Alice Park

Alice Park is a senior writer at TIME. Since 1993, she has reported on the breaking frontiers of health and medicine in articles covering issues such as AIDS, anxiety and Alzheimer's disease. Park has received two CASE media fellowships — the first in 2000 to Harvard Medical School, where she designed a program focused on the latest understanding of AIDS, and the second in 2003 to UCLA's Medical School, where she researched the growing number of clinical applications of genomic research. In addition, Park's work has been recognized with awards of excellence from the National Arthritis Foundation as well as the National Headache Foundation.

Articles from Contributor

TV and Video Games Lead to Attention Problems

Numerous studies have documented the negative effects of television exposure at a young age; TV viewing has been linked to behavioral and attention problems later in life. Now researchers confirm the same effect of video games on attention problems in both younger children and teens.

Studying two groups of students — a group of 1323 …

Can Your Neck Tell You If You’re Overweight?

As helpful as the body mass index is for telling you if you’re overweight or obese, doctors agree that it’s not perfect. Because it measures height and weight, researchers have noted that doesn’t take into account muscle, which can push the BMI of a fit but built individual into the above normal range.

How Parental Smoking Affects Kids

There’s plenty of data showing how harmful smoking can be, and that goes for both smokers and the people around them. Two studies published in Pediatrics point out how indirect the effects can be. A study of paternal smoking in Hong Kong finds that children whose fathers smoke are heavier at seven and 11 years old than their …

When to Stop Breastfeeding

There are many good reasons for new mothers to breastfeed their infants —studies have shown that babies digest mother’s milk better than formula, and that breast milk can build up babies’ immune systems and protect them from infection, leading to better health overall. Breast milk is full of antibodies and other agents that …

A Blood Test for Cancer?

Any cancer doctor will tell you that the earlier you pick up a tumor, the better your chances are of treating it and getting it under control.

So researchers at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago are announcing some welcome news on that front. Scientists at the biotechnology company Chronix …

Cold sores may contribute to schizophrenia symptoms

While schizophrenia is a complex psychiatric disorder that has its roots in genetic changes, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have uncovered a potentially new culprit for some of the condition’s most common symptoms.

Reporting in the journal Schizophrenia Research, the psychiatrists describe a connection between the herpes …

College students short on empathy

Students today seem to care more about things like the environment and animal welfare and poverty around the world, but how much empathy do they really have toward their fellow man?

Surprisingly, not that much, according to a survey by researchers at University of Michigan. In fact, today’s college students, the scientists found, …

Possible criminal investigation for Tylenol maker

Things just seem to be getting worse for Johnson & Johnson and one of its branches, McNeil Consumer Healthcare. After a routine inspection by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of a McNeil plant in Pennsylvania found serious lapses in quality control — including bacterial contamination and lack of proper evaluation of a …

CDC confirms effectiveness of HPV vaccine in men

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed its provisional recommendation from 2009 that the HPV vaccine (Gardasil) against human papillomavirus infection is both safe and effective in males in preventing genital warts.

The HPV vaccine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006 for use in …

How exercise works at the cellular level

We all know that exercise is good for us, but do we know why? How do those hours of sweating it out on a treadmill or pushing yourself in a weight training regimen actually help your cells and tissues to get healthier?

Two papers by separate groups may provide some intriguing answers. One team, led by researchers at the …

Shark cartilage no help against cancer

Despite the fact that sharks do not tend to get cancer, it turns out that their cartilage does not contain any magical cancer-fighting agent that could help patients battling the disease.

That’s the conclusion of the latest research from a government-funded study on the subject. Reporting in the Journal of the National Cancer

AAA survey: parents unsure of car seat requirements

A new survey released by AAA and Dorel Juvenile Group shows that while most parents acknowledge the importance of car seats in keeping their children safe, most don’t know how to use them properly. (Dorel is the leading manufacturer of child safety seats.)

The report, which includes data from 649 adults living with at least one …

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