Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most headlines, as do tales of patients whose identities are mixed up entirely.

There's no one place a virus goes to die - but that doesn't make its demise any less a public health victory. Throughout human history, viral diseases have had their way with us, and for just as long, we have hunted them down and done our best to wipe them out.

Photography is about freezing a moment in time; McGinley's is about freezing a stage in a lifetime.

A close family member once offered his opinion that I exhibit the phone manners of a goat, then promptly withdrew the charge - out of fairness to goats.

Kids whose puberty begins too soon face not just psychological risks, but physical ones too, with an increased likelihood of cancer, as well as skeletal changes that could prevent them from attaining their full adult height.

My family went through divorces and remarriages and the later, blended home - and then watched that home explode, too.

The vexing thing about human behavior is that when we say we know we should do something, we really and truly do know it. It's hard to be 50 lbs. overweight or smoke a pack a day or feel miserable every moment you spend at work and not understand in a deep and primal way that change is in order - and that in some cases it could even save your life.