For centuries, man has searched for miracle cures to end suffering caused by disease and injury. Many researchers believe nanotechnology applications in medicine may be mankind’s first ‘giant step’ toward this goal. According to Freitas nanomedicine is:

The comprehensive monitoring, control, construction, repair, defense, and improvement of all human biological systems, working from the molecular level, [...]

France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday.

The voice was commanding, slightly disdainful and officious. “The legal issues in the United States are complicated, having to do with that the surrogate mother still has legal rights to that child until they sign over their parental rights at the time of the delivery. Of course, and there’s the factor of costs. For some [...]

They’re paralyzed from diving accidents and car crashes, disabled by Parkinson’s, or blind. With few options available at home in America, they search the Internet for experimental treatments — and often land on Web sites promoting stem cell treatments in China.
They mortgage their houses and their hometowns hold fundraisers as they scrape together the tens [...]

The damage that the human body can survive these days is as awesome as it is horrible: crushing, burning, bombing, a burst blood vessel in the brain, a ruptured colon, a massive heart attack, rampaging infection. These conditions had once been uniformly fatal. Now survival is commonplace, and a large part of the credit goes [...]

In Britain, there’s growing support for a controversial government proposal to use electronic tags to track people with dementia. It’s meant to help hospitals keep tabs on dementia patients. But critics warn the program will see technology replace genuine care. (BRENDAN TREMBATH)
There are about 700,000 people in the UK with dementia. Sixty per cent feel [...]

Biggest real reason for freaking out: Anyone remember pandemic flu? This is the nasty strain of flu that is carried by birds, but once in awhile jumps to other species, including us. For awhile the U.S. media and government were all aflutter over the possibility of an avian flu pandemic as a small number of [...]

Unfortunately, 2007 was not a great year for health care in the United States. Every time we seemed to be making a little progress, bad news came rolling in. The fact is that it’s hard to improve a health care system that is designed first, and foremost, to make profits. After all, legally a corporation’s [...]

An “ethics consult” is a service, which can be requested by a patient, family member or member of the medical team to discuss conflicts of values, uncertainty about what is the “right” thing to do, and issues like whether to stop life support.
Many patients don’t know that ethics consults even exist, much less that they [...]