Slime can be great, but when it's the wrong kind of slime (you know, the kind that can kill you?), it gets added to the list of things Hank wishes he didn't have to worry about. Scientists call it biofilm, and it's a type of bacterial...

Hank describes how our brains respond biochemically to various addictive substances and behaviors and where those responses have come from, evolutionarily speaking.

Learn how scientists are fighting cancer... with algae!

The path to better medicine is paved with accidental yet revolutionary discoveries. In this well-told tale of how science happens, neuroscientist Rebecca Brachman shares news of a serendipitous breakthrough treatment that may prevent...

We've harnessed electricity, sequenced the human genome, and eradicated smallpox. But after billions of dollars in research, we haven't found a solution for a disease that affects more than 14 million people and their families at any...

Ever wonder why we still haven't cured cancer? Join SciShow as we discuss what's wrong with that question and why it's so hard to find a cure.

How do sugar pills really interact with our bodies?

Some common life-saving medicines, such as insulin, are made of proteins so large and fragile that they need to be injected instead of ingested as pills. But a new generation of medicine -- made from smaller, more durable proteins known...

In 1928, scientist Alexander Fleming returned to his lab and found something unexpected: a colony of mold growing on a Petri dish he’d forgotten to place in his incubator. And around this colony of mold was a zone completely and...

You've seen it on your shampoo bottle, vitamins, and even your fancy moisturizing cream. But what does the phrase "clinically proven' actually mean?

In 1970, marijuana was classified as a schedule 1 drug in the United States: the strictest designation possible, meaning it was completely illegal and had no recognized medical uses. Today, marijuana's therapeutic benefits are widely...

More than a century after first emerging into the fogbound, gaslit streets of Victorian London, Sherlock Holmes is universally recognizable. And yet many of his most recognizable features don't appear in Arthur Conan Doyle's original...

Who names drugs? Why all the funny names? A number of months ago, we did an episode on how a drug comes to market with the help of out HCT intern, pharmD student Rachel Hoffman. She also helped us out with our episode on Flibanserin.

The impact of antibiotics on human health cannot be overstated. They are a big deal. And thanks to evolution, more and more bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Is there anything we can do? Yes. Let's talk about it.

Thanks, in part, to the generous support of the NIHCM, this month we are releasing four special episodes on Opioids. We hope you enjoy them. This week's episode:

One of the problems with the way we discuss health interventions is that we see them in black and white. Something is either good for you or bad for you. Things are rarely that simple, though. Moreover, there's "good for you" and "GOOD...

All drugs have to follow the same path to approval at the US Food and Drug Administration, except when they don't. Today, with the support of NIHCM, we're learning about the exceptions to the rules that can happen when drugs get...

Can we keep drug prices low without hurting innovation? Well, drugs are a lot cheaper in Europe than in the US, and there's still plenty of innovation over there. So what's going on? It's called reference pricing, and it's pretty much...

A recent study looked into ketamine, noted animal sedative and party depressant, as a short-term treatment for severe, emergency room level depression. While it can help people who are suffering from suicidal ideation, it is a short term...

For many, many years we've been hearing about gene therapy - the chance that we can get into people's DNA and fix it to resolve problems and fix disease. In a recent piece in Science, Stuart Orkin and Philip Reilly discuss what finally...

I'm a doctor. My father is a doctor. My colleagues are doctors, the people I train are doctors, lots and lots of my friends are doctors. But that doesn't meant that doctors sometimes aren't blind to certain issues like their own...

Last week, we discussed how to measure the utility value of different health states. These can be used as a proxy for quality in measuring how effective therapies are. How? That's the topic of this week's Healthcare triage.

The placebo effect extends to how expensive a treatment is. People tend to believe they get what they pay for when it comes to medicine, even placebos. And we talk about measles outbreaks. This is Healthcare Triage News.

Alzheimer’s is a devastating disease that affects millions of people in the US alone, so there was a lot of excitement about recent news headlines of a drug approved to treat the disease. However, the approval was met with an outcry from...