Today's Globe: business support for health plan, Caritas future, chlamydia, cloning monkey embryos, secondhand smoke

A majority of businesses in Massachusetts think the state's new health insurance requirements do not go far enough when it comes to small employers, according to a survey being released today that finds broad business support for the healthcare initiative.

The two scariest words from the Archdiocese of Boston on its struggling hospital chain are these: "go forward" - as in the church's Caritas Christi Health Care System is again pursuing an independent "go forward" strategy for the future, columnist Steve Bailey writes. "Get out," in fact, should be the strategy of choice for the community and for the church itself, and the sooner the better.

More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year, the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said yesterday.

Scientists in Oregon say they've reached the long-sought goal of cloning monkey embryos and extracting stem cells from them, a potentially major step toward doing the same thing in people.

Boston University professor Dr. Michael Siegel has just published a heretical paper in the journal Epidemiologic Perspectives & Innovations analyzing the purported effects of secondhand smoke, columnist Alex Beam writes. The work flies in the face of the received wisdom that 30 minutes' worth of secondhand smoke can cause heart attacks and strokes, wisdom that is prompting some cities to consider outdoor smoking bans.