Daily Briefing: Big Fraud and Big Pharma, Early Births, and Safer Chemicals

Pharma Fraud: GlaxoSmithKline agreed to plead guilty to charges that it promoted drugs for unproven uses, failed to report safety warnings and engaged in other deceptive marketing, Katie Thomas and Michael Schmit report for the New York Times.

Health Reform: Five states and the District of Columbia have extended Medicaid to half a million people by taking advantage of Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, reports Sarah Kliff for the Washington Post.

Early Births: New research shows that children born at 37 or 38 weeks gestation are at greater risk of having lower math and reading scores than children born at 39 weeks or after, reports Alice Park for Time.

High-Protein Diet: A new study involving more than 43,000 Swedish women suggests that high-protein diets (like the Atkins Diet) can increase cardiovascular disease risk, reports Nicholas Bakalar for the New York Times. 

Bioaccumulation: An editorial in Environmental Health Perspectives outlines the strategy in the nascent search for environmental causes of autism. In the same issue, Valerie Brown explains why the new chemicals being synthesized as flame retardants may be no better than the old.

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Photo by Ian Wilson via Flickr