Is your doctor’s necktie transmitting resistant bacteria to your hospitalized loved-one? Quite possibly. The New York Legislature is currently considering a bill that would prohibit all health care professionals from wearing neckties or jewelry, which have long been known to carry bacteria.

British researchers have found yet another reason for mothers to breastfeed their babies. A study in the Archives of Disease in Childhood shows that breastfed babies are less likely to develop behavioral problems, such as restlessness, anxiousness and the inability to socialize, by age five.

Is there a link between smoking and blindness? If you weren’t aware that there is, it’s probably for lack of a national awareness campaign. Smoking is indeed causally associated with a number of visually impairing eye diseases, including cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, but a recently released international study in the journal Optometry found that most people simply aren’t aware of the risk.

We here at ACSH have persistently advised Americans 50 years of age and older to have a colonoscopy at intervals recommended by the G.I. experts, and we have detected sub-optimal rates of these cancer-preventing procedures.

Autism may occur more frequently in South Korean children than among those in the U.S., according to a new study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Led by Yale University’s Dr.

The nation’s second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, may ban chocolate- and strawberry-milk from school menus next year in response to activists, as well as to Food Revolution TV host Jamie Oliver, all of whom consider flavored milk a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic.

New research shows that breast cancers discovered between regular mammogram screenings (interval cancers) are more aggressive than those detected during routine screening.

The FDA has just approved a new diagnostic test that will expedite the time needed to confirm a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. Whereas current MRSA tests take up to 48 hours to generate results, the BD GeneOhm StaphSR test, developed by BD Diagnostics, can detect MRSA within five hours of culturing a sample.

ACSH gives two cheers to the New Zealand Ministry of Health for acknowledging that electronic cigarettes are “far safer” than traditional cigarettes. This statement was made to Members of Parliament (MPs) as they prepare to vote on the Smoke-Free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill, which includes a proposal to legislate electronic cigarettes containing nicotine as a tobacco-related product.

Although this concern seemed alarmist from the start, it is comforting to know that the results of a just-released 35-year study conducted by scientists on the Committee of the Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) find that there is no increased risk for leukemia among children living near nuclear power plants in the U.K.