The Year in Medicine 2008
In good times and bad, science doesn't sleep, and every year brings breakthroughs, setbacks, reasons for worry and reasons for joy. TIME's annual alphabetical roundup of a sampling of those stories gives you an overview of the year behind and a hint of what might be in the one ahead.
Cigarettes: Quitting Causes a Chain Reaction
Diseases are contagious, and so, it turns out, are behaviors like quitting smoking. Researchers at Harvard and the University of California at San Diego have found that a person in one part of a social network was 20% more likely to quit smoking if a person in another part of that network quit, even if they were several degrees removed from each other, or even — remarkably — if they didn't know each other at all. The person quitting influences others who eventually influence you.
View the full list for "The Year in Medicine 2008"Special Features:
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- The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting
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- East Antarctica, Long Stable, Is Now Losing Ice
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