The Top 13 Medicine Stories of 2006 CLICK FOR MORE: "Every year, like clockwork, DISCOVER digs through reams of newspapers and gigabytes of Web sites to find the 100 most important and interesting science stories of the year. We're unveiling the top stories from 2006 over the next couple of weeks, one subject at a time. Here's the whole list (only subscribers get access to the whole special package immediately).

Tissue Engineering Triumph: Lab-Grown Bladders
Artificial bladders can be grown from a patient's own cells and successfully implanted...

Fast-Food Fats Prove Health Hazard
Small daily amounts of trans fats cause weight gain, atherosclerosis, and insulin resistance...

Drugs Aim to Silence Bad Genes
RNA interference helped launch an entirely new class of drugs into trials...

World Trade Center Fallout Fails Health Test
A report revealed widespread, persistent respiratory illness among rescue and recovery workers...

Mouse Breast Grown in Lab
To make a breast, all you need is a single cell...

Bird Flu Risk Explained
The deep infection makes it difficult to spread the avian flu virus...

First Face Transplant
Attaching the nose, chin, cheeks, and lips of a 46-year-old brain-dead woman...

New HIV Drugs
Three new categories of anti-HIV drugs are in the pipeline...

British Clinical Drug Trial Goes Spectacularly Awry
Six of the test subjects wound up with massive organ failure...

Stem Cells Reverse Parkinson's in Rats
Embryonic stem cells helped rats suffering from Parkinson's-like symptoms...

Power of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms Revealed
People who tripped ranked the experience as one of the most meaningful in their life...

Low-Fat Diet A Bust?
Cutting fat from the diet doesn't significantly reduce the incidence of breast or colorectal cancer, heart disease, or stroke...

Fat Vaccine Works in Rats
In August, immunologist Kim Janda grabbed headlines with reports of a vaccine against obesity...
Tissue Engineering Triumph: Lab-Grown Bladders

On April 15, the British medical journal The Lancet carried a landmark article showing that it is now possible to engineer a complex organ to replace one ravaged by disease. Anthony Atala, a surgeon and director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, reported that artificial bladders can be grown in the lab from a patient's own cells and successfully implanted. Over the past six years, seven children have received the organs, which are functioning well..."