The Food and Drug Administration proposed new rules on Friday aiming to prevent outbreaks like those experienced in recent years, such as salmonella from peanuts and listeria from cantaloupe.

The rules are among the first flexing the FDA’s new powers outlined in the Food Safety Modernization Act. By tightening oversight, the sweeping rules will prevent future incidents of the dangerous conditions found at the peanut butter and cantaloupe farms:

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at the Colorado farm where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout a New Mexico peanut processing plant and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

The 2011 legislation is the first major food safety overhaul in over 70 years, even though food contamination sickens one in six Americans and treatment alone costs an estimated $152 billion every year.

Preventable diseases like measles and polio are on the upswing in Pakistan after years of decline, mainly due to growing wariness of vaccines — or, more specifically, wariness of the programs and people that administer those vaccines.

In a continuation of violence in December that saw the murder of six aid workers on the streets of Pakistan’s cities, another seven civilians have been killed since the start of 2013. All but one of those killed on Jan. 1 were female, continuing a disturbing trend of gender disparity in those targeted. All seven of the most recent victims, five teachers and two health providers, were Pakistani nationals working at a community center providing health and education services in remote northern Pakistan.

These attacks are taking a toll on the health and well-being of Pakistan’s children, with easily treatable diseases making a pronounced comeback. Measles in particular has seen an amazing surge. According to the World Health (WHO) the number of measles cases in Pakistan has surged from 4,000 in 2011 to 14,000 in 2012. 306 died of the disease in 2012, compared to only 64 in 2011. The increase has prompted the WHO to launch an emergency vaccination campaign in the Sindh state, where the outbreak has been particularly severe.

In an interview with al Jazeera, Dr. Zulfiqar Ahmed Bhutta, a child health expert said that the outbreak could have easily been foreseen:

“This was a tragedy that was waiting to happen. We have been predicting for a while now that without adequate cover with routine immunisation in many parts of Pakistan, notably in rural populations, that there was bound to be a situation where you would have an outbreak like this …. So what we are seeing this year is an absolute reflection of dropping the ball in covering an adequate cohort of children in rural and poor populations of Pakistan, particularly in the south, against a completely preventable disorder like measles.“

A large part of the opposition to vaccine campaigns can be traced back to the United States’ decision to use one as cover for obtaining proof that Osama bin Laden was living within the Pakistani city of Abottabod. In the months and years since, aid workers in Pakistan have faced growing violence while attempting to inoculate those most vulnerable from diseases that have long since been wiped out in other countries.

Alabama State Rep. Patricia Todd (D), the state’s first openly gay legislator, is once again introducing a bill to repeal the state’s 1992 sex education law, which requires teacehrs to teach that homosexuality is illegal and that “abstinence from sexual intercourse outside of lawful marriage is the expected social standard.” Todd pre-filed the bill ahead of the 2013 legislative session that will begin on February 5.

If the legislature approves the law, then the Alabama Department of Education would be in charge of establishing the state’s sex education programs instead of the legislature:

“The Department of Education needs to be making those guidelines, not the Legislature,” Todd said.

“We need to make sure there is evidence-based education being done in the schools, and all the evidence shows that abstinence-only is not effective.”

The bill would have no effect on the state’s sexual-misconduct law, which makes homosexual acts a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year imprisonment. But it would strike requirements that teachers emphasize “homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense.”

Todd sponsored the same bill during the 2012 session along with Republican Rep. Mary Sue McClurkin, but it failed to make it out of committee.

Including Alabama, 37 states currently emphasize abstinence in their sexual health curricula. Alabama is one of 19 states that actually require sex education programs to include information about the importance of sex only within marriage. But considering the fact that the states with abstinence-only policies are facing staggering teen pregnancy rates, some conservatives in Mississippi are beginning to slowly move away from abstinence-only education curricula in favor of including contraceptive options as well.

A team of Spanish researchers say they have made an important breakthrough in HIV research, developing a new vaccine against the virus that is significantly more effective than earlier attempts. Advancing vaccine research could eventually eliminate the need for the expensive methods currently used to treat HIV-positive individuals.

Researchers tested the vaccine on randomly selected HIV-positive individuals who were already taking highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) medications, the most scientifically advanced form of treatment currently available to combat the virus. They wanted to see if, rather than simply suppressing the effects of the virus with outside treatment, their vaccine could lead the human immune system to coordinate its own defense against HIV — and they succeeded, seeing some subjects’ HIV viral loads drop more than 90 percent after 12 weeks of the trial:

“What we did was give instructions to the immune system so it could learn to destroy the virus, which it does not do naturally,” said Felipe Garcia, one of the scientists in the team at Barcelona University’s Hospital Clinic.

The therapeutic vaccine, a shot that treats an existing disease rather than preventing it, was safe and led to a dramatic drop in the amount of HIV virus detected in some patients, said the study, published Wednesday in Science Translation Medicine. [...]

The vaccine allowed patients temporarily to live without taking multiple medicines on a daily basis, which created hardship for patients, could have toxic side-effects over the long term and had a high financial price, the team said.

“This investigation opens the path to additional studies with the final goal of achieving a functional cure — the control of HIV replication for long periods or an entire life without anti-retroviral treatment,” the researchers said in a statement.

