Thank you, modern medicine

Modern medicine often gets a bad rap, with people preferring to complain about its cost or bureaucracy, or put their faith in unproven ‘alternative’ treatments, but we should all take a moment to appreciate the massive contribution it has made to improving – and extending – our lives.

Life ends at forty

Loneliness, feeling older than your age and a negative attitude to ageing are all associated with early stages of frailty, even in people as young as 40, new research has revealed.

Delivering health care to children in need

Embedding nurse practitioners into specialist homeless services can help to improve healthcare access for vulnerable children.

The wait

The long wait for an initial treatment session for teenagers suffering from poor mental health could be undermining their prospects of recovery.

Australia’s ongoing COVID toll

COVID-19 is still killing Australians — and the full picture shows sobering numbers and a lack of action on some of the key lessons of the pandemic.

Smells like teen spirit

Teenagers don’t distinguish between adverts for alcoholic and alcohol-free drinks – which may be exactly what the drinks companies want.

High risks

Marijuana is now legal in many places, but is it safe? Two new studies add to mounting evidence that people who use cannabis are more likely to suffer a heart attack than people who do not use the drug, even among younger and otherwise healthy adults.

The future of personalised medicine

Genetic testing can significantly reduce adverse drug reactions and improve clinical outcomes by tailoring drug treatments to the individual, but implementing pharmacogenomics into the healthcare system remains a slow process.

Back to the drawing board

Walking upright – and sitting too much – wrecks our backs and despite a plethora of cures and treatments, none of them seem to work.

Who wants to live forever?

The endless quest to expand the human lifespan is both fascinating and fraught with moral peril.

Meet the anti-science conspiracy theorist in charge of U.S. public health

Robert F. Kennedy Jr – a man who doesn’t believe in science in general and vaccines in particular – has been confirmed as the Secretary of the US Health and Human Services Department

Delving into dementia

Dementia affects nearly 60 million people around the world, and air pollution is emerging as a major contributing factor to this global scourge.