Search

Byline: NATALIE ANGIER Throughout his adolescence, José Ramirez Jr., now a clinical social worker in Houston, faced a shifting array of bewildering symptoms. Sometimes, he was feverish; at other times, [...]

JUST when it seemed that the bitter argument over fetal tissue transplants had faded, the Federal agency that is the lifeline of American biomedical research has stepped into another debate […]

CONSIDERED on its face, suicide seems to flout the laws of nature, slashing through the sturdy instinct that wills all beings to fight for their lives until they can fight […]

IN the wake of recent and widely publicized studies hinting that estrogen replacement therapy may help prevent Alzheimer's disease, neuroscientists have expressed relief that at last the world may begin […]

THE first effort to install healthy genes in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients has hit a few bumpy spots, forcing researchers in the United States to redesign their projects […]

AS any serious migraine sufferer knows, an attack can bring pain without pity or horizon, a pain so stupendous that it obliterates work, family, thought, otherness. Yet for all its […]

A radical treatment for brain tumors unlike any therapy used before has proved promising in early clinical trials, researchers report. But they are emphasizing that the trial is small, that […]

As the death of a young Navajo woman dashed hopes that an epidemic of a flu-like illness had begun to abate in the Southwest, Federal health officials said yesterday that […]

FOR many men with early prostate cancer, the best thing to do may be nothing at all, a new report concludes. Sifting through the scientific literature and generating statistical models […]

After 10 backbreaking years in a research purgatory of false leads, failed experiments and long stretches of mordant despair, an international team of scientists says it has discovered the most […]

As a first date is to a marriage, so the discovery of a gene usually is to finding a cure for a disease: a very modest first step. But last […]

AN oral vaccine against multiple sclerosis has proved promising enough in a small pilot trial to merit broader testing, scientists have reported. The novel approach plays upon the unique way […]

The National Institutes of Health, the country's pocketbook for biomedical research and long a stern protector of the most rigorous brand of science, is about to start venturing into the […]

IN a culture obsessed with every ache and flutter of the human body, plant pathologists have long been consigned to the boondocks of biology, their work viewed as being of […]

SOMETIME within the next month, a patient suffering from advanced melanoma who otherwise has almost no chance of surviving will be the first to receive the ultimate form of human […]

LONG consigned to the fringes of medicine and accorded scarcely more credibility than crystal-rubbing or homeopathy, the study of how vitamins affect the body and help prevent chronic diseases is […]

Scientists have discovered the gene behind a rare and severe form of high blood pressure that strikes early in life, often during childhood. Although doctors have long observed that high […]

In his brief life, Vincent van Gogh painted with grand passion, fasted for days on end, drank abundant quantities of alcohol, including the potent liquor absinthe, and suffered a host […]

The rate of a baffling syndrome that seems to favor white, middle-aged and often affluent men is rising steadily, researchers have found. The condition is thought to put people at […]

MOVING with a swiftness that far exceeds expectations of just a few months ago, researchers are preparing to use a new type of gene therapy against a lethal hereditary illness, […]

The Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards, considered second in prestige only to the Nobel Prizes, were given yesterday to two pioneers in the field of fruit fly genetics and to […]

In one of the most extensive reports yet on the health benefits of moderate drinking, scientists say that one or two drinks a day can substantially cut the risk of […]

Only months after they gained their first slender clue into the baffling biochemistry of a common disease of the body's connective tissue, Marfan syndrome, researchers have identified the gene behind […]

A drug made from a natural compound in the brain can help victims of crippling spinal cord injuries regain some mobility and may allow the patients' dying nerves to begin […]

For those who find every wafting chemical of the urbanized, industrialized world to be more than their bodies can bear, the syndrome known as environmental illness or multiple-chemical sensitivity is […]

It was not so very long ago that people would discuss their sexual woes, their family strife, even that most intimate of topics, their salaries, before they would confess to […]

FOLK beliefs about a disease can have widely varying effects on a patient's commitment to taking medication for the illness, a study has found. The beliefs may either help or […]