Northern California is home to a number of questionable lawsuits against various manufacturers, based mostly on activists trying to scare people to improve their own bottom lines. But there are places to find reliable health and wellness information, and the Council is one of them.

The Polymerase Chain Reaction was developed in 1983, and since that time it's become one of the most commonly-used techniques in labs across the world. The ability to amplify one region of DNA using PCR was an incredible advance to many fields of scientific research. 

The concluding piece in this Brain Tumor series spotlights the expertise of Dr. Gregory Riggins. A professor of Neurosurgery and Oncology, and Director of the Brain Cancer Biology and Therapy Research Laboratory at Johns Hopkins, he will help us distinguish myth from reality.

People often tell new parents to avoid sing-song baby talk with their new addition, because it will slow the child’s language development. But evidence shows it does the opposite; baby talk plays an important role in development -- and their precious bundle of joy prefers it to other types of speech.

We did not evolve in a world of plentiful food; instead nature was out to kill us. Today, food is a commodity and when something becomes a commodity, it takes a while for culture to catch up. Science has outpaced our cultural maturity, and it has led to a certain amount of doublethink about food.

Prescribing drugs is a valuable tool in our work, and we should not let medication prices be controlled by forces whose primary concern is the stockholder. Our role as physicians is to advocate for our patients; high drug prices lessen our ability to use the drugs our patients need. It is time for all of us to speak up.

Actor Ben Stiller recently chronicled how early diagnosis of prostate cancer, using a routine blood test, saved his life. And he's urging all men over 40 to discuss the PSA test with their doctor. However, we here at the Council and other organizations have been critical of it, so it's fitting that we review where science stands on the issue.

Aside from occasional high-profile cases and Hollywood movies, brain tumors rarely take center stage. But when they do, it tends to be an ominous story. The CDC recently reported brain cancer surpassed leukemia as the most common cancer-causing death in children aged 1-19, but no age is safe. Here's the first of a two-part series elucidating fact from fiction. 

The Council has been given access to the The National Plan for the Elimination of Cholera in Haiti, drafted by UNICEF, the World Health Organization and the Haitian government to develop a new strategy to deal with this crisis. The UN needs to do today -- right now -- what it should have done years ago.

1. The FDA may be a government body but when they want to be snarky, they go ahead and do it. When genetics marketing whiz 23andMe figured it would use all its Google money to schmooze its way around FDA, not only did it fail, but when the inevitable crackdown on bonkers marketing claims occurred, FDA chided them with sarcasm.