Top stories in health and medicine this morning, February 20, 2012

This series is brought to you by MedPage Today.

1. Follow the Money: Pain, Policy, and Profit. The Federation of State Medical Boards, often develops guidelines that serve as the basis for model policies with the stated goal of improving medical practice but after its guideline for the use of opioids to treat chronic pain patients was adopted as a model policy, it asked Purdue Pharmaceuticals for $100,000 to help pay for printing and distribution that policy to 700,000 practicing doctors.

2. Treating Chronic Pain Fueled the Boom in Opioids. Prescriptions for narcotic painkillers soared so much over the last decade that by 2010 enough were being dispensed to medicate every adult in the U.S. around-the-clock for a month.

3. Signs of Autism Show Up on MRI at 6 Months of Age.... [via KevinMD]