Like Oliver Sachs, I eagerly look forward to the weekly arrival of the next issue of the journal Nature. Last week a piece written by Paul Nurse caught my eye. He quoted his

Sometimes, a rare disease can teach us a lot about treating more common diseases. Such is the case for a disease called transthyretin amyloidosis, which in its autosomal dominantly transmitted form, is rare

For most of us who have been sweltering in Ontario’s summer heat wave, the latest surge in infections in Israel seems too far away to worry. But Israel may be the canary in the mine

Unlike simple cells such as archaea and bacteria, viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 (which causes COVID) are unable to make copies of themselves without host cells to exploit. Like most viruses, SARS-CoV-2 is a

No one knows when storytelling began but it would have required symbolic thought and language and the cognitive ability to imagine and literally “talk about” the past, present and future. Modern humans were probably not

At the most basic level, this pandemic has always been about a battle between hordes of mutating viruses and billions of human hosts, with no clear victor or end as yet in sight.

When I was a medical student, the dean of Medicine at Western University presented the history of a young man who had a malignant melanoma with metastases to his liver (based on a laparoscopic

For much of human history, the Earth was firmly planted at the centre of the known universe – a reasonable assertion given that the sun regularly rose in the east and set in

About 100,000 years ago, 36 stocky people walked along a beach in southern Spain leaving footprints behind in the sand which later fossilized. Most were made by adults and a few by children

For most healthy, middle-aged and especially younger people, infection with COVID-19 has been a non-event – a positive PCR test with few, if any symptoms to show for the infection. But for older folk

A week ago. the Sunday New York Times was in full celebration mode, festooned with plenty of photos of packed indoor and outdoor activities, open restaurants, bars and theatres, admittedly with some residual distancing and

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved aducanumab to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Like other similar drugs, it was designed to rid the brains of Alzheimer's patients of buildups of amyloid and, more importantly, slow the progression of

Every airplane I’ve flown had a magnetic compass located in plain view well above the panel. With it, I could determine my magnetic heading should vacuum-driven devices such as the directional gyro or horizontal

During this pandemic we witnessed selfless behaviour by thousands of health care workers around the globe, who at great risk to themselves, struggled daily to save lives in a battle with a virus,

The story of human origins is very much a work in progress, mostly for want of fossils and artifacts to fill in remaining gaps in the record. But as matters stand, the story

Dr. William Brown is a professor of neurology at McMaster University and co-founder of the Infohealth series at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library.  ________________________________________ We learned last week that much of the brain is

Dr. William Brown is a professor of neurology at McMaster University and co-founder of the Infohealth series at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library. ____________ Toward the end of his BBC series “The Ascent of Man,” Jacob Bronowski

Our brain is enormously complex and capable of great feats of imagination, creation, ingenuity and understanding the world around us. Yet our brains can be mysteriously opaque about how they go about much