The blog will be on hold for a few days over the holidays. But first, here is my list of the top ten stories in health, health care, medicine and science over this past year.

1. Conflicts of interest in health care, medicine, research (just one example: the recent news from the Cleveland Clinic)

2. Avian flu (including hype of unproven Tamiflu)

3. Medicare’s prescription drug benefit – “greatest advance for seniors in 40 years� or “a boondoggle�?

4. Medicaid cuts – impact on states

5. Fallout from aggressive marketing of Cox-2 inhibitors

6. Science stifled by Bush administration

7. Drug prices continue to outpace inflation

8. Continued cost-shifting to employees (AKA consumer-driven health plans)

9. What’s going on at the FDA?

10. Lots of news about two people – Terri Schiavo and Peter Jennings – but relatively little news about 45-million Americand who are uninsured and perhaps twice that number who are under-insured.

A year from now, it would be terrific if the contents of this list would be markedly different.

A special tip of the hat to ABC News for last night's one-hour special, "Peter Jennings Reporting: Breakdown — America's Health Insurance Crisis." It was the last report Jennings worked on before he died.

"Over the course of Peter's long career at ABC News he made more than 60 prime-time documentaries, many of them covering public health issues. He had planned for this broadcast to be the first of a series confronting the problems in the American health-care system — a subject he believed was critical to all Americans," said Tom Yellin, executive producer of Peter Jennings Reporting.

With an estimated 45-million Americans without health insurance, it should not be unusual to see such primetime coverage of an embarrassing national issue -- but it is unusual.

While the report was not perfect (it lacked continuity, appeared to be glued together somewhat hastily after Jennings' death, and relied too much on too few interviewees), it was still television worth watching. Especially since the other networks at that time were airing "The Apprentice," and "Without a Trace."

That troublesomely fuzzy TV ethics line just keeps getting fuzzier.

The Star Tribune reports on Minneapolis station KARE joining a list of other Gannett-owned stations around the country that charge advertisers to talk about their products on a talk show. Advertisers will pay KARE $2,000 to $2,5000 for 5-minute segments on the show. Station news veterans will host the paid-for appearances. My University of Minnesota colleague Jane Kirtley calls this a "logical extension of the whole pernicious practice of infomercials."

The Washington Times reports on that same Gannett trend and on an even more troublesome practice. The Times reports that WUSA in Washington charged the D.C. government as much as $100,000 a year to promote breast cancer awareness during the station's newscasts. So here's a station wrapping itself in the pink ribbon of breast cancer awareness while demanding a premium fee to do so.

Let me remind you: the Radio-Television News Directors Association code of ethics has clauses that dictate that professional electronic journalists should: "Not accept gifts, favors, or compensation from those who might seek to influence coverage; Determine news content solely through editorial judgment and not as the result of outside influence; Recognize that sponsorship of the news will not be used in any way to determine, restrict, or manipulate content; Refuse to allow the interests of ownership or management to influence news judgment and content inappropriately."