Almost five years after SARS, a broad-ranging University of Ottawa study that asked front-line health workers about their ability to cope with large-scale health crises found that many still don’t feel prepared to respond.
And many have little confidence in the system’s ability to handle a public health emergency.
The study, to be released today, began about [...]

Thomas Mahoney came out of a seizure last December surrounded by paramedics ready to take him to the hospital by ambulance. Mindful of the cost, he asked his mom and girlfriend to drive him instead, slipping in and out of consciousness along the way.
Maybe it wasn’t the smartest option for a patient with epilepsy, but [...]

After two years of planning and a public investment of more than $60 million, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said on Monday that New York City was ready to equip doctors with computer software that can track patients’ medical records in order to provide better preventive care.
While not mentioning anyone by name, Mr. Bloomberg used his [...]

Victoria Grove wanted to find out if she was destined to develop the form of emphysema that ran in her family, but she did not want to ask her doctor for the DNA test that would tell her.
She worried that she might not be able to get health insurance, or even a job, if a [...]

How do you answer the question, “Can’t I get an American doctor?” When confronted with prejudiced patients, physicians may struggle to keep their emotions in check while treating those patients competently and with respect. Sometimes, it may be impossible to overcome a patient’s intolerance.
Response: From the time of Hippocrates’ Oath through today’s ethical principles adopted [...]

Google Inc. will begin storing the medical records of a few thousand people as it tests a long-awaited health service that’s likely to raise more concerns about the volume of sensitive information entrusted to the Internet search leader.The pilot project announced Thursday will involve 1,500 to 10,000 patients at the Cleveland Clinic who volunteered to [...]

In the complex, expensive and emotionally charged world of fertility treatment, doctors are sounding a call to arms to reverse the soaring rate of multiple births.  

The doctors are responding to an unintended consequence of the success of in vitro fertilization — that it is often too successful. Since 1980, when the technique became available [...]

As a former chairman of George W. Bush’s President’s Council on Bioethics, Leon Kass is well acquainted with controversy, and with the treacherous terrain at the nexus of science and politics. The council, tasked with advising the president on such hot-button issues as stem cell research and cloning, has sometimes been dismissed as a vehicle [...]

CRAIG VENTER recently announced that his research institute had synthesized the genome of a bacterium. Upon hearing this, observers across the world anxiously suggested that he was on the verge of “synthesizing life.”
But Venter has not done what most people mean by “synthesizing life.” It is true that he has helped to create a new [...]

Computer power will match the intelligence of human beings within the next 20 years because of the accelerating speed at which technology is advancing, according to a leading scientific “futurologist”.
There will be 32 times more technical progress during the next half century than there was in the entire 20th century, and one of the outcomes [...]