Science News

You know that psychedelics are making a comeback when the New York Times says so on page 1. In “Hallucinogens Have Doctors Tuning In,” John Tierney reports on how doctors at schools like Harvard, Johns Hopkins, UCLA and NYU are testing the potential of psilocybin and other hallucinogens for treating depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcoholism--and for inducing spiritual experiences. 

Health care workers are subject to the same human foibles as the rest of the population. But prejudice can get in the way of care, especially when it determines how a health professional decides to work with a patient. [More]

When Sen. David Vitter persuaded the EPA to agree to yet another review of its long-delayed assessment of the health risks of formaldehyde, he was praised by companies that use or manufacture a chemical found in everything from plywood to carpet. [More]

TORONTO--Like electrical wires, neurons are insulated. But in multiple sclerosis (MS), the insulation (called myelin) is stripped or worn down, slowing conduction along the axons--the wires of the nervous system. MS is widely considered to be an autoimmune disease , in which the myelin is attacked by the body’s own T cells. But Paulo Zamboni, director of the Vascular Diseases Center at the University of Ferrara in Italy, thinks a blockage in the veins that drain blood from the brain is the part of the problem. In his pilot study, published December 2009 in The Journal of Vascular Surgery , MS patients who had such blockages (called chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiencies) fixed surgically, including Zamboni's wife, showed a significant improvement.