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Bulgaria and Romania, the two poorest nations in the European Union, tried to bolster revenue by increasing excise taxes on cigarettes — with Bulgaria even reversing a national ban on smoking in cafes and restaurants. But their cigarette tax revenue, which accounted for approximately 10 percent of Bulgaria’s revenue last year, has actually decreased by almost a third so far, since smuggling cheaper cigarettes from neighboring countries has created a growing black market.

In the Reproductive Risk Factors for Incontinence Study at Kaiser (RRISK), researchers found that mothers who never breast-fed were nearly at double the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes (T2D) compared to women who had never had children after studying 2,233 women — 1,828 of whom were mothers — between the ages of 40 to 78 in California.

Following our original predictions last Thursday, the national recall of 380 million eggs due to salmonella contamination has since increased to more than 550 million eggs.
FDA head Margaret Hamburg tells The Associated Press that consumers can protect themselves from getting sick by thoroughly cooking eggs and avoiding “runny egg yolks for mopping up with toast.”

Middle-aged women who average just one alcoholic drink a day may be nearly doubling their risk of a certain type of breast cancer, according to a study of

After the American Heart Association came out with a strong statement against the use of smokeless tobacco as a smoking cessation aid, Dr. Gilbert Ross sent them this letter on Sept. 23:
Re: Piano et al, "Smokeless Tobacco Products and CVD"

Increasing the tax on alcohol could make us all healthier by reducing drunk-driving deaths, cutting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and lowering violence and crime, a new meta-analysis claims.

Following an FDA investigation which found trace amounts of a contaminant — an aromatase inhibitor — in the “muscle building” supplement ArimaDex, the manufacturer Genetic Edge Technology voluntarily pulled the supplement off the market. Aromatase inhibitors are a class of drugs that block the synthesis of estrogen, which have been used in the treatment of breast and ovarian cancer in postmenopausal women.

Activist groups yesterday urged an FDA advisory committee to recommend mandatory labels for Aquabounty’s genetically-engineered Atlantic salmon, to distinguish it from conventional salmon.

A less-aggressive type of surgery to treat early stage breast cancer is just as effective as the standard, more extensive treatment, according to a new study.

USA Today reports that a new study “strongly” links adult diabetes to air pollution exposure — even where pollution levels fall below EPA safety limits.

Balance, leg strength, and impact training may help protect high-risk elderly women from sustaining hip fractures, according to a new study published in yesterday’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission is in over its head with complaints filed by toy makers who argue that they should be exempt from the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which requires children’s products to undergo stringent and expensive safety testing to ensure reductions in the amount of lead and phthalates used following an influx of lead-tainted toys imported from China in 2007.

New proposals to tax sugary beverages and create stricter regulatory policies for restaurants are unlikely to reduce obesity, according to economic analyses published in the Cato Institute’s current issue of Regulation, something ACSH has been saying all along.

ACSH staffers over the weekend received commentary from a reader condemning our recent praise for Dr. Paul Offit after she mistakenly confused his rotavirus vaccine Rotateq with Rotashield. While Rotateq remains on the market as a highly effective vaccine, Rotashield was removed from the market over ten years ago after a very small number of children developed obstructed bowels, even though the vaccine likely prevented thousands from getting sick from rotavirus.

His new title could be the King of New York City Bans. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to institute yet another proscription, requesting permission from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to bar the city’s 1.7 million food stamp recipients from using the stamps to purchase sugary drinks. Mr. Bloomberg believes the demonstration project would aid in curbing the city’s obesity epidemic, which New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley and New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Richard F.

Only 5 percent of Americans perform vigorous physical activity in any given day, according to a study published last week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

A new retrospective analysis by the U.S. government of all influenza vaccines administered to pregnant women over the past 20 years shows that they are quite safe.

Wendy s fries continue to lose taste tests to McDonald s, so they ve decided to reformulate for the first time in 41 years by upping the sodium content with sea salt. Compared with regular salt, sea salt has larger granules that pack more flavor with each dash, yet instead of adding less sea salt to achieve the same sodium levels, it s actually making their fries saltier.

Tobacco companies such as Philip Morris International (PMI), spun off from Altria Group Inc. in 2008 to expand the company s foreign market share and evade American regulation and litigation, have assumed the role of big, bad bully on the foreign block. The companies and others like it are using expensive lobbying campaigns and lawsuits to prevent ad restrictions, larger health warnings and higher cigarette taxes from being enacted in countries like Brazil, the Philippines and Mexico.

After New York Times columnist Ariel Kaminer conducted a risk-to-benefit analysis of seasonal flu shots in her most recent article, ACSH staffers ran a similar analysis and concluded that while Ms. Kaminer’s science-based discussion on the safety of the vaccine is a good for her readers, the article’s headline “Flu Shots: No Panic, Just ‘No’” is not.

The number of U.S. adults with diabetes will escalate from the current rate of one in 10 to as many as one in three adults by 2050, a new analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in the journal Population Health Metrics predicts. According to the study authors, a largely aging population, an increase in high-risk minorities, and people with diabetes living longer are all causes that will contribute to the projected increase.

There s more and more beneficial and lifesaving drugs on the market, so it should be no surprise that more Americans are taking them. But a New York Times article on a study the National Center for Health Statistics released six weeks ago sensationalizes and misrepresents the data.

In our October 15 Dispatch, we reported on an early breakthrough antiviral drug combination developed for oral treatment of patients infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV). The experimental drug RG7128 was predicted to clear HCV infection in 8-12 weeks with minimal signs of the relatively (very) unpleasant side effects of current treatments, or drug resistance.

Pregnant women may need to keep their hands off of Mr. Peanut if they don’t want to predispose their infants to an increased risk of peanut allergy. In a new study of 503 infants aged 3 to 15 months with suspected egg or milk allergies or with eczema and positive milk or egg allergy tests, blood tests revealed that 140 infants had a strong sensitivity to peanuts.