Discover Magazine | Health & Medicine

Vital Signs: How Do You Treat a Watermelon in the Belly?

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:25:00 -0600

Early diagnosis and a fruit of modern medicine keeps a killer at bay.

Can an Injection Break a Cocaine Addiction?

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:50:00 -0600

The drug "vaccination" takes away the high, so users have little reason to use.

The Intellectual Property Fight That Could Kill Millions

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:30:00 -0600

Ngurah Rai International Airport in Bali is best known as a tourist hub, the bustling port of entry to a volcanic paradise. But when Indonesian authorities learned that a Mexican swine flu had gone global, that hub became a surreal microcosm of flu politics. Each arriving passenger was scanned for fever. A Dutch woman, apparently ill while in flight, was greeted by health workers in hazmat suits and whisked into quarantine while fellow passengers were spritzed with disinfectant. The woman was found to have nothing more than a bad sore throat, according to news reports, but that did not change a thing. The controversial head of the Indonesian Health Ministry, physician Siti Supari, quarantined sick foreigners at warp speed. Already embroiled in a battle royal with the world’s superpowers over another flu virus—the ultra-lethal bird flu—Supari did not have time to deal with a new enemy. She would do everything possible, she told her fellow citizens, to protect them from the new pathogen spawned by a pig.

The recent frenzy in Bali stood in notable contrast to the research paralysis that has gripped this tropical archipelago since late 2006, when Supari declared that flu viruses circulating in Indonesia belonged to her government alone. It was a bizarre, 21st-century twist on an age-old intellectual property argument. Developing nations had long fought passionately over plant and native human genes, but no one had ever before staked claim to microbes that birds could carry anywhere. Yet the 57-year-old health minister insisted she had cause: Rich Western nations were patenting the viral genomes, then using the information to create vaccines that were sold for profit to other Western powers while benefiting Indonesia not at all.

If Supari had stopped there, she might have garnered real support. But she ramped up the rhetoric, launching a barrage of fear bombs by accusing the United States of genetically engineering H1N1 (the swine flu virus) and H5N1 (the bird flu pathogen) as biological weapons. Wielding those charges, she flouted agreements with the World Health Organization (WHO), refusing to share samples from Indonesians infected with avian influenza—specimens the rest of the world desperately needs to track a virus on the move.

Numbers: Water, From Precipitation to Irrigation to Sanitation

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:10:00 -0600

Field Notes: Meddling With Mosquito Romance in the Name of Public Healt

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:35:00 -0600

The duets sung by male and female mosquitoes are a critical part of their mating ritual. If researchers can master mosquito music, they may be able to abort a whole generation of disease-carriers.

Treating Agony With Ecstasy

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:15:00 -0600

In the first FDA-approved trial evaluating the street drug's therapeutic applications, it proved phenomenally successful at treating PTSD.

3 Faces of Eve

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:25:00 -0600

Our reporter tries out a trio of genetic tests to find out what they can tell her about her identity and her ancestry.

5 Questions: The Developing World's Disease Fighter

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:55:00 -0600

Jose Gomez-Marquez finds new vaccine technologies that work in the lab and in the real world.

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Digestion

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:10:00 -0600

#15: In which painful condition does your body literally start eating yourself from within?

Bone/Tendon Hybrids Could Quickly Repair Injury

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:50:00 -0600

When quarterback Tom Brady tore a knee ligament last year, the New England Patriots got a rude lesson in the limits of modern medicine: Repairing injured ligaments, tendons, and cartilage is difficult, much trickier than mending a broken bone. When tendons—essential connectors between muscle and bone—are severed, surgical attempts to anchor the tendon to bone often fail because the materials are so different. The problem is akin to joining a rope to a cement wall.

Discover Magazine | Health & Medicine

Vital Signs: How Do You Treat a Watermelon in the Belly?

Can an Injection Break a Cocaine Addiction?

The Intellectual Property Fight That Could Kill Millions

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