Health - Time.com

Days after a government task force rolled back its mammography screening recommendations, another influential group issued revised guidelines on Pap tests for young women

If the brouhaha over new mammogram guidelines has proved anything, it's that even modern medicine does not rely on statistics, scientific facts and clinical outcomes alone

Among the many reasons for the high preterm birth rate in the U.S.: lack of insurance, cigarette smoking and elective cesarean-section deliveries that are scheduled too early

An independent government panel this week abandoned its long-standing recommendation that healthy women over 40 get a breast-cancer screen once every year or two years

Two deaths in people receiving the H1N1 vaccine were reported in China, where an estimated 12 million have been inoculated so far

Twenty-five years after Baby Fae's death following the world's first animal-to-human infant heart transplant, TIME looks back at the history of the procedure

In the span of a week, the CDC's official tally of U.S. deaths from swine flu has tripled. But does that say anything about the severity of the disease?

Diet, exercise and genes aren't the only factors responsible for body weight, say researchers, who are discovering evidence of another component: the bacteria in your gut

New data from a long-term survey suggests that U.S. teens are no less active today than they were in 1991. Yet they've gotten increasingly heavier over the same period

The controversy over a video recently produced by the autism advocacy group Autism Speaks highlights the ongoing dissent that characterizes the autism community

Iowa public health officials reported on Wednesday the first confirmed case of H1N1 flu in a house pet: a cat

A new study of more than 1,000 cases of hospitalization due to H1N1, or swine flu, in California gives a clearer picture of who is apt to develop severe cases of the disease

Without general anesthesia, modern surgery and medical intervention would be crippled. But what do doctors really know about the long-term effects of these mysterious drugs?

A debate is heating up in the European Union over fatty acids. Should foodcompanies be required to differentiate on labels between omega-3s that comefrom fish and the slightly less-beneficial kind that come from plants?

Many consumers are feeling deceived now that SIGG has been outed for failing to tell the public that its bottles were not BPA-free, at least not the ones that were manufactured before August 2008

As Hong Kong and other port cities try to reduce dangerous ship emissions, more and more solar-powered ferries and container ships are getting ready to hit the high seas

The German government has ordered two different batches of swine flu vaccine -- one with fewer side effects for government officials and soldiers, another for everyone else. Not only are Germans irate, but they're also avoiding getting the jab

Despite our stable agrarian society and medical advances that help us live into old age, the effects of natural selection are still at work on the modern human species, researchers say

Have you seen your assistant surgeon? In too many cases these days, the second surgeon in the operating room is missing, due to lack of payment