The Obama administration announced on Monday that health insurance plans must cover birth control with no copays, among other reproductive health care services, as preventative care for women. The requirement will apply to health care plans beginning on or after August 1, 2012. The announcement comes just a month after Health and Human Services released a recommendation that sought to expand preventative services for women under Obama's health care law.

Abortion bans! Mouse hemophilia! Diabetes growth! Botox alternative! HIV testing! Undercover patients! Drug warnings! Weight loss! And having AIDS just got a little harder! It's your Monday Health Watch, where we watch your health—dangerously!

The FDA's main plan to getting Americans to give up the vile weed "tobacco" is to put increasingly nasty photos in increasingly prominent places on cigarette packs, until it simply becomes too socially awkward for anyone to carry around cigarettes. This will not work. But it's entertaining to watch the process! "Entertaining" meaning "nasty."

Looking for new ways to stymy your appetite? Try the FDA's Food Defect Action Levels Handbook, a great new diet book guide for food distributors and inspectors. It details exactly how many maggots a comestible good may contain before it gets banned for "aesthetic" reasons, i.e., "being too icky."

The Food and Drug Administration has issued a caveat today, reminding consumers that any hand sanitizer or antiseptic product claiming to be effective against antibiotic-resistant infection is telling you a Bald. Faced. Lie.

A new FDA rule will force tobacco companies to disclose any changes they've made to their wicked products in the last four years. Hassle! Interference! Big government out of flavor country! But there is some great news for Newport smokers.

After messing it up the first time around, the Senate has passed its big food safety bill.

Last year, the FDA released a report that said mercury fillings are totally harmless when lodged into your head forever. But yesterday, an advisory committee told the FDA to look at new data that might suggest otherwise. Go figure.

The Johnson & Johnson unit that produces Rolaids® has issued a nationwide recall of the "Softchews" line of the antacid drug after people reported finding pieces of wood and metal inside. Nothing fights stomach pain like tiny metal "particles"!

The swift collapse of Four Loko's empire now has the backing of White House narcs. Barack Obama's drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske — boo! — supports the FDA's effective ban on these comical caffeine-and-alcohol hybrids. We are the lamest country, ever.

Under a law signed by President Obama last June, all cigarette packs sold in the U.S. must have anti-smoking messages covering 50% of the front of the package starting next year. Here's what the FDA is proposing.

Once-promising diet drug Qnexa was rejected by the Food and Drug Administration yesterday because its side effects can include "suicidal thoughts, heart palpitations, memory lapses and birth defects." Well, that sounds like every other drug commercial on TV, doesn't it?

Unlimited health care! Avandia outlawed! Mammograms dismissed! MS pills! Safe sex banned! Fat Canadians! Overweight college girls! And scary AIDS facts! It's your Thursday Health Watch, where we watch your health—while eating and sexing, all at once!

Good news for mutants everywhere: The genetically-modified AquAdvantage® salmon has cleared a major hurdle in its slow migration toward the inside of Americans' stomachs. The FDA says that the AquAdvantage® salmon "is as safe as food from conventional Atlantic salmon."

Hey, America: Time to get excited! Why? Because a year and a half from now you could be eating the very first genetically-modified animal approved for public consumption: The AquAdvantage® salmon! Assuming it passes the approval process, which began Wednesday.

Now that BP's oil well is plugged, government scientists can start looking at what 1.8 million gallons of the chemical dispersant Corexit did to the environment, and seafood in the Gulf of Mexico. The FDA says don't sweat it!

The FDA just found that a daily pill to fight obesity really works. Before you jump with joy (if you can even get off the ground, fatty), note that you can't buy it because the FDA's worried you'll go crazy.

In 1983, to keep HIV out of the blood supply, the Food and Drug Administration banned any man who had sex with another man after 1977 from donating blood. Next month they might finally strike the discriminatory law.

ExtenZe brand 'male-enhancement supplement'* has hired former Dallas Cowboys coach Jimmy Johnson as its new spokesman. He will talk about how a pill made his penis bigger in ads. *(These claims have not been evaluated by the FDA.) [AdAge]