Earlier today, President Obama nominated Regina Benjamin to become surgeon general. He pointed out that Benjamin hails from the small Alabama fishing village of Bayou La Batre with a mixture of whites, blacks, and Asians, a "diverse but poor rural community."

Besides describing the down-and-out health clinic she runs—destroyed by two hurricanes and a recent fire—Benjamin recounted her family's sad medical history in a Rose Garden statement following the nomination announcement: a mother who died of smoking-related lung cancer; an older brother, her only sibling, dead from HIV; a father befallen by diabetes and high blood pressure. "My family isn't here today because of preventable diseases," she said.

When it comes to breast cancer, there are certain dogmas that we accept as fact: First, a malignant tumor—allowed to grow unchecked—will eventually spread throughout the body and kill. Second, regular mammograms are a must for women over 40 to find every mass before it turns deadly. The trouble is, these "truths" aren't substantiated by scientific evidence. A new and somewhat shocking study out today shows that about 1 in 3 breast cancers detected on screening mammograms is overtreated. In other words, these malignancies wouldn't have caused symptoms or death in a woman's lifetime, according to research published in the British Medical Journal.

The study, reviewing data from women who began screening at age 50, specifically found that mammograms save 1 life for every 10 cancers that are diagnosed and treated unnecessarily. (Another study published three years ago measured 1 saved life for every 2 cancers unnecessarily treated.) What this means is that mammograms lead to far more unnecessary surgeries and chemotherapy treatments than saved lives. "The real question is, how hard should we be looking for breast cancer?" asks Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Research who wrote an editorial that accompanied the study. That's a toughie because most women wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that they might have a potentially deadly breast tumor lurking in their body undetected. And, as breast surgeon Susan Love previously told me, doctors aren't able to discern the deadly cancers from the benign ones.

This past spring, I spent several days at the University of Maryland Medical Center reporting on a piece about the art of medicine. It detailed how tough it is for doctors and patients to make medical decisions when the science is lacking to guide them. One patient I met was Miriam Smyth, a 51-year-old breast cancer patient from Gambrills, Md. She'd been diagnosed with a small breast tumor back in December and immediately decided to have a lumpectomy and radiation since her cancer had been caught early. But like so many other cancer patients, Smyth soon discovered that other treatment decisions aren't so easy to make.

Her first major dilemma—whether or not to have chemotherapy—was particularly difficult. "I assumed I wouldn't need it, had even decided not to tell my young son or coworkers that I had cancer," Smyth tells me. Smyth, an oncology researcher at the University of Maryland Medical School, thought she'd have her surgery over Christmas break and head back to work without missing a beat. But then she had a test called Oncotype Dx, which revealed that her tumor had certain markers that put her at somewhat higher risk of having a recurrence. Suddenly, chemotherapy was back on the table.

In recent conversations with friends, all I've been hearing about is swine flu. "I had it. I was sick for three days," one friend told me. Her middle child came down with a mild case as well. Another friend said she had to cancel her business trip to Germany after her daughter tested positive for the virus. She was warned that she could be quarantined in her hotel room if she came down with it while traveling; she spent the week indoors with her kindergartner who had a 48-hour sore throat and fever—but didn't wind up getting ill herself.

After hearing about my friends' experiences, I'm wondering why H1N1 is still big news. (Today, Reuters reports that 11 cases of H1N1 have appeared on a U.S. military base in Afghanistan! The country's only known pig was finally released from quarantine, "two months after he was locked away because of swine flu fears.") As of June 25, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that more than 1 million cases of H1N1 have occurred in the United States. "Yet the vast majority of these are mild cases," says infectious disease expert William Schaffner, chair of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. "Most people haven't been diagnosed because only the most severely ill are likely to be tested for the virus." In fact, he tells me, this flu virus has so far been only "slightly more severe" than seasonal influenza.

I couldn't help cringing yesterday when I heard a marriage therapist comment on Good Morning America about the state of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's marriage. "I see this all the time," marriage therapist Terry Real said on the broadcast. "The big secret . . . 'I'm not in love with my wife.' Not being in love with your spouse is part of marriage. It doesn't mean you're in a bad marriage . . . It's perfectly normal not to be in love."

