Many artificial food dyes that colour everything from breakfast cereal to ice cream should be banned because they pose cancer risks, a new report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest says.

"These synthetic chemicals do absolutely nothing to improve the nutritional quality or safety of foods, but trigger behaviour problems in children and, possibly, cancer in anybody," said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson, co-author of the report, Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks.

With the new financial year upon us, business information research and analysis group IBISWorld has compiled its annual list of Australian industries set to fly and fall in the next 12 months. According to IBISWorld, organic farming will be the biggest winner in 2010-2011 as Australians consider the health benefits and environmental impacts of their food choices.Whereas most of the world’s developed nations remain bogged down by the fallout from the ongoing global financial crisis, Australia’s outlook for the new financial year is relatively positive says IBISWorld, with it forecasting Australia’s economic growth to reach 3.7% in 2010-2011.

Children conceived through IVF treatment are 42 per cent more likely to develop cancer in their early years, the largest study of its kind has found.

Concerns have been raised that children born after fertility treatment are at greater risk of complications, congential malformations and infertility problems themselves but this is the first time a significant association with cancer has been found.

Ever wonder what really qualifies as science?

As in the case with the pharmaceutical industry, the studies that are done, at least here in the United States, are paid for by the companies trying to get approvals for their drugs. Then often, the products generally do a little better than placebos (or at least in the trials given to the government). But they also come with a load of side effects that are sometimes many times worse than the problem the drug is supposed to correct.

A new government study finds a 400 percent increase in the number of people admitted to treatment for abusing prescription pain medication.

The increase in substance abuse among people ages 12 and older was recorded during the 10-year-period from 1998 to 2008. It spans every gender, race, ethnicity, education and employment level, and all regions of the country.

All Americans, by 2014 will be required to have an individual obesity rating electronically recorded. It has been determined that under the new health stimulus law passed by President Barack Obama recently, that all Americans, by 2014, will be required to have electronic health records which will include their height, weight and body mass index (BMI).

Scientists searching for the Holy Grail of a vaccine against the incurable AIDS virus say recent encouraging steps should now galvanize efforts to use limited funds in smarter ways to drive the field forward.

International AIDS vaccine advocates said recent studies showing first evidence of vaccine-induced protection in humans and evidence that drugs designed to treat AIDS can also be used for prevention were signs of a "renaissance" in the search.

A federal jury in St. Louis awarded $500,248 on Wednesday to a farmer who claimed that he and his family had lost just over $1.5 million when genetically modified rice contaminated the U.S. rice supply.

The trial, which lasted more than three weeks, is the fifth trial in federal and state courts in which farmers have been awarded damages. In all, hundreds of lawsuits filed by thousands of farmers and others against Bayer CropScience have alleged that the release of LibertyLink, a herbicide-resistant rice, into the rice supply cost farmers millions.