Health

Follow PBS NewsHour’s complete coverage of Health and Medicine.

Doctors prescribed enough pain medication last year to partially numb every American adult around-the-clock for a month. So much of the stuff is now being handed out that lethal overdoses tripled in the past decade, according to a new…

Wormwood plants growing in China. Photo by Flickr user Novartis AG. A synthetic biology breakthrough, achieved at laboratories in northern California, could expand access to malaria treatment around the globe beginning in 2012. Scientists at the University of California,…

President Obama signs an Executive Order directing the Food and Drug Administration to take action to help prevent and reduce prescription drug shortages on Oct. 31, 2011. Photo by Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images. President Obama called for swift government action…

"It's not the end of the world," David Lefner told us, "but you can see it from here." That was our greeting as we stepped off our flight in Bethel, Alaska. It was our last stop before boarding the…

Each week the NewsHour's global health unit highlights what's new in the Twitterverse from the world of health and development. Follow us on Twitter at NewsHourGlobal. View the story "Twitter Round Up" on Storify]…