Health & Medicine / Family Health

Reading Women's Biological Clocks

Computational geneticist Tara Matise looks for biomarkers that predict when women will become infertile. 09.29.2009

Slime City: Where Germs Talk to Each Other and Execute Precise Attacks

For 300 years, scientists thought of bacteria as individual killers, like a bunch of piranhas. Recently, we've found that's almost entirely wrong. 07.17.2009

Evolution by Intelligent Design

Bioengineers will likely control the future of humans as a species. 02.02.2009

First Plastic Went After Babies; Now It's Messing Up Science Itself

A new study shows that plastic lab equipment can interfere with experiments. 01.30.2009

#12: Plastics Come Under Fire

The BPA debate rages on as the public demands action. 12.20.2008

#61: A New Drug Delivers “Fitness” Without the Workout

Take a pill and simulate the effects of exercise. 12.10.2008

Does Shaken Baby Syndrome Really Exist?

Mainstream medicine supports the diagnosis, but some doctors claim the evidence behind it is questionable. 12.02.2008

Twenty-Nine, Male, and Dangerously Ill

A young man with fevers and groin pain leads E.R. doctors on a race to find the cause. 10.23.2008

The History of Humans, Written in One Person's DNA

One reporter's genetic test hints at how people colonized the entire world. 08.20.2008

The Alarming Truth About Lyme Disease

A DISCOVER editor reveals her personal story. 06.13.2008

The Race to Treat a Seizing Child

A toddler's neurological outburst leads to a clinical guessing game. 06.12.2008

A Chat With George W. Bush’s Conscience

Embryonic stem cells crashed against Leon Kass’ old-school moralism. 02.20.2008

The Cancer That Itches

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

Vital Signs: Misdiagnosing ADHD

Just because it's in vogue doesn't mean it's accurate. 08.22.2007

Fetus Fight Club

The first proof that babies are born ready to repel infections 08.16.2007

Danger from the Belly Button

The navel gives a fetus life, but can bring a newborn death. 06.26.2007

You Are a Chimera (Thanks to Mom)

Your mother's cells can be a part of you for decades. 05.09.2007

Vital Signs: A Dangerous Pregnancy

An embryo that lands short of the womb can cause fatal complications. 04.16.2007

Autism: It’s Not Just in the Head

New treatments for a disease that may affect the whole body 03.22.2007

Mind-Control Microbe

An infection can make you have a car crash or determine the sex of your child. 03.01.2007

Blown Away

Lice meet hair dryer of death 02.26.2007

Vital Signs: High Head Pressure

An infant's rapidly growing skull provides a clue to a life-threatening condition. 01.31.2007

What Ever Happened to Crack Babies?

Doctors shoot down crack baby theories and stigmas. 11.29.2006

Raw Data: Do Beautiful Parents Have More Daughters?

Natural selection may be driving the beautiful people to have girls. 11.14.2006

Vital Signs: A Parent's Nightmare

Why has the baby become so listless? 07.29.2006

A Mother's Touch

Good parents can change children's DNA. 05.12.2006

Who's Your Daddy?

Don't count on DNA testing to tell you. 04.02.2006

Toxic Inheritance

Frederica Perera, DNA-damage detective, suspects that if a mother breathes in pollution, her child may develop cancer. 03.06.2006

Vital Signs: Struggling to Inhale

The same symptoms for an infant and an older man have separate causes and different consequences 12.01.2005

Who's Your Daddy?

Who's Your Daddy? 11.22.2005

Behavior

A risk for unborn children 10.24.2005

Fertility

Now a woman can store her eggs and conceive a baby sixties. 10.24.2005

Baby Talk

03.25.2005

Vital Signs

Though seemingly healthy at birth, this boy was in big trouble within 48 hours 12.03.2004

Fearless Mothers

11.30.2004

Vital Signs

Evaluating fussiness in a baby is tricky, but a heart rate of 220 is not ambiguous 08.02.2004

Labor of Lungs

08.02.2004

Vital Signs

Will a young mother bleed to death after giving birth? 04.21.2004

Vital Signs

Was it pneumonia, asthma, or something his mother drank? 03.28.2004

Anthropology

01.02.2004

Zoology

01.02.2004

Crash-Test Babies

12.03.2003

Vital Signs

A child's disease rears up against adults as their vaccinations wear thin 11.08.2003

Go Ahead, Kiss Your Cousin

Heck, marry her if you want to 08.01.2003

Food for Thought

08.01.2003

How Many Fathers are Best?

After 40 years of visiting the Barí Indians in Venezuela, anthropologists have discovered a new twist on family values 04.01.2003

Works in Progress

Does violent TV breed violence? Do video games breed more of it? 04.01.2003

The Hardy Sarah Blaffer Hrdy

The scientist who destroyed our quaint concept of what a mother ought to be comes to terms with her own life 03.01.2003

Interior Designs

Can ailments such as heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure be linked to poor conditions in the womb? David Barker thinks so—and he's not alone 12.01.2002

The Adoption Paradox

Raising someone else's child seems to make no sense from an evolutionary standpoint. So why is everyone doing it? 01.01.2001

Family Matters

The new buzz in psychology is that peers are more important in shaping a child's personality than parents are. But a 13-year study in Dominica, of all places, says home life is ground zero for mental health 08.01.2000

07.01.2000

The Lullaby Cure

06.01.2000

How Old Is Too Old to Have a Baby?

Fertility technology is advancing at such an astonishing pace that couples who fail to have children in their forties could realistically wait until their sixties to try again? 04.01.2000

Brave, Braver, Bravest

A couple with HIV who long for their own child muster the courage to face the consequences 11.01.1999

Vital Signs

A couple with HIV who long for their own child muster the courage to face the consequences 11.01.1999

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

Tiny Invader

02.01.1999

Young Salts

12.01.1998

Maa-Maa's Boys

12.01.1998

The Baby Who Stopped Eating

Infants don't suddenly stop nursing and starve themselves. What was happening to Jarret Fox? 08.01.1998

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Baby

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Baby 05.01.1998

Human in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Fertility clinics have been called the Wild West of medicine—an unregulated world where a dead man can impregnate a stranger and where a child can have five parents. 05.01.1998

Tempting Fates

If you could dictate the content of your kid's genes, wouldn't you? Shouldn't you? 05.01.1998

Babies, Bonds, and Brains

Everybody knows a kid needs love. Now neuroscience is closing in on just how TLC shapes a child's brain and behavior. 10.01.1997

Taking a Stand

07.01.1997

First, Kill the Babies

In the fierce evolutionary battle to pass on one's genes, says one controversial hypothesis, everyone else is a potential competitor--even the infants. 09.01.1996

Bottle-Fed Eyes

08.01.1996

In Dad's Image

05.01.1996

The Breath of Life

03.01.1996

Father's Milk

From goats to people, males can be mammary mammals, too. 02.01.1995

A Reasonable Sleep

Sleeping with babies could ward off sudden infant death syndrome. 04.01.1992