Medicine & Health

In Stem Cell Now, bioethics expert Christopher Thomas Scott explores the possibilities of what some consider the greatest discovery since nuclear fusion: the isolation of embryonic stem cells for research.

Surgeon and medical historian Ira Rutkow's new book is Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine. Rutkow is also the author of Surgery: An Illustrated History, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Investigative reporters Donald Barlett and James Steele's new book is Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business, and Bad Medicine. Bartlett and Steel have worked together for 30 years, winning two Pulitzer Prizes. They are currently editors-at-large at Time magazine

Dr. Rowan Gillies is the International President of Midecins Sans Frontihres (Doctors Without Borders). He is a medical doctor and surgeon from Sydney, Australia. Dr. Gilles began working with Doctors Without Borders in 1998 as a field doctor in Afghanistan. Since then he has worked with the organization in Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Liberia. He recently returned from Sudan.

Barry's new book is The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. In 1918, the influenza virus emerged, and in the next year killed millions of people. He writes "before that worldwide pandemic faded away in 1920, it would kill more people than any other outbreak of disease in human history." Scientists are still trying to figure out why the virus spread so rapidly and killed so efficiently. The story has relevance today as scientists believe we are due for another flu pandemic.

Groopman is author of The Anatomy of Hope. Groopman teaches at the Harvard Medical School and is chief of experimental medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. He also writes about medicine and biology for The New Yorker.

Pinksy co-hosts the syndicated sex advice talk show, Loveline. His new book, Cracked: Putting Broken Lives Together Again: A Doctor's Story, is about his work as medical director of an addiction rehab clinic in Southern California.

Dr. Jonathan Edlow is the author of the new book Bull's Eye: Unraveling the Medical Mystery of Lyme Disease. In the book he chronicles the emergence of the disease, how scattered clues led to the cause — bacterium Borelia burgdorferi, and then to the deer tick that spread it. The search for the cause began in the late 1970s when people around Lyme, Conn., began suffering from unexplained arthritis, swelling, circular rashes, fatigue and other symptoms.

Dr. Samuel Barondes is a professor and director of the Center for Neurobiology and Psychiatry at the University of California. He's also the author of the new book, Better than Prozac: Creating the Next Generation of Psychiatric Drugs. In the book he traces the history and analyzes the effectiveness of the current crop of antidepressants and considers the drugs of the future.

The United Nations Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa talks about the current state of the AIDS crisis there. He recently returned from a tour of Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia, where he was investigating links between hunger and AIDS. He is the former Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF and was the Canadian ambassador to the U.N. from 1984-1988.