The chickenpox vaccine doesn t protect only the inoculated child; it also protects infants who are too young to be vaccinated but for whom the disease is especially dangerous. This protection conferred on non-immunized people by a high rate of vaccination in the area is called herd immunity (or community immunity).

Malaria is still one of the leading causes of death in sub-Saharan Africa, but great progress is being made. According to the organization Africa Fighting Malaria (AFM), the incidence of malaria and malarial deaths has recently fallen by over 90 percent in several southern African countries. The recent decline is no small feat, given that malaria once killed over one million people each year mostly children under five and pregnant women.

Four common medications are responsible for the majority of adverse drug reactions in older Americans, a study just published in The New England Journal of Medicine has found. Blood thinners and diabetes medications were responsible for 67 percent of emergency hospitalizations in people over the age of 65.

Does a severely obese child qualify as a case of parental abuse and neglect?

Americans are not only heavier than they were two decades ago, but their perceptions of their ideal weight have ballooned as well. In fact, the most recent Gallup poll reports that, on average, adults perceptions of what their ideal weight should be are now about 10 pounds heavier than they were in 1990.

The U.S. Senate is currently considering a call for further tightening of our country s already restrictive and effective chemical safety laws. In an op-ed for The Hill, ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross explains how the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of the key lobbyists for this unnecessary measure, has based its campaign on misinformation fueled by fear.

Flying in the face of the USDA s extremely stringent recommendations for population-wide sodium consumption, a recent study reports that low sodium consumption may actually increase a person s cardiovascular risk.

A recent study published in The Lancet finds that taking a statin to lower levels of cholesterol especially the bad type, LDL provides long-term benefits with low levels of risk. Researchers from the Heart Protection Study Collaborative Group in the U.K. randomized over 20,000 patients with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease to receive either 40 mg of simvastatin daily or a placebo over a period of about five years.

A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health reports that eating canned soup significantly raises the concentration of the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) in urine. BPA has been under constant attack from environmental groups alleging that despite its five-decade long history of widespread, safe use it is an endocrine disruptor.

In what has become an annual tradition, the activist organization Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) has released a list of so-called dangerous toys that parents should avoid buying this holiday season. The list, entitled Trouble in Toyland, reports on over a dozen toys that supposedly go against federal safety standards, with violations ranging from claims of excessive phthalate or lead levels to more reasonable concerns, such as choking hazards.