Like most competitive athletes, in-line speed-skater Corey Gahan hoped fierce determination and hard training would give him the edge he needed to fulfill his dream of becoming the best in his sport. But unlike most competitive athletes, Corey Gahan’s father insisted on supplying that winning edge, regularly injecting his son with steroids and human growth hormone, the same illegal substances at the heart of the ongoing major league baseball scandal.... Read full article

If your doctor was a convicted killer, would you trust him with your life?

Karl Svensson’s future as a doctor seemed certain when he was accepted to medical school at Sweden’s prestigious Karolinska Institute. Famed for choosing the annual winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine, Karolinska hand-picked its medical students, selecting an elite group best suited for grappling with the ethics of life-or-death decisions and leading lives devoted to saving others. But four months into Svensson’s studies, the 31 year-old’s future became unhinged by his past: would-be doctor Karl Svensson had killed a man.... Read full article

The golden hour strikes without warning.

The golden hour is the critical 60 minutes from the moment a life-threatening injury occurs to when the human body—if left untreated—starts shutting down on a trajectory toward death. Paramedics and other emergency responders encounter it as a matter of course.... Read full article

By the time British singer Amy Winehouse received five Grammy Awards for “Rehab”—her autobiographical ode to dodging detox—the song had become Hollywood’s newest soundtrack. In the week before Rehab was named record of the year and song of the year, news reports noted that the actresses Eva Mendes, Kirsten Dunst, and Sean Young had all entered rehab, and that Pat O’Brien—host of a tabloid TV show that routinely reports on the rehab struggles of others— was suddenly in rehab himself. All of which prompted one culture-chronicling website to ask: Is rehab the new black?... Read full article

Generations of Americans learned the three R’s in the classroom, while the fourth R—recess—was a stage for life lessons and conflict resolution.

But traditional recess—where kids run around and play kickball, soccer, tag and other games of physical contact—is increasingly being banned across the country by school officials, and not for reasons of injury or litigation. The period of child’s play, they say, has become too competitive and too ego-bruising.... Read full article

When a book called Deceptively Delicious was recently published, it prompted a double-barreled debate about ethics—those of its author and that of its premise. “Deceptively Delicious” is a cookbook.... Read full article