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In yesterday’s Dispatch, we discussed the introduction of a bill called Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now, which seeks to provide financial and other incentives for pharmaceutical companies to invest in the development of new antibiotics to combat drug-resistant bacteria (superbugs).

When it comes to following public health directives, it seems that infants, toddlers and even those petulant adolescents are better listeners than grown-ups, as the 2009 National Health Interview Survey reveals that vaccination rates are low in U.S. adults. Data from the survey indicates a 7.4 percent decrease in total pneumococcal vaccination rates in adults between 19 and 64, and the decrease is more prevalent in minority groups.

Today’s front page of The New York Times featured an article on the alleged health dangers associated with cone-beam CT scanners, devices that are gaining widespread popularity among dentists and orthodontists for their 3-D imaging capabilities, efficiency and versatility.

Exercise helps protect people from colds, suggests a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. During two 12-week periods in 2008, members of a cohort of 1,002 adults who said they exercised at least five days a week had 43 percent fewer days with a respiratory tract infection than those who just exercised one day a week or not at all.

Electronic cigarettes are a “rapidly growing Internet phenomenon” that may pose unknown risks, two doctors and a researcher from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital write in an opinion piece for the Annals of Internal Medicine. E-cigarettes “may pose a risk as starter products for nonusers of tobacco,” could release dangerous toxins, and are unproven as smoking-cessation aids, write the authors, led by David W.

Be sure to read ACSH President Dr. Elizabeth Whelan’s op-ed in today’sNew York Post describing the fantastic gains scientists have made fighting breast cancer, transforming the disease from a “virtual death sentence” to a far less threatening condition.

Patients already using low-dose aspirin (baby aspirin) to protect against cardiovascular disease may also be reducing their cancer risk, according to a new study published online in today’s The Lancet. British researchers conducted a meta-analysis of more than 25,000 people from eight clinical trials testing the efficacy of baby aspirin (81 mg dose in the U.S.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside may as well tell smokers looking to switch to e-cigarettes to keep smoking regular cigarettes based on their study claiming that current versions of the cigarette alternative present a range of issues that pose possible public health risks.

An unintentionally amusing report entitled "On the Money: BPA on Dollar Bills and Receipts”, which was released yesterday by a radical advocacy consortium comprised of The Washington Toxics Coalition and Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, claims that 21 out of 22 dollar bills they tested contained trace levels of bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical sometimes alleged to be a causative agent for a slew of mysterious health maladies.

Yesterday marked another victory for e-cigarette manufacturer NJOY after a federal appellate court in Washington, D.C. unanimously upheld a lower court’s previous injunction against the FDA’s attempt to regulate the products as drugs or medical devices. The appeals court said that the e-cigarettes should instead be regulated under the less stringent 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which allows the FDA to control tobacco products’ packaging and marketing.

Remarkably little media attention has been given to some excellent news announced on Wednesday: U.S. deaths from heart disease dropped by 28 percent and those from stroke declined by 45 percent between 1997 and 2007, according to the American Heart Association (AHA).
This improvement reflects dramatic continued improvements in both the treatment and diagnosis of these ailments, says ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross.

The U.S. Senate yesterday followed the lead of the House of Representatives and passed legislation setting up a National Alzheimer’s Project within the Department of Health. The President is expected to sign the bill, which calls for a “War on Alzheimer’s.”
The plan aims to coordinate and augment efforts to develop drugs to delay or treat the disease and to discover means towards earlier diagnosis.

While the World Health Organization (WHO) reported yesterday that confirmed malaria cases in 11 African nations dropped by more than fifty percent over the last decade, these results were mitigated by a number of less welcome findings.

Josh Bloom, The New York Post, December 1, 2010
The 'pariahs' who tamed AIDS

Another study in Human Reproduction, which examined 13,815 Danish women, reported that women who smoked for part or all of their pregnancy bore daughters began menstruating at a slightly younger age than the daughters of non-smokers.Menarche is the age at which a girl has her first period.

The risk of both early- and late-onset macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness, increases with age but can be prevented, a new study published in the journal Opthalmology finds. After taking detailed images of the interior of the eyes of 5,272 people in Iceland aged 66 and older, researchers found that 11 percent of those in their late 60s had an early form of AMD, and this rate increased to 36 percent for people 85 and older.

Media darling and Duke University Global Health Initiative Professor Eric Finkelstein is back in the news with the release of a report in The Archives of Internal Medicine in which he and three colleagues present economic models in support of taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs).

ACSH staffers were disappointed with the science writing in a Los Angeles Times article claiming that the treatment of livestock with antibiotics threatens both animal and human health. Melissa Healy reported yesterday that the FDA found that U.S.-livestock consumed 29 million pounds of antibiotics last year.

Getting people aged 50 and older to adhere to colorectal cancer screening guidelines can be just as arduous a task as getting sugar-crazed kids to eat their Brussels sprouts, but a new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine finds that mailing patients a letter from a physician in addition to an informational brochure and DVD can increase screening rates at three months and keep the difference sustained for up to six months.

Celebrity Vitamin D advocate Gwyneth Paltrow may (or may not) have a legitimate deficiency of the nutrient, but the notion of a pervasive problem of vitamin D and calcium deficiency in U.S.

For women diagnosed with the localized form of breast cancer, ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a new study in The Lancet Oncology finds that treatment with radiotherapy and tamoxifen after surgery significantly reduces the development of the invasive disease and cuts the likelihood of local cancer resurgence.

In the first national physician survey conducted by the American Medical Association, study researchers found that 78 percent of the 2,400 participating physicians believe insurers mandate preauthorization requirements for an unreasonable list of tests, procedures and drugs. Health insurers often require physicians to ask permission first before performing a treatment, which consumes a significant amount of time and complicates medical decisions.

As we begin a new year, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) would first like to try and slay the demons and hobgoblins of the past year. We do this each New Year s Eve by making a list of the top unfounded health scares of the outgoing year. These bouts of hysteria are prompted by many different things. But what they have in common is that there s no scientific evidence to back up the alarms being sounded.
Here s our top ten:

Triple-negative breast cancer is typically difficult to treat because these cancer cells lack estrogen and progesterone receptors as well as large quantities of HER-2/neu protein, all of which are targets of existing drugs. This type of cancer affects approximately 15 percent of all breast cancer patients.

Pregnant women who smoke are ashamed to admit it. That’s the conclusion of a study using data from a recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which was conducted from 1999 to 2006. According to the results, 23 percent of pregnant women claimed they don’t smoke even though they had high blood levels of cotinine, a tobacco metabolite and biomarker of tobacco exposure.