Many thanks to one of our readers for calling attention to an error in yesterday s Dispatch. In our story covering the Consumer Product Safety Commission s (CPSC) new voluntary guidelines for the allowable level of cadmium content in consumer products, ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross questions whether the CPSC conducts its own research. But as it turns out that, according to our knowledgeable (but shy) Dispatch reader:
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The Associated Press is calling it the most hopeful day in the history of the AIDS epidemic. Yesterday there was news of a new daily pill that dramatically reduces new infections; the pope approved condoms as the the lesser of two evils for preventing HIV infections; and the United Nations declared that the number of new HIV cases worldwide had dropped by a fifth over the past decade.
The vast skepticism held by many Americans about vaccines may be the reason why in excess of 70 million doses of H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine were left unused in the spring of 2010, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Even when word of the H1N1 pandemic broke out last year and fear of the virus was widespread, fewer than half of all adults surveyed were willing to get vaccinated.
Beginning in March 2011, the European Union will outlaw the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in the manufacture of plastic baby bottles, and their import and sales will be proscribed in June 2011.
Labeled an “estrogen-like chemical” and “endocrine disruptor,” BPA was banned from baby products in Canada earlier this year.
By a vote of 73 to 25, the Senate yesterday passed the Food Safety and Modernization Act. The bill, which was opposed by TV news commentator and Tea Party activist Glenn Beck, among others, will now be up for consideration by the House of Representatives. The bill would give the FDA the power to mandate food recalls — authority it has not previously possessed. Its stated aim is to improve procedures assuring food safety.
(Originally published in Forbes.com, Nov. 17, 2010)
Britain's health secretary just made a historic announcement.
In late October Andrew Lansley announced that the British government's drug rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), would be stripped of its power to refuse new medicines based on cost.
We hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving feasts last week. For those concerned about the safety of their meals, the National Review Online’s The Corner publicized ACSH’s Holiday Dinner Menu — now in its 28th year of circulation — in an op-ed by ACSH’s Dr.
The efficacy of India’s anti-malaria efforts are being called into question following the publication of a recent study showing that malaria kills 13 times more Indians than previously estimated by the WHO. Published in The Lancet last month, the study, co-funded by the Center for Global Health Research and U.S.
Dendreon’s pricey metastatic prostate cancer drug Provenge has won the approval of a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services advisory panel, which says the drug should be covered by Medicare. Cleared for U.S.
If pharmaceutical drugs were able to compete in a high school popularity contest, then Merck & Co.’s new experimental cholesterol medication anacetrapib would be voted “most likely to reduce the risk of stroke, cardiovascular (CV) events and death.” The novel drug is able to increase high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the “good” cholesterol, while simultaneously lowering low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol.
Here’s a story that you probably didn’t read in your morning newspaper: An international panel of experts meeting in Canada has rebuked the numerous bodies in recent years that have restricted the common plastic hardening chemical bisphenol A (BPA). The panel has concluded that the levels of BPA circulating in the human body “are very low, indicating that BPA is not accumulated in the body and is rapidly eliminated through urine.”
The panel went on to say:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is on yet another health crusade — this time against salty soups. Hizzoner is spending $370,000 in city and federal funds on subway ads featuring salt spewing from a can of chicken and rice soup.
DDT was banned in the United States since 1972 as part of a worldwide campaign against the pesticide a crusade that has perversely (and we presume unintentionally) been responsible for the loss of millions of African children from preventable malaria deaths. But the excellent powder is now being blamed for thinning condor eggs in California well, one or two eggs, anyway.
Interesting juxtaposition in the pages of Yale Public Health. Page 6 of the fall 2010 issue reports on a study by Yale’s Jason M. Fletcher, Ph.D., that found increased taxes on soda and restricting sugary drinks from school vending machines are having a “negligible effect” on childhood obesity. Kids just find substitutes or buy soft drinks elsewhere, thestudy found.
There’s good news when it comes to treating tuberculosis. New therapies are on their way to treat patients with hard-to-treat drug-resistant forms of the infectious lung disease, the director of the World Health Organization’s Stop TB Department says.
ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross has been a busy man. Yesterday he presented ACSH’s position paper on the mentholation of cigarettes to an FDA panel considering a ban on the products. He also had an op-ed in Forbes.com on how the U.S.
ACSH staffers were troubled — again — by a Los Angeles Times article covering a new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives that claims children born to mothers who live “near freeways” have twice the risk of autism. The association only held between autism and freeways — not major roads.
If enacted, a new proposed policy by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would restrict where and how genetically modified (GM) crops may be grown. This would be a significant and troubling shift for the agency. The USDA appears to be responding to protests from anti-biotech activists and organic farmers.
Just 24 hours after New York Times editors launched their attack on Happy Meals as irresponsible corporate activity, the paper’s Science section printed an article implicitly endorsing a range of ideas which can best be described as based on magical thinking. The article depicts the travails of radiologist and breast cancer specialist Dr. Marisa Weiss. Some years ago, Dr.
Josh Bloom, National Review Online 12/21/10
New Antibiotics, Stat!
Two opinions set forward in the last few days by Consumer Reports magazine suggest that, as ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan puts it, they should stick to testing cars.
The last few days have also seen the announcement of two major breakthroughs with regard to the identification and prevention of infectious diseases with major impact in the third world, especially Africa. We refer to a new, low-cost meningitis vaccine being made available in the developing world, and approval of a new and better test for tuberculosis (TB).
Might there be a relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and levels within the body of the good cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL)?Today’s edition of the Archives of Neurology includes a study performed at Columbia Univers
Five years ago, environmental activist Erin Brockovich was awarded the Harvard School of Public Health’s Julius B. Richmond Award — their highest honor for the promotion of public health — for her legal efforts to expose the undisclosed leaking of chromium (VI) (hexavalent chromium) by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) into the water supply of the California desert town of Hinkley. Allegedly, this was the cause of a spike in cancer cases among the town’s residents.
Many people may find it surprising to learn that China s 300 million smokers consume a third of the world s cigarettes. But then 60 percent of Chinese men smoke an average of 15 cigarettes per day. The result, according to the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung disease, is that smoking-related diseases cause one million Chinese deaths each year, and this number is projected to double by the 2020.
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