The tall woman with dyed reddish blond hair coughed loudly without covering her mouth. The shorter woman with a slicked-back bun wasn't happy about it. They were riding the southbound D train near Rockefeller Center during morning rush hour in New York City this week. A single cough quickly turned...

As the nurse poked the needle into my son's thigh, I expected to feel some kind of fear or worry. After all, I had heard alarm bells about the new swine flu vaccine. Supposedly, it hasn't been properly tested. It doesn't really work. It contains mercury. And there's a video...

The sole survivor of Yemenia Flight 626 could barely swim and didn't have a life jacket. When Bahia Bakari's airplane crashed into the stormy Indian Ocean this week, killing 152 other passengers and crew, the 12-year-old girl suddenly found herself in the watery darkness. She could hear the voices of...

Every twenty seconds, a heart attack strikes someone in America, killing five hundred thousand a year. That's fifty-seven deaths every hour, almost one per minute. In the United States and many nations, it's the leading cause of death among adults over age forty.

The most lethal kind of heart...

On May 7th, Hannah Powell-Auslam of La Mirada, Calif. had a mastectomy to remove her left breast, the kind of surgery that takes place around 137 times per day in the US. Some 185,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and around 50,000 will have mastectomies. But...

I just flew on a regional jet from Los Angeles to Monterey, California. After watching the National Transportation Safety Board hearings in Washington this week investigating the crash of the Continental commuter plane near Buffalo, I confess that I was very focused on the pilots and the airplane.

When I...

Earlier this week, three-year-old Joshua Childers wandered away from his home in southeast Missouri wearing only a T-shirt, sneakers and a pull-up diaper. After intensive searching for more than 52 agonizing hours, the 35-pound toddler was found alive three miles from his home in the wet, chilly and rough terrain...

Long before you'll ever come down with swine flu, you'll be exposed to another kind of virus sweeping the world: A global outbreak of online scams and swindles preying on your fears of the so-called aporkalypse. In coming days when you receive emails offering a variety of ways to ward...

In this 76th hour of the swine flu emergency, President Obama urges that we take "the utmost precautions." And the World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the pandemic flu alert level to 5 out of 6, warning that this international outbreak will pose a prolonged threat.

What do "utmost precautions"...

1. Is History Repeating Itself?

The word pandemic comes from Greek roots meaning "all the people." Not surprisingly, the first known medical reporter to file a story about a flu epidemic was Hippocrates around 412 BC. For centuries, flu disasters have struck just as naturally and inevitably...

A single sneeze propels 100,000 droplets into the air at around 90 mph, landing on door knobs, ATM keypads, elevator buttons, escalator railings, and grocery cart handles. In a subway station at rush hour, according to British researchers, as many as 10 percent of all commuters can come in contact...

According to The New York Times, the idea for the aggressive interrogation techniques used by the CIA on terrorism suspects came from a military training program known as SERE, an abbreviation for "Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape." The Times reports the SERE program was "created decades earlier to give...

Nine million Jews lived in Europe in 1939 as World War II erupted. By 1945, six million had been slaughtered. In the most basic arithmetic, three million European Jews managed to escape the Nazi Final Solution. They fled. They hid. They resisted. The survival rate varied greatly from nation to...

With three perfect sniper shots, Navy SEALs saved Capt. Richard Phillips, the 53-year-old hostage being held by Somali pirates for $2 million in ransom.

"I share the country's admiration for the bravery of Captain Phillips and his selfless concern for his crew," President Obama said in a White House statement....

The massacre in Binghamton boggles the mind and breaks the heart. The sadness is only matched by the lunacy of the rampage. What happened inside the American Civic Association is also a reminder that in the most terrifying and tragic situations, ordinary people are capable of the most extraordinary things.

In El Dorado, Kansas earlier this month, a 15-year-old girl on her way home from high school lost control of her Honda Accord and crashed into a drainage ditch. Bayleigh Stovall hydroplaned on pooled water that had collected on Main Street during a downpour. Bayleigh managed to call a friend...

Natasha Richardson's death is a shock and tragedy for so many reasons. The 45-year-old actress was taking a private lesson on a beginner's run in Mont Tremblant, Canada. When she fell at the bottom of the trail, everything seemed okay. She didn't hit anyone or anything. She wasn't wearing a...

Four men set off from Florida's Gulf Coast on a weekend fishing trip. Anchored 70 miles from land, their 21-foot boat flips over in 15-foot seas and 30-mph winds. But these aren't your usual fishermen. Two of the boaters play in the NFL; the other two are former college players....

The news came this morning on Don Imus's radio show: the controversial and cantankerous radio personality has stage II prostate cancer. Immediately, friends and supporters invoked the common and combative language of survival. "Don is well-prepared to fight this," his spokesman Matthew Hiltzik said.

"The prognosis couldn't be better," Imus...

Today is Friday the 13th. It's okay to admit this date gives you a twinge of anxiety. Bad things happen on Friday the 13th, right? As many as 21 million Americans will change their behavior today because of superstition. They won't go to the mall. They won't set foot on...