Today's Globe: mastectomy decision, FDA on medical devices, mercury warnings, helping parents and children

A small but growing number of women with cancer in one breast are deciding to have the other one surgically removed to avoid the possibility that a tumor develops there in the future. A study published yesterday in the journal Cancer could help women and their doctors make decisions about such preventive mastectomies.

"One way to 'restore science to its rightful place,' as Obama put it, is to review drugs and medical devices thoroughly," a Globe editorial says. "And in a 'new era of responsibility,' the Food and Drug Administration will vigorously carry out its duty to protect the American people."

"What does the actor Jeremy Pivens have in common with over 300 million gallons of sludge, recently spilled from the waste pond of a coal-fired power plant in Tennessee?" Carl Lamborg and Christopher Reddy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ask in an op-ed piece. "Both have moved mercury from a lower rung in the Periodic Table of the Elements back into the headlines."

"Our society has bought into a belief that manipulating medications will fix ... complex problems," Claudia Meininger Gold, a pediatrician in Great Barrington, writes on the op-ed page. "With our overreliance on psychoactive medication, we have created another Ponzi scheme where, just as Bernard Madoff's investment fund was not really earning any money, we are fooling ourselves into thinking that we are helping these children in any significant way."