I am of two minds on the court decision Monday striking down the New York City Board of Health’s ban on the sale of sugary drinks over 16 ounces one day before it was to kick in. I applaud both the judge’s ruling and the mayor’s  resolve.

The ban was declared “arbitrary and capricious” by New York State Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling, whose ruling called attention to the ban’s loopholes, which “effectively defeat the stated purpose of the Rule.” Judge Tingling was referring to the fact that the ban limited sales at some locations (restaurants, movie theaters, and food trucks) and not others (corner convenience stores and supermarkets), that some sugary drinks were included and not others, and that there were no limitations on refills of smaller cups. The judge also ruled that the city Board of Health exceeded its powers in passing the ban. That power, Tingling argued, should lie with New York’s City Council.

Mayor Bloomberg has promised to appeal, calling the ruling  “totally wrong.”

On the one hand, I applaud the court. The ban was public health at its worst — a potentially disaffecting policy that lacked compelling evidence of  benefits that might justify it.

Yes, there is absolutely no nutritional reason for consumers to drink such an obscene amount of soda in one sitting. And, yes, there is strong evidence that soda consumption is playing a significant role in the obesity epidemic.

By Michael Yudell

Results of an important study out of Spain published last week in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine suggests that a “Mediterranean Diet” supplemented by additional extra-virgin olive oil or nuts significantly lowered the risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or dying from heart disease.

But despite the media brouhaha—headlines like “Tasty Diet Curbs Heart Disease, Study Finds” and “Mediterranean Diet Study Rocks the Medical World”— the study's implications for you and me are still unclear.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a valuable study, the largest of its kind to date. And it confirms earlier research showing that the Mediterranean Diet — a high intake of olive oil, nuts, vegetables, and cereals; moderate consumption of fish and chicken; low consumption of dairy, red and processed meats, and sweets; and drinking wine in moderation with meals — can be effective in moderating cardiovascular risks.

By Michael Yudell

Whether you are rooting for Anne Hathaway’s gritty performance as mother-turned-prostitute-turned martyr Fontine in Les Misérables, or Bradley Cooper’s breakout performance in Silver Linings Playbook, you should also be thinking about something else while watching Sunday’s 85th annual Academy Awards — the Academy’s “Best Picture” nomination of the deeply troubling and historically inaccurate Zero Dark Thirty, Katherine Bigelow’s cinematic exploration of the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

From senators to famed Hollywood actors, critics have pounded the film for its glorification of torture and for suggesting that torture played a critical role in finding bin Laden, when the evidence suggests it did not. Does this film really deserve the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “recognition of the highest level of achievement in moviemaking”? Let’s review.

Unlike most historical films that begin with the qualification “Based on Real Events,” Zero Dark Thirty ups the ante, introducing us into the world of CIA interrogations and Al Qaeda with much less qualification. It is “Based on Firsthand Accounts of Actual Events.” By selling itself as something more than fictionalized history, Zero Dark Thirty suggests it’s something it is not. As Steve Coll has written in the New York Review of Books, the film “aligns its methods with those of journalists and historians, and it appropriates as drama what remains the most undigested trauma in American national life during the last several decades” (referring, of course, to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001).

By Michael Yudell

Earlier this month the United States Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed new minimum sound standards for hybrid and electric vehicles traveling under 18 miles per hour, a speed at which such cars travel in near silence. Under the new regulation, hybrid and electric vehicles will be required to produce a sound that pedestrians would be able to hear clearly, and one that will be easily recognized as coming from a vehicle.The NHTSA’s proposal is now open for public comment through early March, after which the agency will formulate its final regulation.

The new standard, a requirement of the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act (PSEA) of 2010, is necessary because at low speeds, with only the electric motor propelling it, hybrid and electric vehicles travel almost silently, resulting in a potentially dangerous situation for the blind and visually impaired who need to hear a car coming to avoid harm. The rule also protects cyclists who also depend on the sounds of an approaching car to stay safe.

According to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood,“Safety is our highest priority, and this proposal will help keep everyone using our nation’s streets and roadways safe, whether they are motorists, bicyclists or pedestrians, and especially the blind and visually impaired.”

By Michael Yudell

“We will respond to the threat of climate change knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” an emboldened President Obama declared in his inaugural address Monday. Following the disconcerting absence of climate change from campaign 2012 and limited climate policy action during his first term, the president has finally told us that not only will he act, but that we (and he) have an obligation to do so. What could be more important, after all, than acting on behalf of our children and future generations?

