HEALTH & FITNESS : BUILDING A BETTER ONION - LESS PUNGENT AND HEALTHIER.

While eating onions can help stave off heart disease, there's one major problem: onions can cause heartburn, especially if they are highly pungent.

Yet the more pungent the onion, the greater the heart-healthy benefits.

Realizing this dilemma, a group of folks at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are trying to build a better onion. Their goal: to breed milder onions with maximum blood-thinning properties by the year 2010.

Onions contain substances that help prevent blood clots from forming inside the walls of plaque-filled heart arteries. When these clots form, the result can be a heart attack.

Using genetic engineering, ``we hope that we can separate the pungent flavor from the anti-blood-clotting activity that helps thin the blood,'' said Michael J. Havey, a research geneticist with the USDA Agriculture Research Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Free cancer screening: Open up and say ``ahh'' for free.

From 2 to 4 p.m. on June 18, physicians affiliated with Northridge Hospital Medical Center are scheduled to offer free screenings for cancers of the mouth and throat, both easily treatable with early detection.

The screenings will be part of a comprehensive oral cancer program. In addition to screenings, a lecture will address risk factors, treatment options and when to seek medical help.

The program, sponsored by the Thomas and Dorothy Leavey Cancer Center, will be held on the fifth floor of the Roscoe Boulevard Campus, Institute for Living Building, Hale Penthouse Auditorium. Parking is $1 with validation. To make reservations or for additional information, call [phone].

Cocaine linked to crossed eyes: Among other health problems, babies born to mothers who used cocaine during pregnancy may be at increased risk of being cross-eyed, new findings suggest.

In a study of 55 children exposed to cocaine before birth and a control group of 100 unexposed children, 27 percent of the exposed children were cross-eyed compared with 7 percent of the others, reported researchers from the Illinois College of Optometry in Chicago and the Children's Hospital in Boston.

About 4 percent of the general population is cross-eyed, according to the study, published in the journal Optometry and Vision Science.