Animals in Medical Testing The use of animals in research has been key in the development of drugs and treatments, for human and animal illnesses. Vivisection, which is the practice of experimenting on animals, was first utilized by the ancient Greeks who cut the throat of a pig in order to un...

Most of us in this room have probably not suffered from a debilitating illness or a life-threatening disease. But maybe you know of someone who has. Has either of your parents or grandparents been diagnosed with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or some other illness? Has someone you know had surg...

In Typhoid Mary, Mary Mallon is isolated on North Brother Island from 1907 to 1910 and again from 1915 until she dies in 1938. Mary Mallon is striped of her civil liberties and is unwillingly quarantined to preserve public health. This brings about an interesting issue, an issue that is just as im...

If your pet dog Sparky became suddenly ill, would you begin to perform experiments on your uncle Waldo to try to find a cure? Probably not, that would be ridiculous. Finding a cure for a nonhuman disease in a human is completely illogical. Yet people across the world have been led to believe that e...

Ethnobotany is the study of how people of a particular culture and region make use of indigenous plants. Cultures have been using the environment around them for thousands of years. The use of plants were mentioned in the Code of Hammurabi in Babylon circa 1770 BC. The ancient Egyptians believed ...

A chronic illness is an illness that lasts for a long time or that last longer than acute illnesses, which are brief and do not linger. Chronic illnesses can be treated but usually not cured entirely. One author writes, "The term 'chronic illness' refers to those disease categories for which th...

Cuba and the Affects of the Embargo The island nation of Cuba, located just ninety miles off the coast of Florida, is home to 11 million people and has one of the few remaining communist regimes in the world. Cuba's leader, Fidel Castro, came to power in 1959 and immediately instituted a...