New York Magazine's Alexa Tsoulis-Reay spoke with a 51-year-old English teacher from the U.K. to learn about his life with a micropenis. His response says a lot about what it means to be human – whether one possesses a penis or not. » 11/08/14 1:30pm 11/08/14 1:30pm

What should you cut out of your diet to be more healthy? Everything. According to the most popular diet books on the market, there's barely a food on Earth that's safe to eat. But what is the actual benefit of these diets? Here's what science has to say. » 11/07/14 6:29pm 11/07/14 6:29pm

For the first time in history, a woman has given birth to a baby after receiving a womb transplant. The mother and child, both of whom are said to be doing well, offer hope to women the world over with missing or non-functional uteruses who desire to carry their own children to term. » 10/05/14 2:10pm 10/05/14 2:10pm

Contraceptives fail a lot more often than you may have realized. Those failure rate statistics that you see are actually a bit misleading — they are for failure rates in a given year. Over time, the risk of failure is compounded. » 9/17/14 3:38pm 9/17/14 3:38pm

Yesterday, The New York Times published a provocative opinion piece by a Cornell medical school professor that argued for adding lithium to our drinking water. It's an interesting idea! It is not, however, a new one. In fact, one of America's favorite soft drinks used to contain the mood stabilizing element. » 9/15/14 1:56pm 9/15/14 1:56pm

It's hard to believe that in the year 2014 we are still debating what most scientists believe to be fairly straightforward, research-proved facts. Yet, that is exactly the name of the game when it comes to critics of child vaccinations. While Jenny McCarthy was an excellent and deserving scapegoat for awhile, we can… » 9/10/14 6:15pm 9/10/14 6:15pm

HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in America. With the exception of HIV, it is also the most fatal. But for almost a decade, we've had a vaccine that prevents HPV infection and, by extension, the deadly cancers it causes. So why aren't American adolescents getting access to this vaccine? » 8/27/14 3:26pm 8/27/14 3:26pm

Researchers are warning that a common gynecological procedure performed on 50,000 American women a year might actually — whoopsie-daisy! — be spreading cancer. » 7/24/14 10:40am 7/24/14 10:40am

For over 20 years, the state of Indiana hoarded the blood of newborns without their parents' consent. If your child was born in Indiana after 1991, chances are his or her blood sample is one of an estimated 2.5-million specimens currently stored in a warehouse, the location of which state officials have not disclosed. » 7/19/14 6:17pm 7/19/14 6:17pm

The number of people suffering from kidney stones has grown over the past thirty years, and a new study shows it's likely to get worse. Here's why. » 7/10/14 8:28pm 7/10/14 8:28pm

While everyone was busy with Facebook fights over the safety of childhood vaccines (GET IT TOGETHER, AMERICA), they've become vastly more expensive. Costs have leapt so high many doctors are struggling to offer them, leaving some parents scrambling for someone to perform this most basic of preventative measures. » 7/03/14 12:30pm 7/03/14 12:30pm

A new law waiting to be signed into law by Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal would require that pregnant and brain dead women be kept on life support, regardless of the stated wishes of her family. If the pro-life crowd is trying to disprove accusations that they only care about women to the extent that they are… » 6/13/14 3:50pm 6/13/14 3:50pm

If you believed the internet, you'd think there's huge debate over whether eggs, coffee, or salt are good or bad for you. In reality, there's significant agreement on diet and health issues among experts, but the general public is conflicted. So why are we so confused when experts agree? Let's clear the air. » 5/07/14 2:59pm 5/07/14 2:59pm

Here's a very handy rap delivered to a little girl, teaching her what she needs to do to make sure she takes care of her cast. » 4/16/14 11:20am 4/16/14 11:20am

Police in Arkansas have issued an arrest warrant for an OBGYN who they say took nude photographs of a woman during a medical exam without her consent. » 4/15/14 11:00pm 4/15/14 11:00pm

You know those "articles" that your barista and your old coworker's boyfriend and your weird Kansas cousin are always posting all over their Facebook feeds, revealing shocking and outlandish "secrets" that such-and-such establishment doesn't want you to know about? And they're always from "news" websites you've never… » 3/20/14 6:30pm 3/20/14 6:30pm

In the annals of Victorian medical history, few foes receive as much bile as the corset, which physicians claimed contributed to miscarriages, cancer, and slow, crushing deaths. But while there are some health problems that can be linked to corsets, they aren't nearly the instruments of medical terror that they're… » 3/17/14 3:38pm 3/17/14 3:38pm

The recent announcement by a British medical ethics board in favor of an experimental three-parent IVF treatment—wherein the genetic material from three donors, not the usual two, is used to create a fetus—and has once again stirred the pot of reproductive controversy. So where exactly is the line between prenatal… » 3/16/14 4:45pm 3/16/14 4:45pm

After a baby born last year with HIV was deemed potentially HIV-free, there was much cause for celebration. Now doctors are even more stoked because a second child born with HIV has been treated and found to have cleared the virus. » 3/06/14 10:00am 3/06/14 10:00am

Recently a group of midwives published a paper about birth outcomes for home births, which seemed to indicate home birth is as safe as hospital birth. A skeptic blog got a statistics professor to analyze the paper, and came up with very different results. Check them both out! » 2/26/14 3:09pm 2/26/14 3:09pm