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In today s hectic times, moms-to-be and their OBGYN s may not think twice about scheduling an artificially-induced early childbirth for the sake of convenience. But a new study by Utah-based Intermountain Healthcare is cautioning against the practice due to elevated health risks for neonates.

Dr. Elizabeth Whelan in Forbes, July 6, 2011
What's Really Causing Childhood Obesity?

Dr. Whelan in the National Review Online, July 5, 2011
Warnings That Don't Work

Josh Bloom, The New York Post June 24, 2011
America's Vanishing Science Jobs

Too many patients entering hospitals because of a heart attack may be leaving with anemia, a new study finds. The cause, it seems, is not vampires in the ICU, but an excess of blood drawn for laboratory tests.

It seems that clinicians need to learn not to judge the proverbial book solely by its cover. According to a new study published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, patients who are leaner than others are less likely to have their hypertension treated.

A new study published in the Journal of Toxicology lays to rest any claims about toxic pesticide residues that the Environmental Working Group (EWG) publicized with their annual Dirty Dozen list. This compilation of tainted fruits and vegetables would have everyone scared to touch the majority of produce in the average grocery store.

Last week we reported on findings from a study that showed soy had no beneficial effects on reducing menopausal symptoms. Research on other nonprescription alternatives such as flaxseed, black cohosh, red clover, and botanicals has also arrived at similarly disappointing conclusions. This is unfortunate, since so many women turn to these supplements out of a misplaced fear that treatment with hormone replacement therapy (HRT) will lead to an increased risk of heart attacks and breast cancer.

Drug shortages, as ACSH s Dr. Bloom explained in a recent op-ed, are a serious and growing problem in the U.S. As he points out, these shortages consist largely of pharmaceutical staples: saline solution, antibiotics, sedatives, epinephrine and morphine supplies found in every emergency room.

While the amount of money that tobacco companies spent on advertising and promotional expenditures fell by 18 percent between 2006 and 2008, nationwide advertising of smokeless tobacco products actually increased by 55 percent during the same time period, according to a new Federal Trade Commission report. In fact, more smokeless tobacco ads may be encouraging smokers to switch from cigarettes to smoke-free alternatives.

The media are suddenly abuzz with the latest on the putative health benefits of one of our favorite foods: a study just published in BMJ reports that chocolate may improve cardiovascular health.

A new study in the journal Menopause shows that the benefits of hormone replacement therapy aren t just hypothetical. Researchers at the University of Southern California found that the nearly 81,000 postmenopausal women who discontinued their hormone replacement therapy were at a much greater risk of a hip fracture due to lowered bone density, as compared to those who continued on the preventive regimen.

Speaking of smokers, ACSH would like to applaud famed actress Catherine Zeta-Jones for her recent efforts to quit smoking by using electronic cigarettes. According to OK magazine, she s been using this method of clean nicotine delivery for three months now. Our only hope is that more smokers are made aware of the potential benefits of using e-cigarettes to quit their habit of deadly cigarettes.

The widespread West Nile virus epidemic could have been easily prevented if more rigorous insecticide spraying had been implemented in the summer of 1999, when the virus was first detected in birds in the NY region, said ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross, in yesterday s Dispatch. But ACSH advisor Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, would like to clarify Dr.

Antioxidants are the panacea that has never quite panned out. Pom Wonderful (the pomegranate juice in the funny bottle), for instance, made its name with claims of its extraordinary antioxidant content. Tell people a product has antioxidants and many are eager to lap it up, eager for the benefits to their immune system, complexion, mental health, heart, joints, and just about everything else.

Nerve cells, or neurons, process and transmit information. Skin cells, by contrast, don t have that capacity. It s quite exciting, then, that researchers from Columbia University have discovered a way to transform skin cells into fully functioning neurons. This method, reported in the journal Cell, is also notable because it avoids the controversial use of embryonic stem cells.

States across the country are experiencing a marked decrease in their anti-smoking program budgets. In Massachusetts, for instance, funding for such initiatives dropped from $50.5 million in 2001 to $4.1 million in 2011 a decrease of more than 90 percent. Where has the rest of the money disappeared to?

Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology, writes biologist Nina V.

A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that doctors are screening women for cervical cancer far more frequently than guidelines recommend. In fact, 67 to 85 percent of six-hundred office-based doctors surveyed opted to screen their patients on a yearly basis instead of the recommended three years.

Pack-a-day smokers are increasingly rare in the average U.S. high school; however, a study just published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine has found that teenagers are more likely to be casual, or social, smokers.

In an effort to streamline drug development while saving time and costs, major pharmaceutical companies have joined and invested in the international Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), which in return provides drugmakers with open access to three-dimensional protein structures the initial building block of drug discovery.

For some women on hormone replacement therapy (HRT), the risk of severe asthma attacks may increase, according to a new study led by Dr. Klaus Bonnelykke from the Danish Paediatric Asthma Centre in Copenhagen. Presented Tuesday at the European Respiratory Society meeting in Amsterdam, the study analyzed data from over 23,000 women and found that, after accounting for factors such as smoking and body mass index, those using HRT were 30 percent more likely to be hospitalized for asthma.

A lengthy article in this week s New England Journal of Medicine catalogues a variety of approaches to helping smokers quit within the healthcare setting, including counseling, smoking cessation medications such as bupropion and varenicline, as well as conventional nicotine replacement modalities like gum, inhalers, and patches.

Patients suffering from kidney disease rely on dialysis in order to stay alive. Without functioning kidneys to remove the waste and fluids that accumulate in the body, the majority of the 400,000 Americans with this condition have their blood purified by a dialysis machine three days a week.

In 2009, nearly 37,500 people died from drug overdoses in the US. That number, writes Maia Szalavitz in The New York Times, could be significantly lowered if Naloxone (Narcan), a drug used to counter the effects of opiate overdose, were available over-the-counter and placed in every first aid kit.