Yarumal in Colombia is famous for having thousands of cases of Alzheimer’s disease – now the origin has been traced to a single Spanish conquistador in the early 17th century

The belief that physical illness can be psychosomatic, or caused by the mind, has long been seductive, capturing the imagination of doctors and writers alike... By Angela Kennedy.

A sobering history lesson we should consider today.

More than a decade after its outbreak, the name “SARS” still incites memories of worldwide panic over a disease that, we thought at the time, couldn’t be stopped. Now, 13 years later, scientists have created a hybrid version of a virus that could be the world’s next pandemic, a “SARS 2.0.” The findings have brought up ethical questions about whether scientists should pursue “gain-of-function” research, or work that could increase the virulence of certain...

A plan to export eight chimps from a research center in Atlanta to a zoo in England is a first test of an endangered species listing that says that only actions that benefit chimpanzees as a species should be allowed. By James Gorman.

Lab-made coronavirus related to SARS can infect human cells. By Declan Butler.

Parents already put their children under intense pressure to compete in the world. Will gene editing make it worse? By Erik Parens.

The Tor Project's director accuses Carnegie Mellon of providing its Tor-breaking research in secret to the FBI in exchange for a payment of "at least $1 million." By Andy Greenberg.

Wealthier patients can afford to get on more organ transplant lists, giving them an advantage, a new study says. By Laura Beil.

For most patients, morcellation means less-invasive surgery. For others, it can be a death sentence. Alison Motluk investigates why two former Harvard doctors are trying to ban a procedure that left one of them riddled with cancer. By Alison Motluk.

The design for the first atomic bomb was frighteningly simple: One lump of a special kind of uranium, the projectile, was fired at a very high speed into another lump of that same rare uranium, the target... By Emily Strasser.

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve known having kids is not for me. At 25, I couldn’t be more certain about my decision to undergo sterilization. So why does every doctor, nurse and therapist in sight keep trying to convince me otherwise? By EP Wohlfart.

Marcia Angell reviews “The Nuremberg Code” issued by the Nuremberg tribunal in 1947, “The Declaration of Helsinki” issued by the World Medical Association in 1964 and revised most recently in 2013, and “The Ethics Police? The Struggle to Make Human Research Safe” by Robert L. Klitzman. First of two articles.

Over the past couple of months, the practice of ad blocking has received heightened ethical scrutiny. (1,2,3,4) If you’re unfamiliar with the term, “ad blocking” refers to software—usually web browser plug-ins, but increasingly mobile apps—that stop most ads from appearing when you use websites or apps that would otherwise show them. Arguments against ad blocking tend to focus on the potential economic harms. Because advertising is the dominant business model on the internet, if...

Doctors and patients say something must be done to stop Catalyst Pharmaceuticals (CPRX) from emulating the indefensible drug-pricing strategies of Valeant Pharm and Turing Pharma.

I recently taught a class about the evolution of the representation of sex throughout American Cinema. It started with silent film The Cheat and ended with Spike Jonze’s disembodied sex in Her. Along the way, I showed a number of films that had caused a lot of controversy when they were first released... By Rani Neutill.

An extra-muscular beagle has been created through genome engineering. Are we on our way to customizing the DNA of our pets?

For a sign language interpreter at a murder trial, the crowning achievement is utter neutrality. By Paul Auckland Best.

She told the family of a severely disabled man that she could help him to communicate with the outside world. The relationship that followed would lead to a criminal trial. By Daniel Engber.

A moral dilemma is better understood as a historical one.