Health & Medicine / Cancer

Vital Signs: Confusing Cues

A spreading rash signals something far more dangerous than a skin condition. 11.02.2009

Sauerkraut, Mustard, Relish, and (Slightly Increased Risk of) Cancer

For anyone who thought hot dogs were the healthiest food around, some new research will come as a sad surprise. 10.16.2009

The Big Idea That Might Beat Cancer and Cut Health-Care Costs by 80 Percent

Paul Ewald says infections are responsible for at least four-fifths of all cancers—and we have the tools to prevent them. 09.30.2009

A New Rx for Cancer: Ignore It (Sometimes)

Dr. H. Gilbert Welch says cancer treatments are often worse than the tumors—especially because some of them go away naturally. 09.25.2009

A Modest Proposal: How to Stop Aging Entirely

Biologist Aubrey de Grey lays out a plan to stay young forever. Key step: finally winning the war on cancer. 09.23.2009

Vital Signs: Running Out of Life's Blood

A dying patient faces a dropping blood count—and a faith that forbids transfusions. 05.28.2009

Vital Signs: A Gland Failure

When adrenal functions go out of whack, the mind and body respond in startling ways. 03.29.2009

The Truth About McCain's Melanoma: He Faces a Very Low Risk

For all the air and ink spent on it, most people have missed the essential point. 10.29.2008

10 Ways Genetically Engineered Microbes Could Help Humanity

Fighting cancer, producing renewable fuels, and making your clothing glow in the dark. 08.06.2008

The Man Who Lost His Name—and His Genetic Identity

Eric Drew miraculously recovered from both cancer and identity theft. 04.09.2008

The Cancer That Itches

A "deep" itch can signal that something's really wrong. 02.15.2008

Hope May Be Useless Against Cancer

New study finds that being happy won't help you live longer. 02.11.2008

The New Anticancer Weapon: Fetal Cells

Cellular stowaways may be able see through cancer cells' disguises. 01.07.2008

Scientist of the Year Notable: Elizabeth Blackburn

Her genetic explorations could lead to revolutionary treatments for cancer. 12.06.2007

Expert: Modern Chemicals Brought Cancer Epidemic

First tobacco. Then asbestos. Now we're awash in a sea of new poisons. 11.08.2007

World Plague Center

Philip Landrigan tracks the massive health fallout from breathing NY air after 9/11. 09.07.2007

The Body Can Beat Terminal Cancer — Sometimes

They should be dead. But a tiny number of people conquer lethal diseases. 08.21.2007

Why Is the HPV Vaccine So Expensive?

Good for the cervix, rough on the pocketbook 06.11.2007

The First Nuclear Refugees Come Home

Chernobyl-area natives return to find a city of ghosts. 06.08.2007

Everything Emits Radiation—Even You

The millirems pour in from bananas, bomb tests, the air, bedmates... 06.04.2007

How We Got the Controversial HPV Vaccine

It took more than 30 years—and mice grafted with infected human foreskins. 05.17.2007

Tanning Beds and Cancer

Long chided for rising skin cancer rates, sun exposure may provide essential doses of Vitamin D. And the tanning bed industry's happy to hear it. 08.15.2006

Firefly Rx

How your favorite summertime insect may be illuminating drug research. 08.10.2006

Are You Immune to Cancer?

Scientists find a strain of super-mice that just can't get cancer. 08.01.2006

Smoking and Ethnicity

Scientists try to pin down why African Americans are statistically less successful at quitting smoking. 07.07.2006

Taking the Sting Out of Brain Cancer

A new drug treatment uses scorpion venom to find tumors. 06.30.2006

Cancer Rewind?

Reversing cell division could have implications for cancer. 06.27.2006

Vital Signs: Why Is She Getting Thinner?

Linking stomach pain, diabetes, and weight loss saves a life 05.29.2006

Outrunning Melanoma

Exercise may prevent skin cancer. 05.25.2006

Secrets of Redheads

Secrets of Redheads 11.22.2005

Killing Cancer With Red-Hot Nanotubes

Killing Cancer With Red-Hot Nanotubes 11.22.2005

Vital Signs

A song from Shrek helps a 5-year-old boy recover from difficult surgery 08.06.2005

Medicine

01.02.2004

The Greatest Unanswered Questions of Medical Science

Where the money and brainpower will go in the next decade 12.03.2003

Vital Signs

New thinking about an old disease 08.01.2003

Vital Signs

She looked healthy, yet the X ray suggested she would soon die 05.01.2003

The scientist who hated abortion

Endocrinologist Joel Brind says research has shown him the truth about abortion, and that's why he set out on a crusade that now reaches into the heart of the nation's most powerful cancer agency. But what if he's wrong? 02.01.2003

Free Radical

The eminent, controversial, and endlessly inventive biochemist Bruce Ames thinks he has found a way to slow the aging process in the brain. May the force be with him 10.01.2002

Bad Science and Breast Cancer

For more than a decade, physicians convinced breast cancer patients that bone marrow transplants were their best hope of salvation. But the insurance companies who resisted paying for the procedures were right all along: It was experimental medicine and most women were a lot better off without it. How could so many oncologists ignore basic principles of science? 08.01.2002

Sky Lights

Radiation levels are up and our satellite is down 02.01.2002

Vital Signs

For more than a century, the key to cancer therapy has always been, Wait for the pathology report 08.01.2001

Works in Progress

Perhaps, but the side effects could get you too 06.01.2001

I Have Seen Cancers Disappear'

When Steven Rosenberg was young, the Nazis killed his aunts and uncles one by one. When he was older, cancer killed his patients one by one. That connection just might save our lives 05.01.2001

Worrying About Milk

08.01.2000

Open Sesame

04.01.2000

A New Red Line

11.01.1999

Code of Denial

Doctors have a dispassionate language for talking to really sick patients. But it doesn't work with people they love. 10.01.1999

Got Cancer Killers?

Breast-feeding protects babies from cancer, but no one knows quite how. So when biologists in Catharina Svanborg's lab saw mothers' milk kill cancer cells, they knew they were onto something big. 06.01.1999

Saurian Sore

10.01.1998

A Head Full of Hope

How do you launch something into orbit without using any fuel? A prototype spacecraft relies on a To attack a terrifying form of brain tumor, surgeons are adding a tiny new tool to their kit: a genetically tweaked virus, designed to mark cancer cells for death. 04.01.1998

Vital Signs: Final Battles

Mrs. Chang's life had not been easy. Now she was afraid her death wouldn't be, either. 03.01.1998

The Year in Science: Environment 1997

Iodine Wind 01.01.1998

The Year in Science: Medicine 1997

Tobacco Row 01.01.1998

Malign Evolution

In 1911 a hen's tumor prompted a 70-year search for cancer-causing viruses. What it ultimately revealed were the rules of a Darwinian game, played to the death. 08.01.1997

A Healing Light

06.01.1997

Ten Years After

01.01.1997

The Player

11.01.1996

Fetal Errors

07.01.1996

Beyond the Lab Rat

By examining humans at the molecular level, researchers hope to pin down cancer's true causes. 05.01.1996

A Gift of the Gods

10.01.1995

Analysis of a Toxic Death

A year ago two dozen emergency room staff were mysteriously felled by fumes emanating from a dying young woman. Investigations turned up nothing--until a team of chemists from a nuclear weapons lab got involved. 04.01.1995

A Mortal Science

09.01.1994

Magic Missiles

We need a kinder way to kill cancer--one that doesn't destroy the patient as well. 03.01.1993

No Longer Human

12.01.1992

The Lazarus Mice

07.01.1992

Stopping the Crab

03.01.1992