Toby: The Natural Therapy Pet

Toby is one of God’s little creatures—a happy, vibrant, and friendly puppy. Loyal and affectionate, Toby has helped me   recover from my strokes   by relieving the tremendous stress with which I, a workaholic, have for so long lived.
I suffered three strokes in February and March 2006. I was chopping wood in my backyard in the bitter cold when blood clots formed in the left vertebral artery in the back of my neck. The clots led to two strokes, one in each left and right side of.......

Medibots: The world's smallest surgeons

Editorial: Getting to the heart of robotic surgery

Gallery: The sci-fi future of surgery

A MAN lies comatose on an operating table. The enormous spider that hangs above him has plunged four appendages into his belly. The spider, made of white steel, probes around inside the man's abdomen then withdraws one of its arms. Held in the machine's claw is a neatly sealed bag containing a scrap of bloody tissue.

This is a da Vinci robot. It has allowed a surgeon, sitting at a control desk, to remove the patient's prostate gland in a manner that has several advantages over conventional methods. Yet the future of robotic surgery may lie not only with these hulking beasts but also with devices at the other end of the size spectrum. The surgeons of tomorrow will include tiny robots that enter our bodies and do their work from the inside, with no need to open patients up or knock them out. While nanobots that swim through the blood are still in the realm of fantasy, several groups are developing devices a few millimetres in size. The first generation of "mini-medibots" may infiltrate our bodies through our ears, eyes and lungs, to deliver drugs, take tissue samples or install medical devices. Next...

A chat with Lynn Morris

This afternoon, I had a lovely chat with Lynn Morris and Marshall Wilborn. Longtime bluegrass fans are well familiar with Lynn’s many years as a performer, bandleader and friend to our music, and we all felt a great loss when she suffered a stroke in Match of 2003.....next........

Drugs Vivus, Analyst in Obesity Drug Side-Effect Spat

"We believe adverse events such as "disturbance in attention," "memory impairment," "amnesia," "aphasia" and "cognitive disorder" -- even if relatively rare -- will prove to be serious regulatory hurdles for a weight-loss drug. Therefore, we now have reduced conviction in the approvability of Qnexa, and partnering prospects also may be reduced," wrote Cowen analyst Ian Sanderson.