Health
Reporting and analysis about the innovation, trends, and business of medicine and health care
Flight for Your Life
When a few minutes matter, an EMS helicopter can make the difference between life and death.
Hazardous Duty
My father loved his job at a Gulf Coast oil refinery. In fact, he loved it to death.
Light My Fire
After struggling to give up smoking, I have come to a compromise: Never smoke more than one cigarette—at a time.
Can Kids On Drugs Be Saved?
Drug treatment seldom works: at many centers, greedy entrepreneurs prey on frightened parents and troubled kids. But one teenager’s parents decided to take one last, desperate step: they sent their son to the toughest program in Texas.
Medicine and Miracles
After learning that he had cancer, the author began a search for a cure that took him far beyond medical expertise.
Dying for a Heart
For Ted Segal of Waco, the problem wasn’t getting a heart transplant; it was finding a donor. The delay was killing him.
This Can’t Be Happening to Me
From the look on my doctor’s face, I knew the results of the biopsy. The lump in my breast was cancer.
The Coronary Bypass
In Texas, survivors of this life-and-death operation wear their scars like medals of honor.
Touch Me, Feel Me, Heal Me!
I was curious when I found that three of my friends had delved into the mysteries of psychic surgery. After three “bloody operations” of my own, I knew what it was all about. About $30 a minute.
Confessions of an Aging Pothead
I smoked marijuana all day every day for several years. It took me almost a year to quit—and now I wonder if I’ll ever get straight.
The Silver Lining
Age is a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
The Death Shift
The three-to-eleven evening shift, Bexar County Hospital, San Antonio: nurse Genene Jones was on duty in the pediatric intensive care unit, and for months babies kept having mysterious—sometimes fatal—emergencies. Why?
So You Don’t Like The Way You Look?
To a plastic surgeon, your face is just the beginning.
Extreme Unctuousness
Without embalming you can have a simple, inexpensive funeral. That’s just what Texas morticians don’t want.
The Cancer Belt
In the southeast corner of Texas, more people get cancer than anywhere else in the state. Why?
Passing On
In her darkest, final hours, a young mother turns to a new kind of medical care for help.
The Finish Line
As a doctor, Tony Seidenberg has become accustomed to death. Only this time it is different: he is the one who is dying.
The Baby Factory
At Houston’s Jefferson Davis Hospital, the wonders of modern medicine collide with the raw realities of birth, poverty, neglect and hope.
A Stitch in Time
A husband and wife decide sterilization is the best answer for birth control; the question is-who does it?
Super Medicine
At the Texas Medical Center the best hospitals, doctors, researchers, and medical technology anywhere in the world have combined to transform doctors from healers into superstars.
Old Folks at Home
We will all grow old; but, as Maurice Chevalier says, “That’s not so bad when you consider the alternative.”
The Agony and the Allergy
You don’t have to move to Arizona to cure your allergies, but you may have to get rid of your cat.
The Lifesavers
Every night at Ben Taub Hospital’s emergency room is a night of the living dead.
In the Bin
A schizophrenic’s own story of his tour through asylums from Bellevue to Texas.
A Matter of Life and Death
If you have to be critically injured in Texas, be sure to pick the right place.
Om, Om on the Range
Alpha waves, past lives, and other explorations of the subconscious.
Spinal Strategists
Vibrating vertebrae is not a disease; it is either a cure or not a cure. Our reporter turned her back to the whole subject.
Method Against Madness
What you eat affects the way you think; and what you think affects the way you eat.
Abortion in Texas
“I was raped. I guess it was my own fault in a way, but I was passed out when it happened. It was my first time and I didn’t even know what was happening. I still feel bad about that.“I knew I was pregnant and I just couldn’t tell my
Environmentalist, Heal Thyself
As long as you're cleaning up the environment, start with your own body.
Living Off the Fat of the Land
Shaping up and shelling out at Texas Health Spas.
Marcus Welby is an Establishment Quack!
The New Doctors refuse to take old medicine.