditation on mortality in which she describes the last days of Maurice Sendak, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, John Updike, James Salter and Dylan Thomas.

This school in Denver teaches its seventh-graders about the disease, the science behind it and the patience needed to deal with it.

How coinsurance hurts: If a drug costs $200, a patient may owe 20 percent of the cost, or $40, instead of a flat copayment of $20. The higher the cost of the drug, the bigger the coinsurance bite.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says there isn't enough evidence to know whether vision screening given by primary care doctors benefits patients.

Terminally ill Californians will legally be able to get medicine from doctors to end their own lives. The end of the state's special legislative session Thursday made it official.

Research from the Dartmouth Atlas Project identifies care that older people receive that doesn't match clinical guidelines or, often, patients' own preferences.

Losing vision due to macular degeneration can spark many other losses, and patients are more apt to be depressed. An eye doctor discovers there are things she can do to help.

Is stress turning your hair gray? Your ancestors may have something to do with it, too. Scientists say they've found the first genetic variant associated with going gray.

Having reached the average life expectancy for an American male, Dr. Schumann's father is acutely interested in his buddies' illnesses and treatments. Call it "medical me-tooism."