Medicine & Health

Dr. Haider Warraich talks about advancements in treating and preventing heart failure, and explains how the understanding of healthy blood pressure and good cholesterol continues to evolve.

After a traumatic injury and multiple surgeries, medical bio-ethicist Travis Rieder was in great pain and prescribed opioids. It took him a month to wean himself off, with great difficulty. Now he is an advocate for opioid use reform, and he wants doctors to better understand how to prescribe and how to help their patients wean themselves off.

While caring for her mother, who had dementia, bioethicist Tia Powell began imagining a different way to approach the disease. Her new book looks at long-term care options and end-of-life decisions.

Anne Harrington chronicles the search for a biological understanding of mental illness. She believes the revolution in medication has left behind a legacy of over-diagnosis and over-medication.

Vox reporter Sarah Kliff spent over a year reading thousands of ER bills and investigating the reasons behind the costs, including hidden fees, overpriced supplies and out-of-network doctors.

How America's jails and prisons have become America's defacto mental health providers. Journalist Alisa Roth is the author of the new book 'Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness.'

Maya Dusenbery writes about gender bias in the medical system in her new book 'Doing Harm.' She is also the executive editor of Feministing, a website of writing by young feminists about social, cultural and political issues.

Lauren Slater is a journalist, practicing psychologist and a patient of psychotropic drugs - drugs that alter brain chemistry to treat problems like mood disorders and anxiety. She'll talk about her personal and professional experience with these drugs.

British neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli details new research into how Alzheimer's attacks the brain, and how scientists are trying to find ways of treating this disease in his new book 'In Pursuit of Memory.'