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— A New York City brochure with ‘10 Tips for Safer Use’ of heroin has been garnering vocal opponents the past few days. In circulation since June 2007 at homeless shelters, jails, and syringe exchanges, the ‘Take Charge, Take Care’ pamphlet is drawing criticism as a beginner’s guide to getting hooked on drugs. This is not the first, nor the last time that straightforward talk on drug abuse and disease has proved too blunt for some. Back in the late 1980s, a guide to AIDS prevention made a similar splash when then US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop mailed his report to over a hundred million households. (NYTimes)

— China is facing the second-largest TB-infected population in the world, after India, with 4.5 million current cases and 160,000 dead in 2008, according to the World Health Organization. With poor compliance and expensive treatment, drug-resistant TB is becoming a particular problem, accounting for 112,000 cases in 2007. (Reuters)

— A meta-analysis of previous studies found that antidepressants show little or no effect among those with mild or moderate symptoms, with less than one point improvement on a depression rating scale (Wall Street Journal)

— A study found that children without siblings were the only group in 2008 that met the Healthy People 2010 target of 80% vaccine coverage. Researchers attributed the lower vaccination rate among multiple-child families to ‘Kodak syndrome’ – a term referring to how there are typically more snapshots taken of eldest children – with younger children’s vaccinations needs not being as closely tracked by parents. (Reuters)

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