Thanks to scientists working under the auspices of the World Health Organization, you can be fairly sure your toothbrush won't give you cancer. Over four decades, a WHO research agency has assessed 989 substances and activities, ranging from arsenic to hair dressing. It found ...

When executive board members of the World Health Organization sat down for their annual meeting in Geneva in January, many powerful figures spoke forcefully of the need to reform the leading global authority on health and disease. "It's time to stop talking," Stewart Jessamine, New ...

Since he ditched Marlboro Lights five years ago, Daniel's fix is fruit-flavored nicotine gum that comes in neat, pop-out strips. He gets through 12 to 15 pieces a day and says he has "packets of the stuff" stashed all over. But he doesn't see ...

The thousands of Britons who take to their local green space each week for a mass 5 km parkrun can expect to reap health benefits well beyond losing 1 kg and lowering their blood pressure. Scientists who have studied the mass participation events, which from ...

Pampering leafcutter ants with fragrant rose petals and fresh oranges may seem an unlikely way to rescue modern medicine, but scientists at a lab in eastern England think it is well worth trying. As the world cries out for new antibiotics, researchers at the John ...

Jenneh became a nurse in Sierra Leone 15 years ago with the hope of saving lives in one of the world's poorest countries. Now she fears for her own after three of her colleagues died of Ebola. Health workers like Jenneh are on the front ...

In a north London laboratory one Saturday in September 2012, an email arrived from a team of virologists in the Netherlands that spooked even some of the world's most seasoned virus handlers. It contained details of a mysterious viral pathogen that had been found in ...