Laura Blue

Laura Blue is a senior contributing health writer for TIME.com. She first began writing for TIME's Canadian edition as an intern in 2004, and then spent four years as a staff reporter for the magazine's international editions, first in New York and later in London, before leaving to pursue a Ph.D. in demography at Princeton University. She is interested in evidence-based medicine, clinical trials and the effects of our day-to-day behaviors — think diet, exercise, smoking and stress — on health and longevity. She lives in Baltimore.

Articles from Contributor

Alcohol may increase risk for certain types of breast cancer

Alcohol is a known risk factor for breast cancer, but it may not be equally risky for all subtypes of the disease. In particular, according a new study released today by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, alcohol appears more important for “hormone-sensitive” breast cancers — with drinkers showing more pronounced risk of …

Top 5 Health Stories of the Weekend

From salmonella spread to vaccine delivery, science doesn’t wait for the work week. Here’s what you missed while you were away from the computer this weekend:

1) Egg recall grows. Fear of salmonella has prompted a massive product recall that now covers more than half a billion — yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’ — eggs across the U.S. …

Can Video Games Be Addictive?

A federal judge in Hawaii is allowing a man to sue the computer-game manufacturer NCsoft for negligence — with allegations that the plaintiff grew addicted to an online game and that it consumed his life for years, Wired.com reports.

In court documents, plaintiff Craig Smallwood claims he played the game Lineage II for over 20,000 …

Rated R For Smoking?

Cigarettes are finally becoming less common in the movies. But there’s still more big-screen smoke today than there was back in 1998, when tobacco companies were banned from paying for product placement, according to a new report today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That means that public-health …

The Secret to Fast-Acting Antidepressants

Scientists have uncovered the antidepressant mechanism behind ketamine — an anesthetic, a recreational dance-party drug, and, as it turns out, an unusually fast-acting mood booster. The scientists hope that their finding will lead to the development of other, new drugs that can help patients recover from depression faster.

Major …

A link between pesticides and attention disorders?

Prenatal exposure to pesticides may be delaying kids’ nervous-system development, leading to attention problems later in life, a new study finds.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley followed more than 300 California children and their mothers over several years. When the women were pregnant, the researchers took …

Why cancer biomarkers haven’t lived up their hype

It’s a frequent complaint that, despite all the money poured into cancer research in the last few decades, progress has only ever seemed incremental. But perhaps nowhere is this more apparent, at least in the last 10 years, than in the field of cancer screening — in the biological indicators or “biomarkers” that promise early detection …

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