Dr. Healy is both a thoughtful, seasoned doctor and a health columnist for US News and World Report.  She was the prime motivator for the outstanding Womens' Health Initiative study, a project that continues to bear fruit to this day.

I recently had a health journalist interview me about the new guidelines for mammography under 50.

You may recall a storm of controversy was touched off in December 2009, when the US Preventive Services Task Force recommended that mammography begin at 50.  Sarah Palin went so far as to compare these recommendations to "death panels" under health care reform.  The controversy died down, and health care reform legislation was rewritten to ensure access to mammographic screening.

Andrew Pollack is probably the single most influential health writer in America. He has the bully pulpit the closest thing to a national platform. His reporting is excellent balanced and thorough. I had the privilege of speaking with him in April 2009 for a tamoxifen article though he did not quote me in the story. So it was somewhat provocative that Mr. Pollack seems not altogether happy about the trend towards maintenance therapy. Higher costs longer treatment.

Spending would mean substantial cut of all revenues. Reuters estimates that the US drug industry the world's largest took in $315 billion in sales in 2007. Today AP reported that the drug industry agreed to contribute $80 billion towards healthcare reform. So we're supposed to believe that the industry is contributing 25% of sales (not profits) to reduce the cost of healthcare in America? Somehow I doubt the shareholders of these publicly traded companies will let this happen.

This will be brief because of my "no ranting" rule here. Where does medical news come from? Really I don't know. How is it that a newspaper or news agency publish a ready-made story THE SAME DAY it's released by a journal or meeting? With quotes? And details of the study? There's no way a reporter could have read the journal article's abstract release on Monday morning and publish a full article on the same journal article the very same Monday. Especially with quotes.

As if the flies that live near poultry farms didn't have it bad enough comes news that they are probably carrying antibiotic-resistant bacteria. They pick these microbes up from their interactions with antibiotic-fed chickens. http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2009/graham_flies.h... So for once doctors who love broad spectrum antibiotics the drug companies who push these antibiotics on doctors and mothers worried about ear infections get a pass.

Mosquitoes everywhere have reason to be scared: a new bug repellent has been announced by a group of entomologists. The new substance known as Isolongifolenone is evidently more effective than DEET and is naturally occuring in a particular plant. I have to admit I don't read the journal of the Entomological Society of America as often as I should but this was too good to pass up! http://esa.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/esa/jme/2009/00000046/00...

Doctors rebuild trachea--using patient's own stem cells! This is a great article that somehow got overlooked nice writeup in the UK Times from a paper published in the Lancet. I wonder if newspapers in England are hurting as much as newspapers in America. I love this quote in the Times article: "This is the first time a tissue-engineered whole organ has been transplanted into a patient.

Diabetes is the most frequent cause of kidney failure accounting for nearly 45 percent of new cases in America. Centers for Disease Control have revealed that over 17 million Americans have diabetes. Diabetes is also considered as the number one cause of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Patients with type 2 diabetes once known as non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus or adult-onset diabetes are at an immense risk of acquiring kidney disease.

A new research publication reveals that lack of vitamin D can double the risk of getting cardiovascular disease like stroke and heart failure. Dr. James H. O'Keefe director of preventive cardiology at the Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City is the lead author of a paper  published in the Dec. 9 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Dr. O’Keefe opined that lack of vitamin D can add to known major risk factors like high blood pressure diabetes and stiffening of the left ventricle of the heart and blood-vessels.