Though today’s oral contraceptives are less likely to cause weight gain because of a lower estrogen dose, many young women are still hesitant to use the pill for fear of packing on extra pounds. Nearly one-third of women on birth control pills stop using them within a few months because of undesirable side-effects, especially perceived weight gain.

While many parents look forward to the year when they can turn their child’s car seat to face forward to commemorate their advancing development, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is advising parents to hold off on the festivities for at least another year.

After growing weary of reading headlines announcing vaccine-preventable outbreaks, we decided to research which states permit parents to forgo vaccinating their kids due to so-called “philosophical exemptions” — which allow opting out of required immunizations for no reason whatsoever. One of these states — Minnesota — allows these exemptions, and is now experiencing a measles outbreak.

It comes as no surprise to ACSH staffers that the newest CDC statistics indicate that prediabetes is on the rise in the U.S. One obvious reason is that more and more Americans are becoming overweight or obese.

A discussion on how to regulate the production and sale of food from cloned animals concluded in a deadlock Thursday morning among various European Union (EU) governmental bodies. In one corner of the ring stood the European Parliament, arguing for a full EU ban on the sale of food derived from cloned animals and their offspring.

While certain newer approaches to prostate cancer treatment, such as less invasive surgery and advanced radiation therapy, may be “doctor recommended and patient preferred,” are they worth the additional price tag? That’s what Dr. Paul Nguyen of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital set out to discover in his study comparing the type and cost of prostate cancer treatments administered between 2002 and 2005.

Drug companies often exclude people with depression from clinical trials, even though it is well known among physicians that depression often coincides with other disorders. By purposefully eliminating this cohort from early testing stages, drug manufacturers hope to gain faster FDA approval, but they may be shooting themselves in the foot once the treatment is mass-marketed and its widespread effects are better known.

In Friday’s Dispatch, we reported that the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) called for a ban on menthol cigarettes, but the committee didn’t actually go quite that far.

Ten days after a devastating 9.0 earthquake and tsunami wreaked havoc on Japan, engineers worked around the clock to successfully restore power to the cooling pumps in reactors No. 5 and 6 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The partial restoration of electricity caused many to heave a sigh of relief as the threat of a nuclear meltdown became less and less likely.

Yesterday, ACSH reported on an early-stage, small trial of a new gene therapy for Parkinson’s disease that could eventually lead to better cutting-edge therapies. Now we bring you news of another promising innovation — the use of bone marrow stem cells for repairing damaged hearts in patients with congestive heart failure. An early phase clinical trial tested eight male patients with enlarged hearts following a heart attack.