Stories by Katherine Harmon

The King of Pop's doctor, Conrad Murray, is on trial for involuntary manslaughter, but could propofol alone have caused MJ's death? Harvard anesthesiologist Beverly Philip explains what gives this drug such lethal potential

More than a third of U.S. health care employees were not vaccinated last flu season. Research shows that the unvaccinated staff have a decent chance of getting sick--and passing that infection on to at-risk patients

A new detailed picture of the biological consequences of the global weight problem, as visualized by the scientifically tuned illustrations of theVisualMD

New animations show how various strains of the flu travel across the U.S. to mingle in the major hog production centers in the Midwest, suggesting strategies to monitor for future pandemics

Predicting pandemics might still be impossible, but with millions of lives at stake, researchers are using the latest science and lessons from history to best prepare for the next big one

Our understanding of how people experience trauma--and how best to help them recover from it--has changed greatly in the past decade

What have we learned about the way children understand and process major events--even if they, themselves were not alive to have experienced them?

A look at how much the U.S. has spent through Homeland Security since 9/11 and what the government spends on preventing deaths through public health

The staff at Scientific American's New York City office felt the August 23 earthquake and quickly snapped some shots of the scene in Manhattan