But the New York Times is already reporting that, even in the wake of the president’s eloquence on the imperative to act now, his path forward will be a restricted one. Instead of focusing on comprehensive legislative change, Obama will use the power of his office to administratively “reduce emissions from power plants, increase the efficiency of home appliances, and have the federal government itself produce less carbon pollution.” He can do this by directing the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, to issue regulations to decrease coal power plant emission, a move likely to face a litany of court challenges.

These types of actions build on Obama’s important but limited success on climate change from his first term. The rise in fuel standards for cars and trucks will help reduce the amount of carbon and other climate-warming pollutants spewed into the atmosphere. And the United States is on track to reduce, over the next seven years, its carbon pollution by 17% (from 2005 levels), just as Obama promised at the Copenhagen climate talks four years ago.

By Michael Yudell

President Obama's speech and executive orders were an important step forward to address gun violence. The president affirmed both his support for the Second Amendment and his commitment to quickly reduce gun violence in the wake of the national tragedies in Newtown, Aurora, Oak Creek, and Tucson.

As we’ve written here before, gun violence is a public health problem, and the president’s proposal — ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines, improve mental health services, close background check loopholes, and make schools safer — treats it as such.

Any changes to gun laws, including banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines, will have to be taken up by the legislative branch, and the president promised on Wednesday to push Congress to do just that. It will be a hard road ahead to pass such legislation, but hopefully our elected officials pay attention to the national mood on gun safety matters.

By Michael Yudell

Late last month my wife and I packed up the car with our two girls and dog and headed south for Grandparents-palooza. It’s our annual weeklong visit to South Florida, a land where the pastrami is neither too lean nor too fatty, drafts seem to be everywhere, and we get to leave the kids with the grandparents for a few nights of parents-of-young-kids' most precious commodity: uninterrupted sleep.

With all the shuffling around between two sets of grandparents' homes and cars, and watching my mom and father-in-law try to install car seats with some twine, Elmer’s Glue, a power drill, and lots of T.L.C., I realized just how difficult it is to properly install a child safety seat. And reading up on the topic, I discovered just how often it's not done properly, even when you think it is – and how dangerous that ignorance can be.

Problems installing car seats are not limited to my parents’ generation, a time before these things were commonplace. I like, many of you out there, went home from the hospital in my mother’s arms, not a special seat. Today, if you have a child young enough to ride in a car seat, the chances are that it – and/or your child – is not correctly restrained. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “3 out of 4 car seats are not used correctly.”

By Michael Yudell and Jonathan Purtle

Approximately 3.9 million babies will fondly recall 2012 as the year they were born in the United States. The year will hold a special place in their hearts for an estimated 78.5 years—the average life expectancy at birth in the U.S. Their chances of living beyond that estimate, and their quality of life as they age, will be greatly influenced by the issues that we write about on this blog—the issues which fall within the purview of public health.  Here are some of the top public health issues that we, and perhaps a cohort of 3.9 million, will think of when we reflect back on 2012. 

Fracking: While not an animal in the Chinese zodiac, 2012 was the year of the guinea pig in Pennsylvania.  As The Public’s Health’s expert panelist Bernard Goldstein described, Pennsylvania has volunteered to serve as the proverbial guinea pig of the Marcellus Shale natural gas extraction experiment.  Limited regulatory oversight, tax incentives, and an absence of research have allowed for the practice of hydraulic fracking to generate quick state revenue while its health consequences remain “inconclusive.” Like a guinea pig in a scientific experiment, however, Pennsylvania is taking on extraordinary risk for short-term gains.   Neighboring states, which are exercising more caution in their fracking decisions, are likely to benefit from the knowledge that results from Pennsylvania’s fracking experiment. 

Violence: An estimated 16,000 people died from interpersonal violence in the U.S. in 2012—most of them youth.  While coordinated efforts to prevent the community violence which plagues many U.S. cities are lacking, the tragic mass shootings in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut have catapulted the issue of violence to the forefront of political agenda. What real change will come from this sudden burst of attention? Time will tell.  To be sure, discussions about tradeoffs between public safety and individual liberty and the role of collective responsibility for identifying and addressing mental illness will be central to any meaningful action.

In the wake of the awful tragedy in Newtown, Conn., some pundits are already trying to peer into the mind of the killer, making misbegotten claims about the cause and nature of his violent act.

On Wednesday, it was announced that Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, H. Wayne Carver II, had asked geneticists at the University of Connecticut department of genetics to investigate whether a genetic condition might have been associated with the shooter’s behavior.

And so on Thursday, The “Booster Shots” blog at the Los Angeles Times wondered, “Will Adam Lanza’s genes help answer the incomprehensible?” The blog focused on Fragile X Syndrome, a hereditary disorder associated with mental retardation, as a possible risk factor for his behavior, as well as possible genes for depression or aggression.

Is this a reasonable line of inquiry?