A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that depression is linked to increased chocolate consumption, though the researchers admit that it does not prove a causal connection in either direction.
It s not news that people eat chocolate because it makes them feel better, says Stier. This is another case of causation vs. association.

PBS s Frontline last night examined vaccines and the increasingly bitter debate between the public health establishment and a formidable populist coalition of parents, celebrities, politicians and activists who are ¦ determined to resist pressure from the medical and public health establishments to vaccinate, despite established scientific consensus about vaccine safety.

A blog hosted by Reason magazine offers a sardonic commentary on a decision in California s Santa Clara County to forbid the inclusion of toys with any restaurant meal (e.g., McDonald s Happy Meals) that has high amounts of salt, sugar, fat, or calories: First they came for Joe Camel, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a camel. ¦ So it was only a matter of time before someone applied the principle to fast food.

According to the Associated Press, Supreme Court justices on Tuesday sharply questioned a lower court's decision that has prohibited biotech giant Monsanto Co. from selling genetically engineered alfalfa seeds ¦

An editorial in the Wall Street Journal points out the unfortunate connection between last week s Earth Day and yesterday s World Malaria Day.

At a recent meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, a Duke University oncologist warned that emphasis on comparative effectiveness research for new drugs may impede cancer research.

The Wall Street Journal’s “Numbers Guy” took a look at the arguments for and against smokeless tobacco as harm reduction for addicted smokers over the weekend. He mentions dangers often cited by critics of smokeless tobacco, writing, “All of these risks appear to be overblown, particularly compared with smoking, which is far more likely to kill than smokeless alternatives.

The New York Times reports, “R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, one of the country’s biggest cigarette makers, must pay $46.3 million to the widow of a Florida man who died from lung cancer in 1995, a jury in Gainesville, Fla., decided Wednesday.”

Three top FDA administrators have a column published in the New England Journal of Medicine this week about how they will use their authority under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

An article in the latest issue of The Lancet reveals that Pyramax, a new oral malaria treatment from South Korean drugmaker Shin Poong Pharmaceuticals, is just as effective as Novartis leading treatment Coartem. According to Reuters, Coartem is the current gold standard for people infected with the mosquito-borne disease.