Health

Playing Doctor

Drug War!

How a small Houston biotech company and a giant California-based rival are battling over who developed what may be a revolutionary cure for asthma and allergies.

Not What the Doctor Ordered

How an old-fashioned Texas physician fought the takeover of modern medicine by heartless insurance companies—and lost.

Hunger Pains

Without constant care, victims of an obscure genetic disorder would eat themselves to death.

Tom Caskey

Tracking down deadly genes.

Loved to Death

Married for 32 years, my parents both died of AIDS, and we, their children, may never know why.

The Price of AIDS

After years of decay and death, a Houston neighborhood ravaged by the disease is learning to live with it—and surviving.

Love and Death on the Third Floor

She was the princess who wore Tiffany perfume. He was the middle-class guy who raced cars. But when they met on the cystic fibrosis wing of a Dallas hospital, romance bloomed.

Altered State

A year after a grand mal seizure left me convulsing on the floor, I’m still finding my way back into everyday life.

Running Rabid

Five years ago, rabies was rare in South Texas. Now nearly three hundred animals have died and the epidemic is not abating.

Essay: Myth-O-Maniacs

Twenty years ago, we were two-steppers. Now we’re twelve-steppers, thanks to a set of self-help gurus.

Last Rights

My son ended his life after three years of madness and unbearable depression. Who am I to say he did the wrong thing?

Heartless Behavior

Cardiologists Per and Peter Langsjoen sounded a warning.

Rescue Mission

The politics of trauma.

Flight for Your Life

When a few minutes matter, an EMS helicopter can make the difference between life and death.

Hazardous Duty

My father loved his job at a Gulf Coast oil refinery. In fact, he loved it to death.

Light My Fire

After struggling to give up smoking, I have come to a compromise: Never smoke more than one cigarette—at a time.

Calm After the Storm

Stormie Jones’s historic transplant gave her four and a half good years. But at what cost?

Arrival of the Fittest

Nice-guy bodybuilder Larry North has muscled his way into Dallas’ power circles.

The Ornish Treatment

His unconventional regimen—and his media savvy—have made him the latest of the Texas celebrity heart doctors.

Can Kids On Drugs Be Saved?

Drug treatment seldom works: at many centers, greedy entrepreneurs prey on frightened parents and troubled kids. But one teenager’s parents decided to take one last, desperate step: they sent their son to the toughest program in Texas.

The Codependency Conspiracy

Codependency leaders preach that we are the victims of a psychological plague. It remains to be seen whether they are selling us a valuable insight or merely a bill of goods.

Dad’s Last Home

It was the hardest decision I ever had to make. Had the time come to put my father in a nursing home?

Medicine and Miracles

After learning that he had cancer, the author began a search for a cure that took him far beyond medical expertise.

Dying for a Heart

For Ted Segal of Waco, the problem wasn’t getting a heart transplant; it was finding a donor. The delay was killing him.

This Can’t Be Happening to Me

From the look on my doctor’s face, I knew the results of the biopsy. The lump in my breast was cancer.

The Booming Business of AIDS

For some entrepreneurs, the dark cloud of AIDS has proved to have a silver lining

The Coronary Bypass

In Texas, survivors of this life-and-death operation wear their scars like medals of honor.

Touch Me, Feel Me, Heal Me!

I was curious when I found that three of my friends had delved into the mysteries of psychic surgery. After three “bloody operations” of my own, I knew what it was all about. About $30 a minute.

The Faulty Cure

Houston is famous for medical cures. But when British rock star Ronnie Lane came to town with a crippling disease and $1 million for research, all he got was crippling legal problems.

Confessions of an Aging Pothead

I smoked marijuana all day every day for several years. It took me almost a year to quit—and now I wonder if I’ll ever get straight.

Texas Primer: Cedar Fever

When cedars start to mate, Texans start to suffer.

The Silver Lining

Age is a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

Leaving the Bottle Behind

Like any disease, alcoholism has specific symptoms. Like many religions, drying-out programs require abstinence, blind faith, and confession.

My Life as a Drunk

It may be hard to believe that you can drink two fifths a day and not only function but function well. But I did it. For a while.

Why I Hate Lamaze

New parents, beware! The only thing I got out of my six Lamaze classes was permission to enter the delivery room with my wife.

All the Better to See You With, My Dear

Are eye surgeons miraculously changing the lives of folks with glasses as thick as Coke-bottle bottoms, or are they just making themselves rich ?

The Death Shift

The three-to-eleven evening shift, Bexar County Hospital, San Antonio: nurse Genene Jones was on duty in the pediatric intensive care unit, and for months babies kept having mysterious—sometimes fatal—emergencies. Why?

The Saint of Falfurrias

Supplicants in the Valley worship at the shrine of faith healer Don Pedrito Jaramillo, more powerful in death than he was in life.

So You Don’t Like The Way You Look?

To a plastic surgeon, your face is just the beginning.

Fangs

Now is the time to unlearn everything you’ve ever heard about snakebite.

Extreme Unctuousness

Without embalming you can have a simple, inexpensive funeral. That’s just what Texas morticians don’t want.

The Cancer Belt

In the southeast corner of Texas, more people get cancer than anywhere else in the state. Why?

Passing On

In her darkest, final hours, a young mother turns to a new kind of medical care for help.

Little Boy Lost

Being autistic nearly ruined Michael Shipley’s life, but his parents sent him to a state mental hospital. Then Michael’s life was ruined for good.

The Finish Line

As a doctor, Tony Seidenberg has become accustomed to death. Only this time it is different: he is the one who is dying.

The Crack-Up

You learn one clear and not so very grim lesson by looking death in the face.

Life Got You Down? Getting Nowhere? Wishing for Wealth? For Success? For Happiness?

My friend, you have come to the right place.

The Baby Factory

At Houston’s Jefferson Davis Hospital, the wonders of modern medicine collide with the raw realities of birth, poverty, neglect and hope.

Smokers Are People Too

You can always spot a smoker. He fiddles with matches, his shirt pocket bulges in a tiny rectangle, and fumes emerge from his mouth and nose. But what should we do about him?