It’s really not news.  Silent film star Gloria Swanson knew it way back when.  William Duffy’s 1975 bestseller, ‘Sugar Blues,’ quotes her as saying, “That stuff is poison.”  Wouldn’t even allow it in her house.  Now a new study from…

Tamoxifen is often administered to women after surgery for breast cancer in the hope it will diminish the chance of recurrence but, other than the test of time, there has been little opportunity to know if the drug therapy is…

Adolescent substance abuse is a problem in many parts of the world, particularly so in the United States, where almost 50% of all high school students admit trying at least one illegal drug before graduation day.  The heaviest users are…

The conclusion from two massive studies of the possibility that antioxidant supplements might ward off prostate cancer was so rock solid that the research teams released their findings way ahead of schedule, citing public health implications as their reason for…

Oh, mosquitoes!  Everybody hates them.  They buzz, they bite, they itch, and they’ve ruined as many picnics as those pesky ants have.  Mosquitoes are much worse than a mere nuisance, however.  They carry a parasite that can infect a person…

Marilyn Monroe had one and it drove men crazy.  Women everywhere wanted an hourglass figure just like hers.  Many of them still do.  A recent scientific study, however, suggests that same curvy figure may not be such a good thing…

Remember the children’s song that says “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands?”  A new scientific study says that even when friends of our friends’ friends are happy, there’s cause for applause.  Seems happiness is contagious and…

“The genomics revolution is here,” according to Dr. James Meigs and, with it, the hope that medical diagnostics and treatments will be revolutionized accordingly.  Two recently published studies, however, suggest the current means of detecting type 2 diabetes or the…

A. Hope Jahren, a University of Hawaii geography and geophysics professor, went on a shopping spree that started in Los Angeles and ended in Boston, with stops in San Francisco, Denver, Detroit, and Baltimore in between.  What did she buy? …

Like the Marlboro Man and martini-swilling TV characters of a couple of decades ago, some advocates for children’s nutritional health would like to see the king of burgers and his clownish golden-arched competition disappear from television airwaves, too.  A just-released…

Medical history is dotted with stories of cancers vanishing without a trace and without any treatment, either.  Once considered medical oddities, a new study suggests more cancers go away without treatment than would be expected.  The theory, however, is quite…

Using current medical technologies, doctors must rely on biopsies or visual image scanning, such as x-ray, MRI, and PET, to diagnose glioblastoma, the form of brain tumor for which US Senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass) has been treated recently.  Biopsies, which…

It took five months for researchers at England’s Bristol University to grow the 60 million stem cells needed for the breakthrough windpipe transplant recently performed on a Colombian woman in Barcelona, Spain, in order to replace her tuberculosis-ravaged trachea with…

Almost all doctors in the United States say they’ve spent too much time on paperwork lately, so much so that many of them are forced to spend more time with paperwork than with their patients, according to a report just…