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Understanding the Risks (and Rewards) of Pills and Pregnancy

Any pregnant woman who has ever cracked open a medicine cabinet is familiar with the warnings against using nearly every kind of medication, including those sold over the counter, from the moment of conception onward. Yet each year in the U.S., some 500,000 pregnant women battle psychiatric illness, cancer, autoimmune disease, influenza and other conditions that require treatment. Leaving aside for a moment the issue of whether the benefits of certain drugs outweigh the risks to the baby, what is the appropriate dosage for a mom-to-be?

The Limits of Empathy for Sonia Sotomayor

If you doubt that President Obama has changed American politics, consider that we are about to have the first Supreme Court confirmation hearing in almost a quarter-century that does not revolve, in one way or another, around Roe v.

A Drug to End Drug Addiction

What if science made a pill to protect us from addiction — keeping us from smoking cigarettes, getting fat or abusing drugs and alcohol? According to encouraging results from several lines of study, it seems that day may be closer than we thought. Researchers in labs around the world are now developing vaccines to inoculate people against dangerously addictive substances such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.

What’s Behind (and Ahead for) the Plunging Price of Oil

It doesn’t feel like it, but we got a raise this week. The plunging price of oil, which prompted OPEC to announce a 1.5 million barrel a day production cut, has put money in the pockets of recession-worried consumers

Rick Steves, Travel Guide

Rick Steves, perhaps America’s most accomplished European tourist, was looking for a cheap but charming steak place in the ancient Tuscan town of Montepulciano last month. Following a local lead, he ducked into an osteria he’d never noticed before: a vaulted medieval cellar jammed with locals sitting at a common table. A man worked an open fire at the back of the room.

Weight Guidelines Toughened for Obese Mothers-to-Be

The Institute of Medicine , the nation’s most influential medical advisory group, has updated its guidelines for weight gain during pregnancy for the first time since 1990. The revised recommendations, released May 28, which also include the first advice regarding exercise during pregnancy, reflect new data on prenatal health as well as several recent shifts in the obstetric landscape — pregnant women in the U.S. are now older, more likely to deliver multiple births and ethnically more diverse than they were 20 or 30 years ago.

The cultural contributors to suicide in Asia

More than nuclear bomb tests, the suicide of former South Korean president Roh Moo-Hyun has stunned the South Korean public. While the news has shocked the nation, perhaps the level of surprise at the method wasn’t as great.

Latinos rejoice in Sotomayor nomination

Cecilia Lopez, a student who is the first person from her family to go to college, sees something of herself in the first Hispanic woman to be nominated to the U.S.

Darwinian Struggle: A Poet Felled by Scandal

“I hope wounds will start to heal,” said Ruth Padel, blinking earnestly as flashbulbs popped. Her statement may not have contained the startlingly original imagery that propelled the poetess to prominence, but to her critics it represented a kind of poetry — poetic justice.

Sotomayor’s resume, record on notable cases

(CNN) — Here is a look at the resume and record of federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whom President Barack Obama has chosen as his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.