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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 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.

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. 

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.

A team of German researchers swabbed 400 bathroom door handles from 136 airports in 59 countries. More than 5 percent produced strains of Staphylococcus aureus, a result that underscores the importance of proactive global epidemiological surveillance. There is no such thing as local outbreak anymore. 

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.

When the word "natural" gets attached to any food or beverage, misunderstandings are sure to follow. Because without looking closely, the impression one receives usually is that "natural" is "better," and the process creating that natural product must be "healthier." Often that's not the case. Take "natural wine," for example.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Are we coming full circle and the doctor becomes a shaman once again?

Here's a new health condition — text neck — supposedly caused by too much attention focused on texting. While we do believe that you can get a stiff neck from a poor position, we find it hard to believe that texting can lead to multiple ailments. Falling into a manhole, sure. But this?

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.

In a lawsuit CSPI, in its fifth decade as America's premier sue-and-settle faux consumer advocacy group, claims the marketing for PepsiCo's Naked Juice is "misleading" because it can have more sugar than some of Pepsi's cola drinks. We have zero interest in defending Pepsi, but it didn't create that sugar, nature did.

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.

Opioid drugs were too easy to get. Plenty of people got addicted. Now, everyone is treated like an addict. Is the solution worse than the problem? Decide after you ... 

As the anti-vaccine movement garnered Hollywood momentum, science stood largely silent. However, Dr. Paul Offit, inventor of the Rotavirus vaccine, took to the helm to fight for children's health and safety. Here's an informative conversation with a true expert in the field. 

Dr. Josh Bloom was interviewed by Dr. Joe Schwarcz, an award-winning chemistry professor, lecturer and author, during which the Council's pharmaceutical expert discussed his recent experience with opioid denial. You're familiar with Dr. Bloom's writings. But for all of you wondering what he actually sounds like, listen to the conversation.

New research shows that the instructions on those little bottles – indicating that dime-sized drop is sufficient – are wrong. To properly coat your hands, you need to apply about 3 mL of sanitizer, or more than half a teaspoon. Here's why. 

The role of infectious pathogens causing secondary diseases is well established. But although suspected, the correlation of childhood infections and type 1 diabetes has not be proven. A recent Finnish study shows a strong correlation between enterovirus infection in children and the development of diabetes. Is this one more piece of the puzzle?

Listen up, slackers: You can no longer use "work" as an excuse to avoid burning calories during the week. Turns out, you could get your best workout in over the weekend, without lifting a finger Monday through Friday.

How to spot greenwashing? When supposedly tiny David vs. Goliath local environmental groups all sprang up after getting money from the same large anti-science foundations.

If Donald Trump's anti-vaccine tweets were not enough to make the scientific and medical community nervous, there is another reason to be concerned. Very concerned. The president-elect met this week with Robert Kennedy Jr., a vaccine denier and one of the most outspoken proponents of the false claim that vaccines cause autism.

A rare genetic disorder that transforms a person's hands and feet, in particular, into tree-bark-like warts and cutaneous horns made news recently. It's truly out of the ordinary. So what's this all about? 

Whether you love him, hate him– or have no opinion at all – Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump's nominee for Attorney General, is right on the money when it comes to addressing the opioid overdose-death crisis. 

Spoiler Alert: If you love fried chicken, and knowing that pigs are intelligent interferes with your love of bacon, do not read this.
“ … Chickens are misperceived as lacking most of the psychological characteristics we recognize in other intelligent animals and are typically thought of as possessing a low level of intelligence compared with other animals.”

The much-anticipated intelligence report, which concluded that Russia tried to influence the recent presidential election, had another startling, yet widely ignored, conclusion: The Russian government promotes anti-fracking propaganda in the United States, via its "news" network, RT.