Upon reflection, Dr. Gilbert Ross criticism of a Reuters Health article on the decline in heart attack rates yesterday was too heavily focused on the reporters third sentence mention of public smoking bans. The news article did first mention better treatment. Our criticism should have more properly been leveled at the authors of the study, who made the unsupported assertion that public bans on smoking had some role in the dramatic decline in heart attack rates.

New research published in Nature suggests there is an abnormal genetic pattern evident in some children who ultimately develop autism spectrum disorder. ABC News reports that scientists have discovered genetic aberrations found exclusively in autistic children that, while unique to each child, represents a possible breakthrough in the search for an early screening intervention.

Next year, New York s required calorie count policy for chain restaurants is set to go into effect nationwide under the country s new healthcare legislation. The Wall Street Journal reports that while supporters believe the new policies are necessary to overcome the nation s high obesity rates, opponents question whether the government should have such regulatory power over private businesses.

ACSH staffers were pleasantly surprised when they discovered anti-pseudoscience blogger JunkScienceMom s reference to a Hands off my plastic stuff! Facebook site, which reveals some of the various consumer and medical products that would disappear if BPA were banned.

The New York Times discussed an Annals of Internal Medicine study investigating the main reasons why only 10 percent of Americans eligible for the shingles vaccine which the Centers for Disease Control recommends for everyone over the age of 60 -- actually get it.

U.S. News & World Report s Washington Whispers blog reports that at least four groups are skeptical of the credibility of the FDA s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC).

While on the road again in Washington, D.C., ACSH's Jeff Stier attended the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research conference on BPA. One of the presenters, Dr. Julie Goodman, director of epidemiology at Gradient Corp. and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, provided the most insight concerning the real adverse effects of BPA in humans, which are none.

Reuters reported Wednesday on a study in the New England Journal of Medicine that asserts a causal link between the nationwide trend in the reduction of heart attack rates and bans on smoking in public places.

ACSH trustees Dr. Henry I. Miller, a Hoover Institution fellow, and James E. Enstrom, a professor at UCLA School of Public Health, contributed an op-ed yesterday in Forbes.com condemning California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations on diesel trucks and other vehicles, which are said to emit a form of air pollution known as diesel particulate matter.

Women who were light to moderate drinkers early in pregnancy were more likely to raise children with more positive behaviors, Reuters Health reports, citing a study by researchers from the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in West Perth, Western Australia. The study defined light to moderate drinking as the consumption of two to six drinks per week, or one a day.