TV News LIES

A new report by the U.S. surgeon general greatly broadens the list of disease evils linked to cigarettes and concludes that urgent, aggressive action is needed to further reduce smoking rates and save lives. The report, released Friday, recommends prevention efforts that especially target groups most vulnerable to smoking, including low-income Americans and ethnic minorities and youth.

If smoking rates persist unchanged, 5.6 million American children alive today will die prematurely because of smoking, the report finds. It pegs the economic costs of smoking at $289 billion a year or more in medical care and productivity losses.

New York State is poised to allow 20 hospitals to distribute medical marijuana, Gov. Andrew Cuomo formally announced Wednesday.

"Research suggests that medical marijuana can help manage pain and treatment of cancer and other serious illnesses," Cuomo said in the annual State of State speech in Albany.

"We will establish a program allowing up to 20 hospitals to prescribe medical marijuana, and we will monitor the program to evaluate the effectiveness and the feasibility of a medical marijuana system," Cuomo added, without elaborating.

Eight million U.S. lives were saved by anti-smoking measures enacted since a pivotal surgeon general's report 50 years ago this month, researchers estimate.

First author Theodore R. Holford, professor of biostatistics and member of Yale School of Public Health's Cancer Center, and six other researchers who are part of the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network found about 17.6 million Americans died since 1964 due to smoking-related causes. However, 8 million lives were saved by increasingly stringent tobacco-control measures that commenced with the Jan. 11, 1964, release of a surgeon general's report on the affects of smoking.

Cardiac surgeon and his colleagues have developed a biodegradable adhesive that can patch a hole in a pig's heart or artery. The experimental glue is nontoxic and is strong enough to hold up under the high pressures in the human heart, the team Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

So far, they've tested the glue only in animals. So the sealant is far from reaching the operating room or battlefield. But del Nido hopes the adhesive will eventually replace traditional sutures and staples for some operations, especially heart surgery.

The year 2013 marked the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide. It also marked another year of success for those who would restrict or even outlaw the procedure.

While much national attention was focused on efforts to restrict abortion in , a from the Guttmacher Institute reports that as many as 22 states enacted 70 provisions aimed at curbing access to abortion. That makes 2013 in the number of abortion restrictions enacted in a single year, according to the think tank for reproductive rights.

If Werner Herzog hasn't already convinced you not to touch your phone while driving, perhaps this will. Dialing a cellphone is the most dangerous thing you can do in a car, according to a new study from the New England Journal of Medicine, and increases your risk of crashing or nearly crashing eight-fold.

Researchers collected 12-18 months of driving data from 42 newly licensed teenaged drivers from southwestern Virginia, as well as from 109 more experienced motorists from Washington, all driving cars that had been outfitted with cameras, accelerometers, and GPS devices.