Paul Harasim

It had been a staple of medical journals and long covered in the health pages of newspapers: If a woman has either a defective BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, prophylactic surgery can decrease the average 65 percent risk of developing breast cancer to about 5 percent.

Six years ago, as a result of a hepatitis outbreak at his clinics that caused more than 50,000 people to get tested for hepatitis and HIV, Dr. Dipak Desai was forced to give up his medical license.

A man named Carl Chamberlain left me an unsettling voice mail last week.

If Thelma French lived in Michigan instead of Las Vegas, chances are good she’d be facing five years in prison and a $50,000 fine for what she laughingly calls “renting my uterus.”

You don’t have to be a psychologist to understand that there’s a good bit of emotional turmoil accompanying a decision by a cancer patient on whether to participate in the first in-human trial of an anti-cancer drug.

If you get into a shootout with a thug who’s already shot five other people, Fred Bedient learned it’s best to pump your first bullet into your attacker’s head to avoid getting hit yourself.

Connie Pope knows firsthand it’s not easy to ride on the back of a motorcycle when you’re about to give birth.

It’s a simple way to keep people healthier while also saving billions of dollars a year in health care spending.

Rosemary Rathbun and Lorrine Rodgers, grandmothers who were on death’s doorstep before they took part in the first in-human trial of a new antibody drug, told me they wanted to share their stories so other cancer patients would avail themselves of clinical studies that might save their lives.