The names might sound impressive -- but when parsing their message, you'll want to know who they serve. Obesity is a national health crisis -- or it isn't. Vaccines cause autism -- or they don't. Think of any current health controversy, and you can be sure that plenty of experts have already taken opposite sides.

They wouldn't prevent the disease, but might help people who are already fighting it. It's a deceptively simple idea: What if doctors could recruit the body's own immune system to fight cancer? The complexities of the immune system have kept this from becoming reality, until now. Three cancer vaccines -- for prostate cancer, melanoma and lymphoma -- have achieved positive results in so-called Phase 3 clinical trials -- the kind of studies that the Food and Drug Administration requires for a medicine to gain approval.

Here's an easy stretch that feels great after an upper-body workout -- or any time your shoulders and back feel tight. Remember to keep your hips raised for maximum benefit.

A 'normal' child used to be, well, normal. But now a lot of parents, sadly, don't think that's good enough. When my son's preschool teachers recommended that we send him to speech therapy, I can't say that my husband and I were completely surprised. Clay wasn't entirely easy to understand; his "r" sounded like a "w," his "th" was indistinguishable from an "s," and his "l" was essentially nonexistent. But he was only 3 years old.

Some athletes tout its effects on post-workout aches, but so far, there's little research to back such claims. Some athletes are turning to a lip-puckering remedy for post-workout pain and weakness: tart cherry juice. The juice can be hard to swallow, but the claim is that it diminishes muscle pain and soreness as well as, or better than, many over-the-counter medications.

President Barack Obama wanted to put a human face on his plans to overhaul health care, and a Virginia supporter did just that Wednesday. Fighting back tears, Debby Smith, 53, told Obama of her kidney cancer and her inability to obtain health insurance or hold a job. The president hugged her ? she's a volunteer for his political operation ? and called her "exhibit A" in an unsustainable system that is too expensive and complex for millions of Americans. "We are going to try to find ways to help you immediately," he told Smith as hundreds looked on at a community college forum ? and countless others watched on television. But the nation's long-term needs require a greater emphasis on preventive care and "cost-effective care," he said.

The percentage of Americans with private health insurance has hit its lowest mark in 50 years, according to two new government reports. About 65 percent of non-elderly Americans had private insurance in 2008, down from 67 percent the year before, according to preliminary data released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It's bad news," said Kenneth Thorpe, a health policy researcher at Emory University.

You don't have to be Michael Jackson to have this problem: The odds of surviving cardiac arrest after getting CPR in a hospital are slim and have not improved in more than a decade, a big Medicare study concludes. Only about 18 percent of such patients live long enough to leave the hospital, researchers found. Blacks fared worse than whites ? a disparity only partly explained by more of them being treated in hospitals that did a poorer job of CPR. Results were published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.