Jeffrey Hawkins Writer likes to say that the average drop of water entering the Mississippi River headwaters north of Minnesota will be used 11 times before it reaches the Gulf of…

A few key data points about Amelia Sloan: She likes to suck her own toes. She wears pink tutus. She doesn’t do interviews with journalists. She was born in Falls Church, Va. on April…

Back in 2000, before MRSA—Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus—had become a household word, Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg wrote in the journal Science that “the future…

Just like every new drug the oncologists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center tested against bladder cancer in the last 20 years, this one didn’t seem to be doing any good.…

In 2007, at her high school graduation in Quesnel, British Columbia, Ivana Topic stood at the top of the auditorium stairs, her long gown skimming the floor, her dark brown hair spilling…

The history of science is punctuated with medical breakthroughs that seemed unlikely in the times from which they arose. Infections from simple cuts or sore throats laid waste to millions…

Sometime in 2004, a pig was trucked with a herd of others to Sheung Shui Slaughterhouse, Hong Kong’s largest abattoir. It could have been shipped from any number of farms in China.…