Monsanto is one step away from receiving FDA approval for their genetically modified soybeans that will produce omega-3 fatty acids. The new soybeans will be used to produce Monsanto’s brand “steridonic acid (SDA) soybean oil” to fortify consumer food products, such as cereals and baked goods. “This could be a beneficial, genetically improved product,” says ACSH's Dr.
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In a surprise ruling, the FDA determined last week that tobacco product maker Star Scientific Inc. is free to market and sell its Ariva-BDL and Stonewall-BDL dissolvable tobacco lozenges independent of FDA regulation since the products do not fall under the jurisdiction of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.
In March, ACSH challenged the validity of a proposal by New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg to prohibit the purchase of sugar-sweetened beverages with food stamps. The New York Times covered the same topic yesterday in an article titled “Soft Drink Industry Fights Proposed Food Stamp Ban,” which ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross points out is a bit misleading.
According to a new study published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, mortality due to hypertension is decreasing, yet it s still greater in people with high blood pressure compared to those without. Study author Dr. Earl S. Ford, medical officer with the U.S.
ACSH staffers would like to give two thumbs down to the Cleveland City Council for recently passing some “extraordinary” public health bills. The first one will ban the use of trans fat in prepared foods in Cleveland restaurants, while the second is an outdoor smoking ban. Residents will no longer be able to light up in city-owned public parks, recreation areas, swimming pools, picnic shelters, public squares and some malls.
Falls are the leading cause of injury among people over the age of 65, and according to the CDC, it affects one in three adults each year. Jack Mills, a continuous quality improvement specialist for the Lake County Health Department’s Population Health Services, emphasizes that falls have “really a life-altering and quality-of-life-altering impact on older people,” which is why the Lake County Health Department established a Falls Prevention Task Force to disseminate prevention and awareness pamphlets to seniors.
As an unscientific follow-up to last week’s interminable “toxic sugar” story is another chemophobic rant from The New York Times. This time it’s about chemicals involved in the hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) process used to release natural gas from shale deposits deep underground.
In February, ACSH commended the efforts of North America’s only “safe injection site” — Insite — for successfully reducing the number of new HIV infections in Vancouver, B.C. by 52 percent since 1996. Now a new study published in The Lancet shows that Insite is also contributing another form of harm reduction: decreasing the number of deaths from drug overdoses.
The use of mammograms has decreased ever since the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) made a controversial recommendation in 2009 advising women in their 40s to wait until age 50 to get routine mammography screenings, and then only every two years.
In a victory for embryonic stem cell (ESC) researchers, a U.S. appeals court has ruled that the Obama administration may continue to federally fund ESC studies using embryos that would otherwise be discarded. The story began in late August when U.S. District Judge Royce Lambeth ruled in favor of two adult stem cell scientists who sued the NIH, arguing that federal funding of ESC research would violate U.S.
The FDA has just approved a new diagnostic test that will expedite the time needed to confirm a methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. Whereas current MRSA tests take up to 48 hours to generate results, the BD GeneOhm StaphSR test, developed by BD Diagnostics, can detect MRSA within five hours of culturing a sample.
In 2007, a large 33.5-million-dollar trial, known as the COURAGE trial, found that percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) offered fewer benefits over drug therapy for the treatment of stable heart disease.
A potential ban on menthol cigarettes got some momentum, based upon three studies published in the latest edition of The American Journal of Public Health.
A new study published in The Lancet finds that hydroxyurea, a cancer drug which has been used used to treat sickle cell disease in adults and adolescents since 1995, is also safe and effective for infants. Researchers — part of a team led by Dr. Winifred Wang of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis — studied 193 infants and toddlers, ages 8 to 19 months, at 14 U.S.
Is there a link between smoking and blindness? If you weren’t aware that there is, it’s probably for lack of a national awareness campaign. Smoking is indeed causally associated with a number of visually impairing eye diseases, including cataracts and age-related macular degeneration, but a recently released international study in the journal Optometry found that most people simply aren’t aware of the risk.
Is your doctor’s necktie transmitting resistant bacteria to your hospitalized loved-one? Quite possibly. The New York Legislature is currently considering a bill that would prohibit all health care professionals from wearing neckties or jewelry, which have long been known to carry bacteria.
Another misguided but bombastic effort ostensibly about the fight against childhood obesity comes in the form of a letter to McDonald’s Corp that asks the franchise to stop marketing “junk food” to kids, and, specifically, to retire Ronald McDonald. The letter, signed by “more than 550 health professionals and organizations,” is being run as a full-page ad in six metropolitan newspapers in the U.S.
The number of urban and suburban emergency room shut-downs has increased by 27 percent between 1990 and 2009, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And even though you think you may be safe because the ER nearest you is still operating, think again: Closures of nearby ERs will undoubtedly affect your own quality of health care.
Just as it's not advisable to purchase your prescription medications online, it's probably not a good idea to find your drug highs there either. Published in the journal Drug Testing and Analysis, Dr.
Physicians — and consumers — should be aware of particular Ayurvedic medicine products that have been associated with two recent New York City cases of lead poisoning in adults. This report from the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene offers a full advisory in regard to Pregnita, Vasant Kusumakar Ras with Gold and Pearl and Mahashakti Rasayan.
On his tobacco blog, Tobaccoanalysis.com, ACSH scientific advisor Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences, Boston University School of Public Health, addresses the misleading claims of a recent article published in Tobacco Control, in which the authors reprimand the tobacco industry for not doing enough to lower the levels of tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs) in cigarettes over the years.
Though today’s New York weather may not look it, spring is in the air and summer is fast approaching. For many, this means that it’s time for spring cleaning. However, as is pointed out in a USA Today article, this season is also a time when many people sustain preventable injuries during their cleaning. For instance, the U.S.
There is a reliable means of reducing the risk of permanent disability from a stroke, though many stroke victims may not act quickly enough to receive it. A clot-dissolving drug called tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) has been approved by the FDA since 1996, but it is used by only a very small percentage of stroke victims, most likely because it must be administered within a few hours of stroke onset in order to be effective.
We were shocked and disappointed to read that an average 40 percent of pregnancies in our country are unwanted or unexpected. Based on a 2006 state-by-state pregnancy intention survey — the first of its kind ever conducted — out of 86,000 women who gave birth and 9,000 who had an abortion, the study found that the highest rates of unwanted and unplanned pregnancies occurred in the South, Southwest and in states with large urban populations.
Although some version of the intrauterine device (IUD) has been available for female contraception since the 1970s, side effects both large and small prevented most women from considering it a valid option. However, advances in design and usage have resulted in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists formal endorsement of the device for all healthy adult women.
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