Disease

Aubrey de Grey says, “There’s no such thing as aging gracefully.”

Can Human Mortality Really Be Hacked?

Backed by the digital fortunes of Silicon Valley, biotech companies are brazenly setting out to “cure” aging

A giraffe skin disease was first described in the mid-1990s in Uganda and evidence of the disease has been spotted in numerous other countries, including Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

How a Tiny Worm is Irritating the Most Majestic of Giraffes

They sound horrifying and look worse. A Smithsonian researcher is investigating the cause of these grotesque skin lesions

Chocolate, coffee and tea all played a role in overturning a medical theory that had dominated the Western world for more than a millennium.

How Coffee, Chocolate and Tea Overturned a 1,500-Year-Old Medical Mindset

The humoral system dominated medicine since the Ancient Greeks—but it was no match for these New World beverages

A nurse suits up in Liberia before entering an Ebola red zone in 2015. Now, a single case of Ebola has been confirmed in Congo by the World Health Organization.

Ebola Returns to the Democratic Republic of Congo

A single death has been confirmed—now public health officials must keep an outbreak from becoming an epidemic

Frances Oldham Kelsey, a pharmacologist with the Food & Drug Administration, helped prevent a generation of children born with congenital deformities in the United States.

The Woman Who Stood Between America and a Generation of 'Thalidomide Babies'

How the United States escaped a national tragedy in the 1960s

Drinking fountain on the Halifax County Courthouse (North Carolina) in April 1938.

Racism Harms Children's Health, Survey Finds

Racism may not be a disease, exactly. But a growing body of research finds that it has lasting physical and mental effects on its victims

This memorial to the victims of Nazi Germany's "euthanasia" program was erected in Berlin in 2000.

German Scientists Will Study Brain Samples of Nazi Victims

A research society is still coming to grips with its past—and learning more about how the Third Reich targeted people with disabilities

Fruit bats are thought to be the natural host for the Ebola virus. Groups like USAID PREDICT regularly monitor such diseases in wildlife to prevent the jump from animal to humans.

Can Saving Animals Prevent the Next Deadly Pandemic?

A global disease monitoring network is banking on the idea that healthier wildlife means healthier humans

During World War I, a critical shaving tool caused critical illness in hundreds of people.

How Shaving Brushes Gave World War I Soldiers Anthrax

A new paper looks back on an old epidemic—and raises fresh questions about antique shaving brushes

A field hospital in Virginia, photographed in 1862, shows the grim conditions during the Civil War.

Fearing a Smallpox Epidemic, Civil War Troops Tried to Self-Vaccinate

People knew that inoculation could prevent you from catching smallpox. It was how Civil War soldiers did it that caused problems

Roughly 70 pink pigeons exist in captivity around the world, including this one at the San Diego Zoo.

Threatened Species? Science to the (Genetic) Rescue!

This still-controversial conservation technique will never be a species' panacea. But it might provide a crucial stop-gap

A baby in Ghana rests underneath a mosquito net. Ghana will become one of three African countries to pilot the new malaria vaccine in 2018.

Hundreds of Thousands of Babies Will Receive World’s First Malaria Vaccine

The pilot program will focus on Kenya, Ghana and Malawi—countries at the center of the global malaria crisis

A recipe for an eyesalve from ‘Bald’s Leechbook’

Medieval Medical Books Could Hold the Recipe for New Antibiotics

A team of medievalists and scientists look back to history—including a 1,000-year-old eyesalve recipe—for clues

You can't sit with us. You smell like poo.

Gut Check: Mandrills Sniff Poop to Avoid Peers With Parasites

Researchers have documented one of the first instances of social avoidance in a non-human animal

The tick discovered preserved in amber

30-Million-Year-Old Tick Full of Monkey Blood Found in Ancient Amber

Scientists think the tick was plucked from a primate before being dropped in a puddle of sticky tree resin

Tools of diabetes treatment almost always include improved diet and regular exercise.

MIT Mathematician Develops an Algorithm to Help Treat Diabetes

The key to managing the disease, which afflicts 29 million people in the U.S., might be in big data

The University of London's Senate House inspired Orwell's description of the Ministry of Truth. Orwell's wife Eileen Blair worked in the building during World War II, when it was the real headquarters of the Ministry of Information.

George Orwell Wrote '1984' While Dying of Tuberculosis

Orwell, like thousands around the globe today, struggled with tuberculosis for many years before finally succumbing to the disease

The notorious RPB: the rusty patched bumble bee.

The Bee That Breaks Your Heart

Insects are hard-pressed to get protection as endangered species. Can one fuzzy anomaly beat the odds?

Commuters in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam use makeshift face masks to protect them from smog. Doctors are warning that climate change will affect human health, in part by increasing air pollution.

Doctors Warn That Climate Change Makes People Sick

Medical associations join forces to sound the alarm on climate change and human health

Itchy and scratchy: When they see their peers scratching away, mice get the urge to itch.

Why Is Itching So Contagious?

Scientists figure out how compulsive scratching spreads in mice, and maybe humans

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