The researchers did find that the effectiveness of the vaccination declined after the first year, when patients had to return to their previous HAART treatment. Still, though, they noted this breakthrough is the culmination of seven years of research — and they will spend the next several years working to improve the vaccine even further.

Over the past year, the global community has made significant strides forward in its mission to eradicate the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This latest scientific progress builds upon previous research and policy advances that have contributed to better tests and treatments for HIV, better health care for HIV-positive individuals, and ever-increasing life expectancy rates for those living with the virus.

Newly sworn-in Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) vowed to fulfill his campaign promise to introduce a “day one” bill repealing President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, even as he admitted a repeal will never pass. During his campaign, Cruz proclaimed, “We must and will repeal every syllable of every word of ObamaCare.” But in a press call on Thursday, Cruz told reporters that his pet project “is not going to pass anytime soon.”

Fully aware of its futility, Cruz will still make a symbolic repeal bill his first priority, the Dallas News reports:

As promised during the campaign, he still plans to focus the first bill he files on an attempt to “repeal very syllable of every word of Obamacare,” though he’s realistic. With Obama reelected and Democrats still in control of the Senate, “We know to a metaphysical certainty that that bill is not going to pass any time soon.” So he’ll do whatever he can to prevent implementation of that law.

Republicans have already wasted 88 hours and $50 million in taxpayer money on 33 failed votes to repeal Obamacare since January 2011. They have refused to give up even after the Supreme Court ruled the health care reform law was constitutional. Obama’s re-election did lead House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to acknowledge the ACA is “the law of the land,” but he and his colleagues quickly renewed their efforts to dismantle the law. Meanwhile, the 112th Congress earned the title of least productive Congress in history, failing to pass a single piece of jobs legislation.

And now, with a fresh slate before the 113th Congress, Republicans are still not ready to concede defeat and move onto the many more pressing matters facing the nation. In addition to Cruz’s expected legislation in the Senate, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) has already introduced a repeal bill in the House.

Repealing Obamacare would kick an estimated 30 million people off their health insurance while adding more than $100 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade.

Now that the presidential election is behind us and a new legislative session is about to begin, officials across the country will spend much of 2013 taking the steps to prepare to fully implement the Affordable Care Act. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) made significant progress in that area this week when he announced his state will accept Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program, a move that will ensure that over 160,000 of his low-income residents will now be eligible for coverage.

At a press conference on Thursday, the governor announced that his plan to expand the Medicaid program will both improve coverage for low-income Coloradans as well as end up saving the state money in the long run:

“This is a step toward what we have talked about for a couple of years: How can we make sure we’re making Colorado the single healthiest state in America?” Hickenlooper said.

Through 2016, the federal government covers the entire cost of the expansion, which comes under provisions of the Affordable Care Act. The governor said he anticipates that even when federal funding for the expansion is reduced, “not one dollar of general-fund money will be used to replace it.” [...]

The state’s ability to embrace the health-care expansion draws on “a relentless focus on how to control costs,” Hickenlooper said. The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing zeroed in on several areas of projected savings, largely by rewarding value over volume.

Efforts to avoid duplicating services, improve coordination and employ information technology to reduce fraud and improve claim tracking drive the $280 million estimate.

Expanding the eligibility levels for the Medicaid program is optional under Obamacare, and federal funding makes the expansion a good deal for states. Numerous studies have shown that if states choose to expand Medicaid for their residents, they will be able to extend coverage to over 20 million previously uninsured Americans, save millions of dollars, and create jobs.

Nevertheless, some Republican-controlled states are still digging in their heels against reform, preferring to take an ideological stand against Obamacare rather than extend health care to their low-income residents. Republican governors in nine states have already said they will refuse the expansion.

In May, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (R) signed a stringent 20-week abortion ban with no exception in cases of rape or incest. That law was scheduled to go into effect at the beginning of the new year — but thanks to a last-minute court ruling in the final days of 2012, women and doctors have been spared the harsh abortion restriction.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit to block the “fetal pain” law from taking effect, claiming that both doctors and women would suffer under the unnecessary restriction. Proponents of banning abortions after 20 weeks of gestation rely on the widely-disputed claim that fetuses can feel pain after that point, but the science doesn’t back them up. In reality, Georgia’s HB 954 is focused on preventing women from making their own decisions about when to terminate a pregnancy, as well as criminally prosecute the doctors who choose to provide their patients with the health care they need after the arbitrary cut-off. After hearing the ACLU’s arguments, Georgia Judge Doris Downs issued a temporary injunction to right before the Christmas holiday to block the law from taking effect this week.

Nevertheless, several other states — Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, and North Carolina — have enacted 20-week abortion bans, and Texas may consider one in the new legislative session.

But Georgia isn’t the only state to run into legal roadblocks as it attempts to scale back women’s access to abortion. The ACLU also won a temporary injunction against Arizona’s stringent ban — considered the worst restriction in the nation, since it redefines the gestational period to outlaw abortions even before 20 weeks of pregnancy — while it is considered in court. Depending on the courts’ decisions in Georgia and Arizona, the so-called “fetal pain” laws in other states could also be at risk.

2012 was a banner year for new abortion restrictions, as 19 states passed 42 different provisions to restrict women’s access to reproductive health services. Imposing limits on later term abortions was one of the most popular methods that anti-choice lawmakers used to threaten abortion rights last year.