Scientific background

A reader chooses here by where the science sits on the path from the healthy body to the population: how the body works, a disease area, how a condition is diagnosed or predicted, how it is treated, or the health of populations and the planet. Each is held as orientation to build on rather than as a substitute for a specialist text. What a study's numbers mean is in evidence and data, the documents the science ends up in are in areas of practice, and what sustainability asks of the writer's own practice is in sustainability in a writer's own practice.

• The body and how it works — human anatomy and physiology system by system, fertilization and early development, spaceflight, how cells signal and how substances move, the gut microbiome, and nutrition and exercise
• Disease areas — cancer, infection, immunity and allergy, metabolic and endocrine disease, and the cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological, mental health, women's health, pain and rare disease conditions
• Diagnosis, testing and prediction — what a diagnosis claims, pathology and laboratory medicine, surgical pathology and the tissue diagnosis, imaging techniques and what they show, ancestry DNA testing, and predictive health
• Treatment — how medicines act, developing a medicine, biotechnology and advanced therapies, lifestyle medicine, and anaesthesia and perioperative care
• Population and planetary health — health disparities and the social determinants of health, nature exposure and health, One Health and planetary health, and sustainability in healthcare