The AP reports that a quarter of the H1N1 vaccines produced in the US will be thrown away. Some believe that the World Health Organization may have overblown the issue.
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Doctors working for the WTC Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program are investigating the relationship between 9/11 rescue and recovery work and thyroid cancer. In a February 2009 court report, 51 cases of the cancer were claimed among the 10,000 cops, firefighters, hard hats and other plaintiffs suing the city.
Duff Wilson of the New York Times presents new CDC data indicating that the teenage smoking rate has not declined fast enough, failing to reach the goal of 16 percent by 2010. Currently, high school students make up approximately 20 percent of smokers.
An FDA advisory panel surprised observers Thursday by voting 10-to-6 to reject Vivus Inc.’s anti-obesity drug Qnexa, citing concerns of adverse side effects and unknown safety risks associated with its long-term use. The panel’s rejection is not final, and the FDA will make a decision on the drug’s market approval in a few months.
Alarm over new food technologies is increasing in the EU as the European Parliament asked for a ban against the sale of foods from cloned animals and their offspring last Wednesday.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) gets another red mark from ACSH for attempting to have three of the most commonly used food dyes banned by the Food and Drug Administration. CSPI claims that these dyes contain carcinogens and cause behavioral problems in children. Notably, the three dyes Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 are often found in sugary foods such as cereals, fruit drinks, and candy.
ACSH has received a number of responses to our coverage of CNN s Dr. Sanjay Gupta s claims that the food additives used in McDonald s Chicken McNuggets in China pose serious health threats.
For instance, ACSH trustee, Hoover Institution fellow, and former FDA official Dr. Henry Miller reminded us that Dr. Gupta was the Obama administration s first nominee for surgeon general, despite his talent for popularizing such pseudoscience claims.
After U.S. officials reported an alarming 400 percent increase in the number of Americans treated for prescription painkiller abuse over the last decade, the state of Washington has decided to take matters into its own hands. It’s developing regulations prohibiting physicians from prescribing high doses of painkillers to patients who are unlikely to benefit from them, but are likely to abuse them.
The millions of people taking calcium supplements to strengthen their bones may be increasing their risk of a heart attack, a study in BMJ has found.
ACSH staffers are amazed at the plethora of baseless scares making the news this week. Perhaps, as ACSH’s Jeff Stier predicts, this silly scare season is associated with activist rallying to promote legislation on the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA reform), including an effort by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to enact a BPA ban — or attach such a ban to the Food Safety and Modernization Act, now under consideration in the Senate, after languishing there for over a year after House passage.
Slate.com ran a story addressing the controversy over raw (unpasteurized) milk consumption, which public health officials have linked to 85 infectious disease outbreaks from 1998-2008. Advocates for raw milk argue, however, that “nature’s perfect food” tastes better and that public health concerns are overblown. Raw milk is banned in some states, but those that allow it impose strict regulations on the farms that produce it.
The front page of today’s New York Times business section features a topic ACSH addressed on July 9th — the transfer of anti-smoking funding toward anti-obesity efforts.
ACSH staffers made cruel fun of the sillier aspects of the new food guidelines on Tuesday, but today we have found something to praise. In Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times, addiction and alcohol expert Stanton Peele, Ph.D., J.D., lauds the addition of alcohol guidelines asserting that moderate consumption — defined as one to two drinks per day — may extend life expectancy and retard cognitive decline.
Just about every evening news channel publicized the possibility that nitrates and nitrites, preservatives found in cured meats, have caused an increase in bladder cancer.
Genzyme and Isis Pharmaceuticals have developed a new cholesterol-lowering drug, Mipomersen, which has demonstrated substantial efficacy in Phase III clinical trials but may cause liver problems in 20 percent of patients. Mipomersen is targeted towards patients with a genetic predisposition to elevated blood cholesterol levels (familial
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation performed with only chest compressions is just as effective — or perhaps moreso — as CPR that includes mouth-to-mouth breathing, according to two studies in the New England Journal of Med
In another obscure story from the CNN newsroom, anchor Fredricka Whitfield on Saturday asked Dr. Ava Shamban, a Las Vegas dermatologist, which ingredients consumers should avoid in their toothpaste or shampoo. Dr. Shamban showed proclivity for sophistry by responding that “there is absolutely an epidemic of cancer in this country, and we don’t know what contribution all of these products that we use to make yourself more beautiful or to brush our teeth — what they’re doing to us internally.”
ACSH staffers have been troubled over the unjust termination of our trustee Dr. James Enstrom from his professorship at UCLA s School of Public Health, where he has served for the past 34 years. Dr. Michael Siegel, a Boston University School of Public Health professor and ACSH advisor, comes to Dr. Enstrom s defense, arguing he was fired solely because his research findings did not align with the university s political agenda and environmental ideologies:
ACSH staffers breathed a temporary sigh of relief as a provision to ban BPA was omitted from the Food Safety Modernization Act by the Senate health panel on Thursday. The provision was originally introduced by Sen.
Sanofi Aventis rimonabant a diet pill approved but subsequently banned in Europe in 2007 was wrongfully pulled from the market because clinical trials assessing its cardiovascular benefits were prematurely terminated, according to an article published Friday in the Lancet.
A troubling denial of academic freedom at the University of California, Los Angeles: ACSH trustee Dr. James Enstrom has been terminated by a secret vote of the faculty after serving for 34 years as a faculty member at the UCLA School of Public Health.
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
Following positive results from studies in Asia and Africa on the efficacy of rotavirus vaccines in preventing severe rotavirus gastroeneteritis (RVG), international health experts are promoting the distribution of the vaccine in both continents. RVG causes diarrhea, vomiting and fever, and is responsible for the deaths of about half a million children around the world each year.
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