Whether it’s in preparation for an upcoming wedding or a high school reunion, many of us find ourselves seeking a quick path to weight loss.
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Yesterday the AP offered its readers a rather creepy story about at-home genetic testing intended to determine if children have certain genes associated with improved athletic performance.
Drug companies often exclude people with depression from clinical trials, even though it is well known among physicians that depression often coincides with other disorders. By purposefully eliminating this cohort from early testing stages, drug manufacturers hope to gain faster FDA approval, but they may be shooting themselves in the foot once the treatment is mass-marketed and its widespread effects are better known.
A new Wisconsin bill sponsored by state Sen. Sheila Harsdorf (R-River Falls) and Rep. Erik Severson (R-Osceola) — who is, sorry to say, a physician — aims to repeal a Department of Natural Resources (DNR) rule requiring all municipal water systems to disinfect their drinking water by chlorination. Although 88 percent of Wisconsin municipalities already chlorinate their water, the remaining 12 percent that comprise 66 municipalities don’t.
On March 7, the Medicare Rights Center in New York won a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS): a federal judge ruled the Medicare Part D drug coverage program is responsible for covering off-label use of drugs when treatment is medically necessary.
President Barack Obama acknowledged last week that the current FDA infrastructure is not capable of assessing recent advances in medicine and biotechnology. He calls for a modernization of the FDA that balances safety with economic interests in the creation of drug and medical device regulations:
Don’t let the Lexington-Herald Leader headline, “Madison County health board bans electronic cigarettes,” fool you. The Madison County Board of Health has actually added electronic cigarettes to their list of indoor smoking restrictions, perhaps due to an FDA warning in 2009 cautioning that the nicotine-delivery devices supposedly contain “toxic” ingredients.
In the developing world, more than 1,000 mothers and 2,000 newborn babies die each day from preventable birth complications. Many of these deaths could easily be avoided by providing pregnant women with trained midwives who can assist during birth.
Unemployed and looking for a lucrative job in New York City? Don’t mind long walks and occasional arrests? This may be a job for you: According to an article in The New York Times, smuggling and reselling cigarettes on the streets is a profitable practice.
Over the past few years, prostate cancer screening using the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test has received a lot of media flack while various health organizations and physicians struggle to outline specific guidelines for the exam.
ACSH staffers were pleased to encounter a variety of pieces defending vaccines as a vital public health practice. A book review in today’s The New York Times, for instance, features an excellent work by informed consumer and Vanity Fair Contributing Editor Seth Mnookin. The Times’ Dr.
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.
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.
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