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The controversy over the defunding of Planned Parenthood affiliates by breast-cancer group Susan G. Komen for the Cure is showing no signs of cooling off.

Here at Health Blog headquarters, we’ve been intrigued by the career of John Johnson ever since he left a company called Johnson & Johnson.

That was back in 2007, when he became CEO of ImClone Systems, which was eventually acquired by Eli Lilly.

Today, Johnson, who is 53, was named president, chief executive and chairman-elect of Dendreon, succeeding 43-year-old Mitch Gold, who remains executive chairman until June 30. Gold has been CEO for nearly a decade. (Here’s the WSJ story.)

The simple act of putting photos of green beans and carrots in cafeteria-tray compartments sparked increased consumption among elementary-school students, according to a small study that suggests one more potential avenue for getting kids to eat their veggies.

Certain cystic-fibrosis patients will now have an FDA-approved treatment that targets an underlying cause of their disease.

But that drug — Kalydeco, from Vertex Pharmaceuticals — won’t come cheap.

As Dow Jones Newswires reports, the annual cost will be $294,000. Vertex has set up a patient-assistance program to help patients pay for the treatment.

Bydureon, the once-weekly injection for treating patients with type 2 diabetes, has finally won the FDA’s okay.

As Dow Jones Newswires reports, it’s been a long, bumpy road to approval for the drug’s developer, Amylin Pharmaceuticals.

(Alkermes is behind the extended-release technology used to deliver the drug, a longer-acting version of Amylin’s twice-daily Byetta.)

What’s standing in the way of the wider spread of health IT?

Plenty of things, according to a new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center. The report says boosting use of electronic medical records and other health IT “enjoys bipartisan support.” It’s also being pushed by billions of dollars in government incentives.

The American Society of Hematology says it doesn’t think student athletes should have to be screened for sickle-cell trait in order to play their sport. Instead, the group says in a policy statement, schools should take steps to protect all athletes from exertion-related illness and death.

Hostile Bid For Illumina: Swiss drug maker Roche is making a $44.50 per-share hostile bid for Illumina, valuing the gene-sequencing company at $5.7 billion, the WSJ reports. Illumina has already rejected an offer of $40 per share, Roche says. The latest bid represents a premium of about 18% to Illumina’s $37.69 closing price Tuesday. Illumina said today it would review Roche’s proposal.

J&J Settles With Texas: Johnson & Johnson said it would pay $158 million to settle claims by Texas that the company promoted its antipsychotic drug Risperdal for unapproved uses, resulting in overcharges to the state’s Medicaid program, the WSJ reports. J&J said the settlement, to be paid to a plaintiff who filed a whistleblower suit and his attorneys, the state of Texas and the U.S. government, “will circumvent potentially and costly appellate activities.”

We saw someone walking along the street the other day with a cascade of dollar bills falling from her pocket — oblivious to the warnings of passers-by because she was wearing headphones.

She could’ve lost more than a few bucks, according to a study of pedestrian-vehicle accidents in which the walker was using headphones to listen to an MP3 player. (The study was just published online in Injury Prevention.)