The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating five deaths and a heart attack for possible links to consumption of Monster Energy drinks, an agency spokeswoman said Tuesday.

"I can verify that FDA has received five adverse event reports of death and one of heart attack possibly associated with Monster Energy drink," the FDA spokeswoman, Shelly Burgess, said in an email.

Pakistan has witnessed a sharp drop in the number of families refusing to get their children vaccinated against polio, officials said Monday, while lamenting that nearly half a million children were left unvaccinated.

"The number of refusing families has declined (44 percent) from 80,330 during the first national polio round held in January to 45,122 in October," the World Health Organization, the U.N. and the government said in a joint statement.

Feed your children plenty of fruits and vegetables but don't fret over whether they're organic or not if you're on a budget, U.S. experts said Monday.

While organic foods have lower pesticide levels, they also have the same vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other nutrients as their conventional counterparts.

Obesity rates in young people in Britain appear to be going into reverse, a top gathering of health officials heard Monday, as the message on the risks of being overweight seems to be getting through.

Presenting research on obesity in Britain, Klim McPherson from Oxford University told the World Health Summit in Berlin that people aged 16 to 29 had generally tended to be less overweight or obese in recent years.

Women's health advocates set out their plan Monday to put a copy of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" in the office of every lawmaker on Capitol Hill, 41 years after the guide to the female body was published.

By doing so, they're aiming to check the danger that senators and congressmen in Washington -- and the vast majority are men -- might give short shrift to science when forging legislation that impacts on women's health.

The parents of an 8-year-old boy who has had severe brain damage for years have sued a Chicago hospital, alleging that doctors pronounced their son dead, keeping him off his ventilator for hours, even though relatives continued to insist that the boy's eyes and body were still moving.

The lawsuit filed this week by Sheena Lane and Pink Dorsey on behalf of their son, Jaylen Dorsey, accuses Mercy Hospital and Medical Center of negligence in the February incident and alleges that nearly five hours passed before staff agreed to perform a cardiac ultrasound, which showed Jaylen Dorsey's heart was beating.

An investigative panel on Monday rejected a contested French study linking transgenic corn to cancer in rats but called for a "long-term, independent" probe into the product to advise the public.

The Higher Biotechnologies Council (HCB) said it found "no causal relationship" between the rats' tumors and consumption of Monsanto's NK603 corn or the Roundup herbicide that was part of the experiment.

A controversial study that linked genetically modified corn to cancer in lab rats is a "scientific non-event," six French scientific academies said on Friday.

"This work does not enable any reliable conclusion to be drawn," they said, adding bluntly that the affair helped "spread fear among the public."

The maker of Banana Boat sunscreen recalled 23 spray-on products Friday saying there was a risk they could catch fire on one's skin, after reports of five people being burned in the U.S. and Canada.

Energizer Holdings said it was recalling its popular continuous spray sunscreen "due to a potential risk of product igniting on the skin if contact is made with a source of ignition before the product is completely dry."

The death toll in a wave of poisoning from methanol-tainted alcohol in the Czech Republic rose to 30 on Friday as a 66-year-old man fell victim to lethal bootleg liquor, the Czech CTK news agency reported.

On October 3, he was admitted to hospital in Brno, a major city about 200 kilometers east of the capital Prague, after drinking the Tuzemak-brand of Czech rum he had purchased for an unusually low price at a gas station, police in the city said.