Claudia Kalb

It's not as easy as popping Prozac, but it's definitely more fun: swimming with dolphins. But is it medicine? In a recent study published in the British Medical Journal, researchers found that patients with mild to moderate depression who splashed around with dolphins reported greater improvements in their symptoms than a control group who swam and snorkeled on their own in a coral reef.

Chris Neuner was doing his manly duty in the collection room at New York University's infertility clinic when the light bulb went on. The high-tech babymaking that he and his wife, Amy, were enduring--the sperm specimens, the hormone shots, the egg harvesting--wasn't only agonizing, it was pretty darn funny.

It's hard to hate baby pictures, especially your own, but Janna Bosshardt could never stand the ones that showed her as a toddler with a pacifier in her mouth.

Stem-cell scientists love a good challenge. Here's one: can you create embryonic-stem-cell lines without destroying healthy embryos? Two new reports, released online last weekend by the journal Nature, say yes.

Melissa Paske was 29 weeks pregnant with a girl when she asked her doctor for a second ultrasound. Her belly had been scanned at 24 weeks, and there was no medical reason to take additional images.

What's the problem?Boomers still think their bodies are indestructible. We've doubled our life span, but our frame is only engineered to last 40 years. We need to change our mind-sets, not wait for evolution to change our bodies.What should we do?Find your weak link and work safely around it.

Dorothy Green had always been an independent woman. A Cadillac-driving, mink-coat-wearing, Tiparillo-smoking woman. So it was especially hard on her family members when they realized that their spitfire matriarch, now 85 and suffering from dementia, could no longer care for herself.

Kim Barnett would do anything to help her dad. Already, she's changed careers. That move came after Barnett noticed her father, who has Parkinson's, drooling on an airplane in 2001.

It has been more than four decades since dr. judah Folkman presented his theory of angiogenesis--that tumors grow by recruiting blood vessels. The research is now moving from lab to clinic.

Danley Pearson left his job as a machinist in utter agony two decades ago. Sixteen-hour days of hauling and lifting submarine and airplane parts had battered Pearson's back.

For decades, health officials have been scrambling to stamp out polio around the world. Three years ago, Eckard Wimmer, a virologist at New York's Stony Brook University, figured out a way to bring it back.

The South Koreans have done it again. Last year Seoul National University's Woo Suk Hwang announced that his team had derived stem-cell lines from cloned human embryos for the first time.

SCIENTISTS ARE NOW LOOKING FOR THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF THE MYSTERIOUS DISORDER AS DESPERATE PARENTS HUNT FOR TREATMENTS THAT MAY IMPROVE THEIR CHILDREN'S LIVES

Remember that first milk mustache? Naomi Campbell, 1995. Followed by a herd of others--Kim Cattrall, Dr. Phil, Michael Phelps--all promoting the wholesome drink.

TV cameras brought the pounding waves and broken souls into our living rooms, but none could capture the next awful threat for Asia: a massive onslaught of infectious disease.

For three years, Jon Grover--skateboarder, snowboarder, surfer--has thought about getting health insurance. But his employer, a sporting-goods shop in California, doesn't offer it, and Grover, 27, already forks out about $1,300 a month in bills.

When California voted yes on a $3 billion fund for stem-cell research last month, patient activists across the country rejoiced. E-mails went flying: "They did it!

Sex isn't always fun. Just ask Jeffrey Deckham, who volunteered to have his brain scanned while he lay flat on his back inside an MRI machine watching erotic video clips.

IN THIS RAZOR-THIN ELECTION, THE ARCANE SUBJECT OF EMBRYONIC-STEM-CELL RESEARCH HAS RALLIED LAWMAKERS, SCIENTISTS, PATIENTS, CELEBRITIES--AND THE CANDIDATES. THE ISSUE MAY CAUSE SOME VOTERS TO SWING.

You'd think that Stuart Krasnow and Ben Silverman worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One gabs about nicotine addiction, the other touts the benefits of veggies and fiber; both bemoan the toxic American lifestyle.

If you think quantum dot nanocrystals, turbot larvae and microtubules sound like boring scientific mumbo jumbo, you haven't seen them under a microscope. They're brilliant, they're explosive, they're captivating canvases of colors, shapes and patterns.

At the age of 39, Janet Clarke discovered that she had a benign spinal tumor, which caused her unremitting back pain. Painkillers helped, but it wasn't until she took a meditation course in Lytham that Clarke discovered a powerful weapon inside her own body: her mind.

For decades, Dalia Isicoff has suffered the agony of rheumatoid arthritis--joint pain, spinal fusion, multiple hip surgeries. Painkillers dull the aches, but it wasn't until she took a course at the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Medicine that Isicoff discovered a powerful weapon inside her own body: her mind.

If its nickname, the "silent killer," isn't scary enough, the perils it can lead to surely are: kidney damage, heart disease and stroke. The culprit? High blood pressure.

How well are you warding off the wheezing? In a study published last week, University of Michigan researchers found that half the steps parents take to prevent a child's asthma attacks are ineffective or unproved.

When Anne Perlman, 50, needs to see her doctor at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) in California, she schedules her appointment online. Prescriptions zip through the ether from her physician to her pharmacy.

Sauntering into a coffee shop in Pasadena, Calif., Cassandra McCarthy--pink flip-flops, big smile--looks carefree. But McCarthy, 34, is worried: will she find a mate and have kids before her fertility plummets?

When she's not working as a naturalist leading tours through the Minnesota woods, Pat Rummenie takes care of her husband, Mike, 62, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's four years ago.

In a Philadelphia hotel, hundreds of twenty- and thirtysomething women sip coffee and swap e-mail addresses. They are a vibrant, confident, upbeat group. But here and there you glimpse a bald head or sunken eyes.

Stop rubbing your sore back for a minute and take a quick tour of Mother Nature's engineering masterpiece: the human spine. Pretend you are Alice, so tiny you can climb among the muscles, nerves, bones and ligaments that make up the very core of your body.