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After decades of relentless rise, the number of new cases of diabetes in the United States has finally started to decline. The rate of new cases fell by about a fifth from 2008 to 2014, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the first sustained decline since the disease started to explode in this country about 25 years ago. The drop has been gradual and for a number of years was not big enough to be statistically meaningful. But new data for 2014 released on Tuesday serves as a robust confirmation that the decline is real, officials said. There were 1.4 million new cases of diabetes in 2014, down from 1.7 million in 2008. (Tavernise, 12/1)

When the government launched what would become most influential survey to monitor the nation’s public health, there were just 75 questions — and 95 percent of those asked agreed to sit for it. But that was nearly 60 years ago, and the National Health Interview Survey has mushroomed along with the government and its interests. There are now 1,200 potential questions, and the average family takes more than 90 minutes to complete the survey. (Stobbe, 11/30)

Hundreds of scientists and ethicists from around the world gather in Washington this week to debate the boundaries of human genome editing, sort of a biological cut-and-paste tool that allows researchers to spot a gene defect inside living cells and swap it out. It's all experimental so far, but the promise for new treatments is huge. The ethical quandary: Should it also be attempted in human embryos, altering a gene in not just one person but his or her descendants? Already, China has reported the first laboratory experiment with embryos to start learning how. (Neergaard, 12/1)