The link between soda and obesity has attracted a hailstorm of media attention recently, not least of which in New York City, where Mayor Bloomberg is attempting to restrict the sale of sweetened beverages exceeding 16 ounces. Yet, amidst the soda melee, it s surprising how little attention diet soda has received.

New research from Denmark, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, gives further support to the long held notion that having a family member die from heart disease at a young age increases an individual s own risk of a similar condition.

With apologies to my attorney friends, the saying "95 percent of lawyers make the rest of them look bad" remains one of my favorites.
And a story in yesterday's New York Times did little to change this. The lawyers who were involved with negotiating the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) of 1999 (and made obscene amounts of money in the process) are now going after food manufacturers using a similar strategy. This is almost funny.

Earlier in the week we discussed the spate of lawsuits against the food industry filed by many of the same lawyers who negotiated the 1999 Master Settlement Agreement with Big Tobacco. Unfortunately, while the claims against the tobacco industry were entirely justified, the allegations in these latest suits can only be described as spurious. (Something about the absence of real berries in Cap n Crunch Crunch Berry cereal, we believe.)

Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) relies on classifying patients based on their global cardiovascular risk the probability of developing CVD within a set period of time, taking into account a number of risk factors at once. A person is found to be either high, intermediate, or low risk based on several risk models, among which the best known is the Framingham Risk Score (FRS). It has become increasingly apparent, however, that the intermediate risk group is actually a composite of individuals of various predicted risk levels.

There is little more disheartening than scientists who pursue unscientific ideological agendas when public health is at risk. Yet that s what happened at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society this week, where a group of scientists reported finding the first strong oral carcinogen in smokeless tobacco such as chewing tobacco, snuff, and other products.

We were pleased to hear that chemoprevention as a means of breast cancer risk reduction is being seriously discussed. In a recent internal medicine meeting, Dr. Jennifer R. Diamond, a medical oncologist from the University of Colorado at Denver, spoke about the importance of chemoprevention as a primary means of reducing a woman s risk of breast cancer.

Over a decade ago, major cigarette manufacturers were forced to take responsibility for their role in tobacco-related health care costs, in the form of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement. The court case set right numerous cigarette marketing practices that were misleading and harmful. Yet the ruling was a mixed bag for public health: Some marketing restrictions and increased taxes contributed to a decline in smoking rates, but Big Tobacco was ultimately granted immunity from individual lawsuits.

In 2006, the CDC recommended that everyone between the ages of 13 and 64 be tested for HIV at least once. Yet only a year before, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) had not found enough evidence in favor of routine testing and instead stated that such decisions should be made by doctors on a case-by-case basis.

In July, the CDC reported that the U.S. was on track for the worst whooping cough (pertussis) outbreak since 1959. And so far this year, an estimated 18,000 cases of whooping cough have already been reported about half of which occurred in infants younger than three months. Because such young children can t yet be vaccinated, they must rely on herd immunity, which occurs when there are high immunity rates within the whole community.