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December 19, 2012 Gunmen staged new attacks Wednesday on health workers carrying out a nationwide polio vaccination program. On Tuesday, six workers were killed as they went house to house.

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December 19, 2012 Myanmar and other parts of Southeast Asia are awash with shoddy and phony malaria drugs. Some fakes are almost indistinguishable from authentic drugs. The counterfeits can be deadly for patients, but they also threaten to undermine major weapons against the disease.

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December 18, 2012 More than 100 federally owned primates have been the subject of controversy. In 2010, the National Institutes of Health made arrangements to move some retired chimpanzees back into the research, spurring protests. But the NIH eventually decided to accept an independent assessment that found there is almost no scientific need for chimps in biomedical research.

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December 18, 2012 There are some warnings parents drill into their kids: no drinking, no smoking, don't do drugs. But now that two states have decriminalized recreational marijuana use, those conversations have become tougher.

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December 18, 2012 Global deaths from malaria have dropped sharply in the past decade, thanks in part to powerful drugs called artemisinins. But on the border between Thailand and Myanmar, doctors are starting to see cracks in artemisinin's armor. The medicine is working more slowly, and sometimes not at all.

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December 18, 2012 Starting in January, the French government will provide contraceptives for girls ages 15 to 18 — without charge and without parental notification. The measure, which passed parliament without debate, aims to reduce teen pregnancies by increasing access to birth control and education.

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December 18, 2012 In South Africa, drug users are crushing HIV medications and mixing them with marijuana, heroin and other illicit drugs. Public health workers worry that people who smoke so-called whoonga are helping to fuel the rise of drug-resistant HIV.

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December 18, 2012 KHNIn a switch, Medicare began covering smoking cessation counseling for smokers without symptoms of disease back in 2010. Beneficiaries are eligible for up to two four-session smoking cessation counseling attempts a year.

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December 18, 2012 On Tuesday, the National Institutes of Health in Maryland is holding a second day of talks about whether and how to continue funding some controversial scientific experiments. Back in January, virologists agreed to temporarily stop research that was creating new forms of bird flu, because critics argued that the work was too dangerous.

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December 17, 2012 Ayurveda is a form of traditional medicine that's thousands of years old. But some ayurvedic remedies have harmful heavy metal additives, including lead. And those remedies are finding their way to the U.S., as two recent cases of childhood lead poisoning in New York attest.

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December 17, 2012 Secretions from a brown frog's skin contain chemicals that might be useful in fighting bacteria. Russian researchers are cataloging compounds in the slimy goo. Although the odds against them are long, the researchers hope their work will aid the search for new drugs.

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December 17, 2012 Are we getting "Jack'd"? A surge in new caffeine-containing foods leads to new questions about just how much caffeine we're getting in our daily lives. Some advocates are calling for labeling, and they raise concerns about children's and teens' consumption.

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December 17, 2012 Children in third through sixth grade consume more calories when snacking on potato chips, and fewer when they snack instead on raw broccoli, peppers, carrots and cheese combinations, according to a recent study. This adds to evidence that foods high in fiber and protein help us feel fuller.

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