Eyes on the Prize
The noble—and Nobel—efforts of a Houston pharmacology professor could someday help in the treatment of cancer.
The noble—and Nobel—efforts of a Houston pharmacology professor could someday help in the treatment of cancer.
By Jim Atkinson
Can Al Lipscomb survive both the ballot box and the jury box?
By Jim Atkinson
You can’t call it a Texas disease, but meningococcemia—a blood-borne form of meningitis—afflicts a fair number of the state’s children. And if the FDA will let him, a Dallas pediatrician thinks he can treat it.
By Jim Atkinson
If your family has a history of cancer, are you doomed? Even though many of his relatives—including his famous father—succumbed to the disease, Mickey Mantle, Jr., didn’t think so. Then he got sick.
By Jim Atkinson
If you had a blood transfusion before 1992 or have ever shared a needle, you could have hepatitis C. You may feel fine, but it could be killing you.
By Jim Atkinson
Even if you’re not, many Texans are: Sex Addicts Anonymous has 61 chapters across the state, tending to the tattered psyches of exhibitionists and other tormented souls.
By Jim Atkinson
An anxious, alcoholic, stressed, and depressed Dallasite. A suicidal San Antonian. For each, a seemingly visionary treatment.
By Jim Atkinson
Cash-poor PBS stations can’t seem to come up with innovative new ideas, so they ought to resurrect an innovative old one: Newsroom, the best local public- affairs program in Texas history.
By Jim Atkinson
Smoking out the truth.
By Jim Atkinson
Eating a peanut shouldn’t be a particularly memorable experience, but for Dallasite Mona Cain and countless other allergic Americans, it’s a matter of life and death.
By Jim Atkinson
Itchy eyes, sore throat, runny nose: It must be allergy season. But what causes allergies? How do you pick a doctor? And what’s the best treatment? An in-depth look at an affliction that’s nothing to sneeze at.
By Jim Atkinson
At the Texas Woman’s University Aphasia Center in Dallas, a promising new treatment is helping stroke victims learn to read, write, and speak again.
By Jim Atkinson
Today students at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas are expected to master more hard-core science than ever before. Yet after graduation, they’ll have to keep studying, and be counselors and business experts too. A hard look at the way we teach our doctors—and why it has had to change.
By Jim Atkinson
Now that the crack epidemic has leveled off and gang violence is down, urban Texas is being terrorized by a new type of criminal: the superpredator. He murders without motive, feels no remorse, and worst of all, seldom gets caught.
By Jim Atkinson
What could drive a suburban housewife to murder? The bizarre cases of Rowlett’s Darlie Routier and Fairview’s Candy Montgomery hint at the answer, and it may be closer to home than we’d like to think.
By Jim Atkinson
Vertigo isn’t just the stuff of Hitchcock thrillers—it’s a debilitating disease, as Dallas radio talk show host Kevin McCarthy found out the hard way.
By Jim Atkinson
“Michael Jackson’s disease” sounds like a punch line, but the pigment-robbing skin disorder is no joke. Just ask Dallas County commissioner John Wiley Price.
By Jim Atkinson
You might say Tarek Souryal is the most important Dallas Maverick: He doesn’t score or rebound, but he reconstructs million-dollar ankles and knees, and that makes him a real team player.
By Jim Atkinson
For reformers of the nations health-care system, ground zero may be Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital, where the crush of uninsured patients with non-urgent complaints is affecting everyone’s care.
By Jim Atkinson
Can a suburban Dallas house-wife who suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder ever overcome her fears? She doubts it.
By Jim Atkinson
Without constant care, victims of an obscure genetic disorder would eat themselves to death.
By Jim Atkinson
When Dallas sleep doctors cured Tommy Atkins’ snoring probelm, they probably saved his life.
By Jim Atkinson
When diesel fumes, power lines, and even his wedding ring made a Dallas man faint, he knew he had a big problem.
By Jim Atkinson
A Dallas clinic offers hope to pain patients, treating chronic suffering not as a symptom but as a disease itself.
By Jim Atkinson
With an early flu season and the emergence of deadly diseases this summer, our good health is under siege.
By Jim Atkinson
A year after a grand mal seizure left me convulsing on the floor, I’m still finding my way back into everyday life.
By Jim Atkinson
You probably think that the main reason to go to the Texas Rangers’ Florida training camp is to watch baseball. You’re probably wrong.
By Jim Atkinson
When crack comes to a neighborhood, it infiltrates, it corrupts, and it destroys—and there is nothing the cops can do about it.
By Jim Atkinson
Dallas lawyers Arlen Bynum and John Collins are personal friends and profession foes. They get a kick out of both roles.
By Jim Atkinson
Time-honored Texas rituals.
Time-honored Texas rituals by Paul Burka,
By Jim Atkinson, Al Reinert, Liz Carpenter and Alison Cook
A crusty, cranky, curmudgeonly species of bird is proliferating within our borders. And maybe that’s good.
By Jim Atkinson
Bail bonding is one Texas business that’s recession proof.
By Jim Atkinson
Dallas cracks the whip on weeds and litter.
By Jim Atkinson
The cure for San Antonio’s inner-city malaise may be worse than the disease.
By Jim Atkinson
Buckle up for your own safety—and save $35.
By Jim Atkinson
The Dallas movie board is antiquated and eccentric, like a wacky uncle.
By Jim Atkinson
The DA in El Paso may do a lot of things, but there’s one thing he doesn’t do—plea-bargain.
By Jim Atkinson
Look into the Houston sky—those helicopters are full of commuters who are having fun.
By Jim Atkinson
The Dallas Citizens Council has a new look, but it’s singing the same old tune.
By Jim Atkinson
A dog’s best friend?
By Jim Atkinson
You have to wonder if guys like San Antonio’s C. A. Stubbs aren’t the future of urban politics.
By Jim Atkinson
Darrell Royal’s supremely simple invention took Texas teams to the top and kept them there.
By Jim Atkinson
The maddest crowd in town? The incensed citizens at the Dallas Auto Pound who have to shell out for the privilege of reclaiming their towed vehicles.
By Jim Atkinson
A question of honor in San Antonio; Christian harmony in Dallas; a wage dispute in Houston.
By Jim Atkinson
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a developer with a million-dollar idea or a homeowner with a yen to remodel. You can’t bend any rule at all without approval from the Board of Adjustment.
By Jim Atkinson
Houston police chief Lee Brown is doing things right; crime is down, public approval is up.
By Jim Atkinson
Street barricading in Dallas.
By Jim Atkinson
When five-year-old Christi Meeks disappeared and the police couldn’t find her, her father turned to Bill Dear, one of the most controversial private detectives in Texas.
By Jim Atkinson
Selling crime self-help devices has become a booming business. But do any of these gadgets really make us safer?
By Jim Atkinson