Last week, life was complicated enough for poor Daniel Hauser.  He was a 13-year old kid with Hodginks Lymphoma, stuck at the center of a heated court case. At issue: could his parents refuse chemotherapy and radiation in favor of nutritional supplements?

Now he's still all those things, plus a hostage—or a fugitive, depending on how much autonomy one gives a sick teenager. Either way, Daniel Hauser is dealing with a lot more stress then your average 13-year-old cancer patient should have to endure.

 Share your take on lines the state should never cross, plus a family's obligations to their faith after the jump

Mein Liebling: German scientists may have uncovered the first representation of modern woman, and they're pretty sure it's a sex toy. The figure - what the novelist Tom Harris might call "a woman and a half in every direction" - rocks some serious curves, and is thought to have been carved over 35,000 years ago. Pros: a testament to beauty and sex appeal in women of all sizes, throughout time. Cons: It's been over 35,000 years of women as porn objects. I need coffee.  (BBC)

The Color of Money: National Geographic released a survey of environmental consumer habits from across the globe. Anyone who's paying attention could predict that on the color-coded chart of greeness, Americans were more of a sickly, pale, yellow-y chartreuse. Surprisingly, Europeans were only  a light kelly hue, while the dark, rich, life-affirming green was found mostly in China and India. This suggests that communism and extreme poverty help shoppers make inadvertently smarter eco-choices. To wit: Indians get high scores for repairing things rather than throwing them out, while Americans are dinged for their high use of private cars. (National Geographic)

Sugar Shock When was your last physical? Feeling sluggish and thirsty? Maybe it's time to get your blood sugar checked. Twenty-three million Americans have diabetes, and one-quarter of them don't realize it. One of the experts for the piece cited people's fear of complications -- and their shame in having an "overweight disease" as part of the problem:

Some people fail to get tested because Type 2 diabetes is often associated with being overweight and sedentary. "People think it's their fault, but that's not true," Dr. Goland says. Roughly 20% of the people with Type 2 diabetes are thin, and 75% of obese people never get it.

 In my ever-growing quest to figure out just how obesity affects health - and how shame affects healthcare - this stuck out at me. (WSJ)

Smoking Kills (Women) Last week, we linked to a report that associated darker skin color with nicotine addiction: melanin in the skin makes one more susceptible to the dangerous effects of cigarettes. Now, research presented at the American Thoracic Society's general meeting shows that "women who smoke develop lung damage earlier in life than men, and it takes less cigarette exposure to cause damage in women compared with men." In part, this could be because women on average are smaller than men, but smoke cigarettes of the same size, meaning they're absorbing more smoke and chemicals per cigarette. (MSNBC)