Big news today: We're getting fatter. Obesity rates in adults increased in 23 states and didn't decrease in a single state over the past year, according to this report released today by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I suppose this news isn't so shocking, considering that the trend has been going on for some time. Two thirds of us are now overweight or obese.

You might think we'd lose weight during a recession, but actually the opposite happens. Healthful foods like fresh fruits and vegetables tend to be more expensive than pasta, chips, and other processed foods. So people counting every penny tend to turn to cheap, calorie-dense fare. The report states, "The current economic downturn is likely to push these numbers even higher as rising prices and constrained incomes make it more difficult for families to buy healthy foods." And of course, many of us choose sweet, rich comfort foods like ice cream and brownies when we're feeling stressed or down in the dumps.

[Photo Gallery: See the Top 10 Fat States Where Obesity Rates Are Highest]

While taking a little holiday in Manhattan over the weekend, I breathed in all the sights, sounds, and smells of Fifth Avenue and Central Park. Though I lived in the city 15 years ago, I'd forgotten about the crowds: swarms of people strolling along the sidewalks or clustering around street dancers who were doing flips and moonwalks in tribute to Michael Jackson. While I certainly enjoyed watching all the buff performers—especially those roller-dancing in the park—I found myself yearning for a bit of solitude. Even while wandering through 38 acres of Central Park "wilderness" known as the Ramble, I found I wasn't alone for more than 30 seconds.

Yesterday, actress Sarah Jessica Parker and actor Matthew Broderick welcomed their new twin daughters, born via a surrogate. Those of us who follow celebrity news are wondering: Are they the biological parents, or did they use donors for the eggs and sperm? (Alas, we may never know.) But 40-something women like Parker, who's 44, often need to turn to egg donors to have a baby because their own eggs have aged beyond the point of viability.

If that's you, a new website called Donor Network Alliance launched this week to pair couples with potential egg donors. Similar to a multiple listing for real estate agencies, the site includes listings from 20 different egg donor agencies. Prospective parents enter their search preferences—hair color, eye color, education level, race, nationality, religion, location—and out pops a list of potential donors, with their profile photos and a way to contact the agency representing them. "We have about 1,000 donors on our site now and plan to download 2,000 more over the next few weeks," says Robin von Halle, cofounder of the site.

Every health journalist who's been on the beat for a few years has reported on studies that appear to contradict each other. Vitamins, the cure for — no, cause of — cancer! Well two new studies about the risks of being overweight are sure to leave women scratching their heads. In one, obese women who had bariatric weight-loss surgery were found to have reduced cancer risks compared to obese women who didn't have the surgery. (Men, for some reason, didn't get the same benefit from the surgery.) In the other study, researchers found that those who were moderately overweight lived longer than normal weight individuals.

Just how much do our doctors really know when it comes to advising us about body weight? I'm beginning to realize that they may not know as much as they think. Certainly, there's no question that being 75 or 100 pounds overweight—aka obese—puts a strain on your heart, drastically increases your chances of developing diabetes, and probably moderately increases your cancer risks.

My gynecologist's office never calls to tell me my annual Pap smear is fine. And I've been guessing the strep test my 9-year-old son had 10 days ago was normal, since my pediatrician didn't contact me. But I'm mistaken in my assumptions and shouldn't rest easy. That's according to a new study published in yesterday's Archives of Internal Medicine , which finds that 7 percent of abnormal results aren't reported to patients. "You can't assume that no news is good news," stresses study author Lawrence Casalino, an associate professor of public health at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

Last February, I wrote that Planned Parenthood clinics had seen a 10 percent uptick in business because of women losing their health insurance and that women are swarming to these clinics for cut-rate contraception, Pap smears, and breast exams. Today, Planned Parenthood introduced an ad campaign, airing on cable news networks in the nation's capital, stating that every year the group provides 1 million cervical cancer screenings and 850,000 breast exams and also supplies immunizations, as well as contraception. "Ninety percent of what Planned Parenthood does is provide preventive and primary care to keep women healthy," the voice-over states.

The other 10 percent—abortions—goes unmentioned. I ask Cecile Richards, the organization's president, to explain why. She says the ad is aimed at policy folks involved in healthcare reform, those old guys in Congress (my words, not hers) who think the clinics only provide abortions. "Polls show that women generally know that Planned Parenthood provides STD testing and cancer screenings, but a lot of folks in Washington don't. We're trying to fill in information that they don't have."