updated 7:52 AM EDT, Thu March 15, 2012 CDC unveils graphic anti-smoking ads STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Washington (CNN) — Federal health officials are unveiling Thursday a $54 million national media campaign to get smokers to quit and prevent anyone else, especially children, from starting.

The campaign, called “Tips From Former Smokers,” is intended to educate Americans about the dangers of smoking through the stories and graphic pictures of ex-smokers who have suffered severe health consequences of tobacco use.

The former smokers profiled have suffered ailments like stroke-related paralysis, limb amputation, lung removal and heart attack.

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• There are a small number of well-known athletes, including Martina Navratilova, Carl Lewis and Mike Tyson, who follow a vegetarian or vegan diet. The range of sports that include top level vegetarian athletes is broad and includes bodybuilding and Ironman triathletetics, so clearly it is possible to achieve competition level peak fitness on a diet of this type. If this is a nutritional regimen that you would like to work with, one place to start for advice is The American Dietetic Association (ADA).

Steve Fisch 

Russ Altman and his colleagues found a way to sift through reportts of medication problems to identify “true” side effects.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy answer. Clinical trials are designed to show that a drug is safe and effective. But even the largest trials can’t identify irksome or even dangerous side effects experienced by only a tiny proportion of those people taking the drug. They also aren’t designed to study how drugs interact with one another in the human body — a consideration that becomes increasingly important as people age and their medicine cabinets begin to overflow.

Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have devised a computer algorithm that enabled them to swiftly sift through millions of reports to the U.S. Food and

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Adela Garcia took home her second title of 2012 and her fifth Fitness International title in her career. Adela was the odds on favorite to leave Columbus with the title and she delivered. The more surprising story line of this years events were the placings of the others in the top spots. There were more than a few surprises when the results were read off on Friday night at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium.

It was pretty clear that Adela was the winner of the physique round as she typically has been in the past five years. She was noticeably improved from her showing at the FLEX PRO two weeks prior to this event.

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