It's the time of year when we like to look back before we look forward.
So here's my list of the Top 10 health stories of the year that touched us locally. Please tell me if you disagree with my picks and if I missed any big stories.
10. The beloved state dessert, the Smith Island Cake, is declared one of the nation's least healthy foods by Health magazine.
9. Baltimore hires a food czar, Holly Freishtat, to help the city figure out how to better feed itself and cut down on obesity-related illnesses.
8. Four Loko, the caffeinated alcohol drink, is pulled off national and local store shelves.
7. Everyone is told to get a flu shot by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the first time.
6. A 12-year-old article in prestigious British medical journal that scared parents everywhere by making a link between autism and the mercury in childhood immunizations is retracted.
5. Haiti's earthquake devastates a city and mobilizes many people to offer their time, skills and money to help the needy.
4. A federal judge blocks funding for embryonic stem cell research, and scientists fear potentially life-saving discoveries are jeopardized.
3. A doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital is shot by the distraught son of a patient, who later killed himself and his mother.
2. St. Joseph Medical Center tells heart patients their stents may not have been necessary.
1. The health care reform law passes and begins to offer protections for consumers and the promise of coverage to the uninsured.
I got pretty close to this year-in-review list, compiled by the health editor here at The Sun. She also included bed bugs, doctor shortages, Mercy Medical Center's new hospital buidling and a record grant to the University of Maryland for celiac research, among other stories.