Originally published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
When an FDA panel voted to reject a new weight-loss drug this fall, many observers were outraged.
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As ACSH's Dr. Elizabeth Whelan was exposing the health hoaxes of last year, the EPA chose to end the year by initiating a campaign calling for schools across the country to replace old light fixtures containing PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls). Might this be another health scare based on faulty science? Among those who promptly questioned the practicality of the non-binding proposal were New York City officials.
Last week brought news through the Associated Press of the death of Ronald Lee Herrick, the first man ever to successfully provide an organ to another patient in a transplant operation. One of Herrick’s kidneys was implanted into his identical twin brother in December 1954. His brother lived for another eight years after the operation.
ACSH’s comprehensive assessment, Cigarettes: What the Warning Label Doesn’t Tell You, offered data showing that smoking increases infertility and rates of miscarriage among women. That book was first published in 1996.
Thanks in large part to FDA over-regulation, there is a paucity of new antibiotics. Yet antibiotic-resistant bacteria run rampant worldwide, ACSH’s Drs. Josh Bloom and Gilbert Ross write in an op-ed published in National Review Online. The number of new antibiotics being approved is negligible, and currently only four companies manufacture 80 percent of the world’s vaccines. Dr. Bloom and Dr. Ross point out that the FDA is mostly to blame for this predicament:
Physicians should exercise extra caution when prescribing antidepressants for older patients since they could negatively react with or cause adverse side effects when combined with other drugs, finds a new study by Thomson Reuters, the University of Southern California, Sanofi Aventis and others, published in the American Journal for Geriatric Psychiatry.
A report in Tuesday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal reveals that more than one-fourth of all American minors are on prescription drugs. These drugs range from hypertensive and asthma medications to anti-psychotics and drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
A triad of studies from the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium brings welcome word from the breast cancer research arena.
A just-released study about the dietary habits of American children offers a window into some of the problems of contemporary parenting.
Here’s a surprise: researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health reported that higher intake of whole fat dairy products correlated with a lower incidence of type II diabetes in adults aged 65 and older. Published in yesterday’s Annals of Internal Medicine, the study analyzed data from a cohort of approximately 3,700 Medicare-eligible patients.
Looking (once more) to garner attention, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) made a considerable media splash after they announced yesterday that they were starting a lawsuit against McDonald’s. CSPI and California mother Monet Parham are going after Ronald McDonald and friends with mysterious claims that the toys found in the fast-food restaurant’s Happy Meals violate consumer protection laws.
Dissatisfied with the pace of new drug development by the pharmaceutical industry, the federal government is establishing a research center devoted to expediting drug discovery beginning this October.
On Thursday, the FDA will consider whether to downgrade the classification of the devices used to deliver electroshock therapy (or electroconvulsive therapy, ECT) to the “medium risk” category, thus waiving the need for new safety testing prior to entering the market.
Though less shocking than the prospect of electroconvulsive therapy, a new, recently FDA-approved antidepressant appears to have a significantly lower risk of sexual side effects. Sold under the brand name Viibryd and intended for major depression, vilazodone is a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), plus it’s a dual mechanism medication that also affects the 5HT gene.
A meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology indicates that the world’s most widely prescribed blood pressure medication, hydrochlorothiazide, is only a little more than half as effective in treating high blood pressure as newer classes of drugs like ACE inhibitors and calcium channel blockers.While over a 24-hour period ACE (angiotensin converting enzyme) inhibitors were shown to reduce patients’ systolic or “top” blood
On average Americans live several years fewer than people in a number of other developed countries like France and Japan. This may seem puzzling as Americans spend more on health care, and American patients do, in fact, live longer following diagnosis of cancer and a number of other serious diseases. Well, a report from the National Research Council released yesterday presents a theory why this might be.
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Shingles is an often painful and blistering skin rash caused by the varicella-zoster virus — the same virus responsible for chickenpox — and is most common in people over 50. That’s why a new study on Merck & Co.’s Zostavax shingles vaccine published in the Journal of the American Medical Association brings good news as results reveal that the shot reduces the risk of shingles in older patients by 55 percent.
The FDA may issue stronger health warnings about acrylamide following the release of new toxicological information about the chemical, which is found in many foods when cooked at high temperatures. Because fried potato products are the main source of acrylamide in food, the potato industry is trying to develop new spud varieties that produce lower levels of the compound.
Confused by the story, ACSH's Dr. Josh Bloom asks, “How can you ban acrylamide if it’s formed naturally when you cook?”
While legislators on the East Coast were railing against the perils of teenagers guzzling caffeinated beverages, a radical environmentalist group called the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), accusing them of being lax on pesticides.The ostensible legal grounding for the suit lies in the Endangered Species Act.
Efforts to reduce health care spending should not come at the cost of fewer drug options, ACSH’s Dr. Gilbert Ross argues in an op-ed featured in yesterday’s Des Moines Register.
Yesterday brought news that smokeless tobacco manufacturer Star Scientific had issued a press release saying that they would ask the FDA to formally acknowledge that their new moist smokeless tobacco product, called Stonewall Moist-BDL, was 90-99 percent lower in carcinogens than those offered by their competitors.
Yesterday the world learned that Dr. Andrew Wakefield is a fraud. British Medical Journal released the results of its investigation documenting the premeditation of Wakefield and his lawyer as co-conspirators who were attempting to extort compensation from vaccine makers. The investigators found that Dr. Wakefield concocted his findings to aid his attorney-partner’s lawsuits. He was paid $675,000 for this. The exposure of Dr.
The New York State Assembly health committee is about to vote on a bill to outlaw e-cigarettes. Yet both the proposed legislation and the hearings on it appear to be founded on a series of fallacies, reports ACSH advisor Dr. Michael Siegel. He writes:
The New York Times reported on Friday that an FDA advisory panel recommended the approval of an imaging test for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) which can detect plaque build-up in the brain and provide early warning of the first signs of the disease. AD currently affects five million Americans, and the figure is likely to rise rapidly as the population ages.The agency usually follows the recommendations of these panels.
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