The concept of patients’ charters is inadequate and should be replaced with charters of health responsibilities, argues an expert in this week’s BMJ.

State and Federal Governments are guilty of frequently suppressing embarrassing or damaging public health information.

Over the past century, the United States has witnessed historic advances in public health and medicine that have contributed to improved health and a significant increase in life expectancy for all socioeconomic groups.

Abuse of psychostimulants such as amphetamine remains a serious public health concern. Amphetamines mediate their behavioral effects by stimulating dopaminergic signaling throughout reward circuits of the brain.

A new report from the National Research Council recommends that government agencies enhance their efforts to incorporate genomic data into risk assessments of chemicals and medicines, and calls for a concerted effort to fully develop these methods' potential to protect public health.

Corporate leaders at Dow Chemical, Cracker Barrel and Eastman Kodak have learned the hard way that public protests can drive down the value of an otherwise healthy stock.

Allowing the drug industry to supply information on prescription medicines direct to patients in Europe will have serious implications for public health, warn experts in this week's BMJ.

Global warming is often in the news these days, usually in connection with changing, and sometimes destructive, weather patterns. But the World Health Organization says rising temperatures also have alarming implications for public health.

Genetic research into athletic ability should be encouraged for its potential benefits in both sport and public health, a leading group of scientists meeting at the University of Bath said today.

Hepatitis B is caused by a virus that infects the liver, causing disease that can lead to a deadly cancer. The World Health Organization calls hepatitis B a serious global public health problem. Many people who have it, even in the United States, are completely unaware they are infected.

Monitoring of pig carcasses and pig meat in slaughterhouses, butchers’ premises and retail outlets will be undertaken in Ireland over the next two years in an attempt to determine how a human disease causing bacteria, Yersinia enterocolitica, enters the food chain, scientists announced today at the Society for General Microbiology’s 161st Meeting at the University of Edinburgh, UK, which runs from 3-6 September 2007.

The Internet is serving as a fertile medium for "HIV denialists" to spread false ideas about HIV/AIDS, which could have terrible public health consequences, say scientists in a policy paper in PLoS Medicine.