Columbia University Press

Contested Illnesses and the Environmental Health MovementThe increase in environmentally induced diseases and the loosening of regulation and safety measures have inspired a massive challenge to established ways of looking at health and the environment. Communities with disease clusters, women facing a growing breast cancer incidence rate, and...

Reclaiming Biotechnology for the Common GoodPersonalized healthcareor what the award-winning author Donna Dickenson calls Me Medicineis radically transforming our longstanding, one-size-fits-all model. Technologies such as direct-to-consumer genetic testing, pharmacogenetics in cancer care, private umbilical cord blood banking, and neurocognitive...

How Drugs WorkWhy do smokers claim that the first cigarette of the day is the best? What is the biological basis behind some heavy drinkers' belief that the "e;hair-of-the-dog"e; method alleviates the effects of a hangover? Why does marijuana seem to affect ones problem-solving capacity? Intoxicating Minds is, in the author's words,...

Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a CureA London researcher was the first to assert that the combination measles-mumps-rubella vaccine known as MMR caused autism in children. Following this "e;discovery,"e; a handful of parents declared that a mercury-containing preservative in several vaccines was responsible for the disease....

How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It MattersGordon M. Shepherd, a leading neuroscientist at Yale University, embarks on an eye-opening trip through the human brain's "e;flavor system,"e; establishing the parameters of a new field: neurogastronomy. Challenging the belief that humans' sense of smell diminished as they made the...

The Science and Stories Behind the Next Generation of MedicinesAfter more than fifty years of blockbuster drug development, skeptics are beginning to fear we may be reaching the end of drug discovery to combat major diseases. In this engaging book, Brent Stockwell, a leading researcher in the exciting new science of chemical biology, describes this...