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Prostate-Cancer Drug Studies: The results from two trials of experimental drugs for advanced prostate cancer add to recent progress against the disease, the WSJ reports. Medivation’s MDV3100 extended survival by nearly five months in a 1,199-patient study, while Bayer and Algeta’s Alpharadin, which homes in on cancer that has already spread to the bone, boosted survival by almost three months in a 922-patient study, the paper reports.

Central to the drug-shortage issue is a chicken-and-egg question that often leaves legislators scratching their heads at congressional hearings.

Chicken: Are the shortages of crucial drugs caused by factory flaws and shutdowns? Or egg: Are shortages somehow caused by economics, like the thin profit margins of generic drugs?

A federal report to be released Thursday comes down with both feet in the chicken camp.

You might want to give your high-school student an extra helping of sweet potatoes or squash for Thanksgiving dinner.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms just how few fruits and vegetables high-school students are eating. More than a quarter of 10,765 students surveyed in the 2010 National Youth Physical Activity and Nutrition Study don’t eat fruit every day, and a third don’t get their vegetables daily.

Teen Births Drop Again: The birth rate among Americans ages 15 to 19 years old fell 9% from the previous year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The WSJ reported that more effective sex-education programs along with a rough economy may help explain the continued decline.

Deficit-reduction proposals to change the structure of Medicare would increase costs for most current beneficiaries, a new study has found.

Several deficit-reduction committees have suggested changing the federal health-care program for seniors to combine the hospital- and doctor-services deductibles that participants currently pay separately. In this system, seniors could have a $550 annual deductible, and be required to pay 20% toward all services up to a $5,550 annual limit.

Drinking and driving dropped to historic lows last year, new government data show, though it’s not necessarily because adult Americans are boozing less—or less often.

The reasons behind the decline are “not well understood,” U.S. health officials said in their report. But one possibility is that the rough economy is leading people to limit their “discretionary driving” and opt to drink more often at home.

There are new rules for financial-conflict-of-interest disclosure for scientific researchers who get grants from the National Institutes of Health.

While the “vast majority of academic researchers” are already sensitive to conflicts and act with “the highest standards of integrity,” the system “needs an additional layer of oversight” to protect against potential problems down the line, said Francis Collins, director of the NIH, on a conference call with reporters.

Everyone agrees Medicare spending growth is unsustainable, but the specifics of how to curb it are much tougher to agree on.

At a House subcommittee meeting today, medical societies weighed in on how to fix the much-maligned Medicare physician payment formula.