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Since 1994, new and expecting parents have been told to put their babies Back to Sleep. This pithy public health campaign, which emphasized that the safest way to put babies to bed is on their backs, has helped reduce the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) by over 50 percent in 10 years. But now this salutary decline in mortality rate has plateaued, according to Dr. Henry Krous, director of Pathology Research at Rady Children s Hospital in San Diego and author of a recent study on SIDS.

A pharmacologist's research has linked kidney failure and cancer to an ancient and still inexplicably popular herbal supplement, Aristolochia, commonly sold as birthwort. And while Dr.

Paging all doctors: A new set of guidelines, devised by a team of nine specialists plucked from eight separate medical specialty boards, recommends that physicians less frequently perform certain common procedures and prescribe some expensive medicines less often; it also advises patients to question the necessity of some of the tests they are offered.

Here s another instance where the headlines may be true, but the impact on most women will be next to nothing. Study finds some early breast cancer overdiagnosed, reads a recent AP headline. It refers to a new study from Norway that estimates that 15 to 25 percent of breast cancers detected by mammograms would not have caused any problems during a woman s lifetime if left alone.

Should patients be able to choose which form of colorectal cancer screening they receive? Researchers who have published a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggest that they should: According to their study, providing patients with a choice between testing options increases the likelihood that they will follow through with screening.

As part of a legal settlement with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the FDA must decide by tomorrow whether it will ban the widely used chemical bisphenol A (BPA). The agency s decision will determine if the chemical used to make polycarbonate plastic can remain in food packaging.

People who drink diet sodas may think that skipping the extra calories from regular sodas gives them leeway to eat some extra dessert or a big steak dinner. Not so, says a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. People who drink diet sodas but eat a less healthful overall diet are more likely to develop metabolic syndrome, researchers find.

A surprising number of women overestimate the effectiveness of widely-used forms of contraception, according to a new study from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

If you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, or if you just consume a large variety of such products, you may have a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, according to the results of a new study published in the journalDiabetes Care.

Over a quarter of New York City s residents under the age of 18 fall below the poverty line, and many of these children fail to maintain adequate nutrition. So when the city s health department began providing children in some schools with free in-classroom breakfasts, the program was warmly welcomed.

Today marks the fifth anniversary of World Malaria Day an initiative started by the World Health Organization (WHO) to call attention to a global goal of ending malaria deaths by 2015. Nearly half of the world s population is at risk of contracting malaria, a parasitic disease transmitted by certain mosquitoes.

Folic acid protects against neural tube defects (birth defects that can be devastating, the most common of which is spina bifida) in developing fetuses which is why women of childbearing age are advised to consume 400 micrograms of the vitamin daily. And in order to ensure that women who are or who might become pregnant are getting enough folic acid in their diets, the FDA mandated in 1998 that certain grain products, including corn meal, wheat flour, rice, macaroni, and bread, be fortified with the vitamin.

Over the course of the last decade, treating breast cancer with brachytherapy has become an increasingly common alternative to mastectomy and external radiation. This method, which involves placing a tiny radiation pellet inside the breast and adjacent to the cancer, irradiates less breast tissue and typically allows for a much shorter course of therapy.

Bike sharing programs, which are gaining widespread popularity, provide users with free or affordable access to bicycles for short-distance trips as an alternative to motorized public transportation and private vehicles. The goal is to reduce traffic congestion and noise. Sounds like a great idea, right? It did to us, until we learned that 80 percent of these riders don t use a helmet, according to a new study.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are an enduring problem on a global scale, as we often have the occasion to report. Addressing the conditions that are conducive to such resistant bacteria is one important tack to combat this problem: For instance, poverty, crowding, and poor sanitation in developing countries favor the spread of germs, and having cheap antibiotics available without a prescription encourages bacterial resistance. Furthermore, in all countries, over-use or taking an inadequate course of these medications also encourages resistance.

Recent data has indicated that, despite ongoing claims that obesity is skyrocketing in the U.S., it s prevalence has actually been fairly constant for most of the past decade.

Women taking antidepressants who become pregnant are faced with a difficult choice: Should they continue their treatment, which may pose risks to the unborn child, or should they stop taking the medication and risk their own mental health, as well as the health of their newborn?

New Yorkers accustomed to making their own beverage choices may soon have to cede further control to the iron fist of Mayor Bloomberg: The King Mayor has proposed a new city-wide ban on larger servings of sodas and other sugary drinks. Though it s no surprise that the Mayor, in conjunction with Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley, is targeting soda yet again, the latest measure is his most extreme by far.

Tomorrow is World No Tobacco Day, a day to bring attention to the toll of tobacco use on the world s population. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) tobacco use is responsible for 6 million deaths around the globe each year, and if current trends continue, this number may rise to 8 million by 2030, the majority of which will occur in low- to middle-income countries.

After ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom was inspired to coin the phrase Wheel of Extortion just last week, in reference to Syngenta s disappointing class-action settlement in a suit against its herbicide atrazine, we have, unfortunately, come across another example to add to the wheel.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has added all baby boomers to the list of people who should receive screening for hepatitis C, which formerly included mainly those who had injected illegal drugs, are HIV-positive, or who received a blood transfusion or organ transplant before July 1992. Hepatitis C is curable, but since most people who are infected don t know they have it, widespread screening for those at risk could save lives, according to the CDC.

Just last week, we observed that ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom is about as qualified to write about Ming Dynasty ceramics as The New York Times Nicholas Kristof is to explain the nuances of chemistry which is to say, not at all.

Dr. Ross heads off to Williamsburg, Va on Sunday, where a conference called Evidence-Based Science and Regulation of the Tobacco Industry is being held. While there, Dr. Ross will moderate two different panels, one titled Tobacco Harm Reduction and Medical-Ethical Issues, and the other called The Swedish Experience, which will discuss the role Swedish snus has played in lowering the rate of smoking-related diseases in that country.

Times have changed since the days when alcoholism was regarded as a failure of will. Thanks to advances in science and medicine, however, alcohol addiction is now recognized as a biologically-based chronic disease requiring long-term management, not unlike diabetes or hypertension. And it's this recognition that has led to recent efforts to develop effective therapies that can assist with the long-term management of this disease.

Thanks to continued advances in HIV treatment, patients who previously had to take 20 or more pills a day can now control their infections with a single daily cocktail drug. The first once-a-day therapy to hit the market was Atripla, which, when approved in 2006, vastly simplified the dosing schedules for many HIV-positive patients and is currently considered the gold standard regimen.