Recognized for her roles in such popular movies as Almost Famous and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, actress Kate Hudson is now better known around the mommy blogosphere for committing what is perceived to be the cardinal sin of pregnancy: imbibing a glass of wine.
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The FDA is requiring drug makers of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blockers to include an additional warning to their product label, cautioning of an increased risk for Hepatosplenic T-Cell Lymphoma (HSTCL), a type of blood cancer primarily reported in adolescents and young adults on TNF blockers.
Last night, ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross and Lana Spivak attended the American Cancer Society s one-year anniversary celebration of Choose You, co-hosted by executive producer and Academy Award-winning actress Hilary Swank (photo below). Dr. Ross and Ms. Spivak caught a preview of Swank s documentary, Choose You, a film that captures the stories of women empowered to choose a healthy lifestyle that includes diet and exercise to help prevent cancer, particularly breast cancer.
According to an organization called the Environmental Law Foundation (ELF), Dr Soda Co., a refreshment services provider in California, is in violation of the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, otherwise known as Proposition 65.
As spring turns to summer, ACSH anticipates better beach weather, plenty of summer movie sequels, and a new seasonal scare from the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Well, the EWG has yet to disappoint us, and this time, they’re warning us about sunscreens that may contain phototoxic and “dangerous endocrine disrupting” chemicals such as retinyl palmitate and oxybenzone, respectively.
Newer antipsychotic drugs currently approved to treat schizophrenia are being increasingly prescribed for off-label indications, according to a study published in Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety.
Environmental Health News reports on a new study published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology alleging that exposure to the phthalate DINP (di-isononylphthalate) causes developmental abnormalities in rats. To get their results, researchers had to inject the rodents with phthalate levels that were from 300 to 90,000 times greater than the exposure level found in humans.
Remember all those environmental activist reports that cropped up around Earth Day, alleging that prenatal exposure to certain pesticides will decrease your child’s IQ?
For the second time in as many days, we’d like to give a tip of the hat to ACSH advisor and Boston University School of Public Health Professor Dr. Michael Siegel for his essays on two different smoking-related policies. As we noted in yesterday’s Dispatch, Dr. Siegel’s perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine considered the problematic issue of mentholated cigarettes.
A new report which can be found here makes a devastating and overwhelming case that DDT spraying can save hundreds of thousands of lives every year and that UN and other NGO opposition to it is, as ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross puts it, “scientific fraud, as the authors document with copious evidence.” For any readers who may still have doubts about the issue, we suggest examining the evidence.
A business article published yesterday by The New York Times alerts us to a profound worry: FDA over-regulation of the medical device industry is driving companies in this business overseas to countries like China, India and Brazil. The approval process for new medical devices is not only more difficult and time-consuming in the U.S.
Previous studies have suggested that certain pain-relieving drugs, with the exception of aspirin and acetaminophen, may increase the risk of heart attack or death from a cardiovascular event. The drugs under suspicion are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents (NSAIDs). Now a new study published in the American Journal of Medicine and led by Dr. Anthony A.
What are the top ten unfounded health scares this year?
New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley launched a new campaign this week to counter obesity in the city: smaller portions. Cut your portions. Cut your risk, one poster states, depicting an overweight diabetic man whose leg has been amputated. The campaign takes note of the correlation between increased serving sizes of food and increased obesity rates over the past several decades.
If we frequently promote useful smoking cessation aids such as smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes, it s because there are promising signs that these methods deliver a much higher quit rate than the methods that are conventionally promoted which have frustratingly low rates of success.
Urinary tract infections (UTI) are common enough, but a study just published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that doctors too often prescribe antibiotics for bacteria in the urine when a patient s condition does not actually warrant it.
In his TobaccoAnalysis blog, ACSH advisor Dr. Mike Siegel, professor at Boston University s School of Public Health, reports on the FDA s Center for Tobacco Products latest initiative to compile a list of the ingredients found in cigarettes and cigarette smoke. This endeavor, he says, is a pointless waste of time and resources, since there is nothing the agency can actually do with the list that would benefit public health.
Last week, we watched incredulously as the very popular TV personality, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former physician, continued to insist that there may be unsafe levels of arsenic in the apple juice parents are serving to their children. Despite the FDA and other experts stepping in to clarify that Dr.
In keeping with the unimpressive success rate of conventional smoking cessation aids, cytosine, an anti-smoking drug first marketed in 1964, has only an 8.4 percent success rate among smokers, according to the first large modern study of the drug published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers in Poland analyzed data from 740 volunteers who were accustomed to smoking 10 or more cigarettes a day.
Exciting results from a final stage clinical trial of an experimental malaria vaccine reveal that African children s risk of contracting malaria after being vaccinated was reduced by half.
Called RTS,S or Mosquirix, the GlaxoSmithKline-developed shot was administered in three doses to half of a group of 6,000 five-to-17-month-olds in seven sub-Saharan African countries, while a control group received other vaccines and not the malaria vaccine.
Radiation following breast conserving surgery for women with smaller cancerous lesions is beneficial in terms of both recurrence and mortality, according to the results of a large meta-analyis of 17 studies published in The Lancet. The analysis was performed by researchers from the Early Breast Cancer Trialists Collaborative Group.
Alyssa Pelish in Science Magazine, October 28, 2011
For the Democracy of Science
ACSH staffers have long known that the adverse health effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT), according to the 2002 Women s Health Initiative study, were dramatically overstated. Despite this, the public response to this report was drastic: Based on the widely publicized results of that research, 93 percent of U.S. women ceased using HRT or did not obtain a new prescription.
New Vaccine May Give Norovirus the Heave Ho
By Josh Bloom, December 9, 2011
LigoCyte, a small biotech based in Montana has been working for years on a vaccine for norovirus (the so-called stomach flu, or cruise ship virus). And it looks like they may really have something.
Pagination
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