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As most virology experts predicted (including ACSH's Dr. Josh Bloom), an FDA advisory panel voted to recommend that Victrelis (boceprivir), the first specific antiviral drug for hepatitis C, be approved by the FDA. The vote was unanimous, which is unusual. This reflects the urgent need for the drug, which has excellent efficacy, a good safety profile, and fills an unmet medical need.

The Linn County, Iowa Board of Supervisors will vote next month on whether to ban the sale of dissolvable tobacco products. They allege that such a ban will “protect children,” claiming that some of the tobacco products’ packaging resembles candy or breath mints. We beg to differ.

Twenty-five years ago today, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian SSR in the former Soviet Union near the Polish border exploded, causing a global frenzy of fear and panic. It was the worst nuclear power plant accident in history at the time. The incident raised concerns over the safety of the nuclear power industry and the potentially adverse health effects associated with it, and now the world faces similar questions in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan.

It’s bad enough when grown-ups use untested and unapproved supplements. But now, new research published in the journal Pediatrics found a surprisingly high rate of herbal supplement use among infants. The 2005 to 2007 study suggests that the prevalence of such use (including herbal teas) in the U.S. was between 3 and 10 percent.

Previously, ACSH has emphasized that older men diagnosed with prostate cancer should not be rushed off to a radical prostatectomy (removal of the prostate and seminal vesicles). But today we learned that for younger men — those under the age of 65 — diagnosed with early prostate cancer, a prostatectomy may be better than watchful waiting (WW) when it comes to both prostate cancer-specific and all-cause (total) mortality.

All the common misconceptions about stem cell research have reared their ugly heads in an ongoing dispute in Minnesota that pits businesses against a so-called anti-cloning proposal that we thought had died an ignominious demise when we last skewered it. But no, it’s alive! And it’s even being advanced in the state Legislature as part of an omnibus education bill.

An article in today’s Los Angeles Times reports that women who begin to take hormone replacement therapy (HRT) at the onset of menopause (often called peri-menopause), around age 50 or so, and take it for five years or less, run fewer risks than benefits, including relief from hot flashes and pain during sex, as well as reduced bone fractures.

Asthma rates in the U.S. have increased over the past ten years, according to the CDC. However, as Ileana Arias, principal deputy director of the CDC says, no one quite knows why: the increase of 4.3 million Americans with asthma since 2001 comes even as air quality has increased and smoking rates have decreased. And since researchers have adopted different means of measuring asthma incidence in the population, a direct comparison to rates in the 1990s isn’t possible.

In yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, William Weir offers a thorough overview of the dangers of increasingly prevalent counterfeit drugs. It’s a topic ACSH covered in its 2006 report, Counterfeit Drugs: Coming to a Pharmacy Near You.

We here at ACSH have persistently advised Americans 50 years of age and older to have a colonoscopy at intervals recommended by the G.I. experts, and we have detected sub-optimal rates of these cancer-preventing procedures.

Dr. Gilbert Ross in The American Spectator, May 11, 2011
The hijacking of Earth Day

A study just published in the journal Diabetes Care found that diabetic men and women were 10 percent more likely to have had a cancer diagnosis of any kind. Researchers from the CDC, using data from a telephone survey of nearly 400,000 adults, found that 16 to 17 out of every 100 diabetics have cancer — a rate significantly higher than the seven per 100 men and ten per 100 women found among non-diabetics.

President Obama claimed Tuesday that air pollution from coal can cause asthma in children. Speaking at a town hall event in Annandale, Virginia, the President said that while coal is ”very cheap, it’s also dirty.

Speaking of snus, three members of the Swedish Parliament recently wrote a letter to the editor of the Swedish newspaper Göteborgs-Posten, requesting that the E.U. lift the ban against Swedish snus. The writers argue that, while the E.U. considers the sale of snus outside of Sweden illicit, all other oral tobacco products are fully legal and loosely regulated — a policy that, Dr. Ross says, is among the most ironic.

SimplyThick, a product used to thicken breast milk and formula, should not be used to feed premature babies, the FDA warned yesterday. According to the agency, the additive may cause life-threatening damage to children’s intestines. Since May 13, 15 cases of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), with symptoms of abdominal bloating, greenish-tinged vomit and bloody bowel movements, have been reported in addition to two deaths.

The CDC and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) have a number of upcoming meetings scheduled to discuss whether to endorse a new meningitis vaccine for infants. Though nothing on the CDC website mentions the cost of the vaccine as part of the agency’s deliberations, one of the groups invited to the meetings, The Keystone Center, received a letter which effectively says just that.

Even though its been decades since numerous international governmental health authorities approved the use of aspartame as a food additive, the European Commission is not satisfied with the abundance of studies on the matter and is asking the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) to conduct and expedite yet another re-evaluation of the artificial sweetener by July 2012.

Today is World No Tobacco Day, and the media have commemorated the occasion from a variety of perspectives. The New York Times today features an article focusing on new state laws that seek to ban or limit hookah use, which many teens and young adults wrongly believe is a safer alternative to cigarette smoking. Paul G.

Results from a large international phase III clinical trial conducted at 104 centers in 12 countries brings exciting news to some melanoma patients, and to medical progress as well. At the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting, researchers announced that treatment of melanoma with a therapy that targets a specific genetic mutation had an “astounding” 63 percent reduction in the risk of death in patients with the BRAF V600 mutation, which is found in about 90 percent of melanomas.

The most recent trend in sleep aids comes not in capsule form but in the crumbs of a baked good. Melatonin, a hormone secreted by the pineal gland near the brain, is involved in regulating the sleep-wake cycle. It is now being folded into batches of pre-packaged brownies and cookies marketed as Lazy Cakes and Lulla Pies in a variety of convenience stores and online.

ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross made a guest appearance on Dr. Barry Dworkin s radio show, Sunday House Call, which can be heard here. The two spoke at great length about today s often media-driven and pervasive fear of chemicals chemophobia particularly in reference to pesticides and vaccines. Dr.

A recent Reuters Health story, headlined “Vitamins won’t prevent pregnancy complication,” reported on the failure of vitamins C and E to prevent preeclampsia (a serious elevation of maternal blood pressure late in pregnancy) when taken prenatally. However, ACSH's Dr.

A new study should allay the fears of women who take osteoporosis drugs. The Swedish study, just published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that the class of drugs known as bisphosphonates (including Fosamax, Boniva, Actonel, Atelvia, and Reclast) caused only one atypical femoral fracture for every 2,000 people who used them in a year.

Bayer’s Yaz and Yasmin, two popular brands of birth-control pills that contain drospirenone (a synthetic progestin), are currently under investigation by the FDA, the agency announced Tuesday.

The number of young adults with high blood pressure appears to be on the rise. Nineteen percent of 14,000 men and women between the ages of 24 and 32 had a blood pressure reading of 140/90 millimeters of mercury or higher when it was measured at their home as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (known as Add Health).