It was 50 years ago this month that Senator Robert F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin. In what is now the first study of its kind, a team of specialists has conducted a systematic review of the medical care he received during the critical hours following the shooting. Their findings offer unprecedented details about…
Officials with California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) have intervened to nullify a recent court ruling saying coffee sold in the state—say, like at a local Starbucks—must be accompanied by warning labels saying brewed coffee contains the carcinogen acrylamide.
The state of Massachusetts has filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma LP, the company that developed the semisynthetic opioid OxyContin in 1995 and aggressively marketed it while downplaying the risk of addiction. It’s part of a growing backlash to Purdue, a pharmaceutical giant the New Yorker characterized as an …
Elizabeth Holmes lost everything—and nearly $900 million of other people’s money—when her bunk blood-testing startup Theranos went into full meltdown, resulting in the layoff of nearly all staff and civil charges of “massive” fraud for Holmes and former company president Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University have synthesized an artificial human prion, a scientific first that could eventually lead to treatments for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and other deadly brain-wasting disorders.
Lurking quietly in the deep dark jungles of New Guinea are a group of lizards who share a rather striking feature: green blood. It’s a rare trait for vertebrates to have, but new insights into this strange blood could lead to innovative medical treatments.
Lo and behold, President Donald Trump has appointed none other than widely ridiculed quack Dr. Mehmet Oz—yes, the Dr. Oz so infamous for his dubious TV health advice that the British Medical Journal published a thorough trashing of him—to serve as a health adviser.
Squirrels and other hibernating animals have an almost magical ability to withstand frigid temperatures. New research has uncovered the biological factors involved in keeping cellular structures intact during hibernation—a finding that could eventually be used to preserve human organs prior to transplantation.
Over the past few years, a hospital in Portland, Oregon has dramatically shifted its approach to treating patients with substance use disorders, including opioid addiction. And since then, the hospital has undergone a “sea change” in the way its medical staff think about and address addiction, according to a study…
Researchers at the University of Chicago are working on an app that they hope will be able to answer to a question many a stoner has asked themselves at one point or another: Am I actually high? The results of their latest research—presented this week at the Emerging Biology conference held in California—suggest…
A surgical team from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore performed a total penis and scrotum transplant, the first operation of its kind anywhere in the world.
Researchers at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science are trying to create a vaccine for a class of drugs most infamously, if wrongly, accused of turning people into face-eating zombies commonly known as bath salts. And their latest results in rats, presented this week at the annual Experimental Biology…
It might take just one puff of cannabis to quickly if temporarily dull depression, depending on the strain, suggests a new study published this month in the Journal of Affective Disorders. But smoking weed for too long might also make you sadder over time, the researchers found.
A Canadian naturopath is feeling the heat after she boasted about treating a young child’s behavioral problems with a homeopathic remedy made from the saliva of a rabid dog. But it’s really only the latest episode to highlight the absurdity of the popular alternative “medicine.”
Ketamine, a drug that’s been retooled as a “breakthrough” in depression treatment, is one step closer to becoming mainstream medicine, thanks to the results of a Phase II clinical trial published this week in the American Journal of Psychiatry. But some experts are wary of creating a new drug-abuse crisis by…
This man had a tiny second fingernail growing on top of the nail of his middle finger. It looks like a second finger.
It turns out the cute, harmless-looking rubber ducky floating around in your bathtub may actually be a Trojan horse for ravenous legions of “potentially pathogenic bacteria.”
When it comes to hoverboard injuries, it’s tempting to think a good portion of them are severe burns caused by those overheating battery packs. New research shows this is very much not the case, and that each year around 13,500 kids are treated in US hospital emergency rooms after falling from their hoverboards. That…
Italian archaeologists have uncovered a Medieval grave containing the remains of a woman and a fetus lying between her legs. It’s a grim example of a “coffin birth,” say the researchers, but there’s even more to this horrific Middle Ages tragedy than that.
If you’re a history buff, you might not know much particle physics. But the two fields share more in common than you’d think. X-rays from a high-energy lab have revealed ancient Greek medical texts that had been stripped and covered with religious writing.