Although they’ve been around for years, tanning beds have thus far escaped much regulation — even though the American Academy of Dermatology has stated that they cause a 75 percent increase in the risk of the dangerous skin cancer melanoma. Further, the Academy says the risk increases with each use. The FDA this week proposed [...]
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You may want to think about having a snack before you go grocery shopping. According to new research published in JAMA, going grocery shopping on an empty stomach may actually result in more high-calorie food purchases. Researchers at Cornell University conducted a two-part study. The first part, conducted in a lab, involved 68 participants who [...]
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The approach to fighting obesity using appetite suppressants came to a screeching halt in 1997, when Wyeth, the maker of the wildly successful diet drug phen-fen, was forced to withdraw the drug after the FDA received numerous reports of heart valve problems and also some cases of pulmonary hypertension, a rare but often fatal lung [...]
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Kudos are due to the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune for their stand against a proposal to levy a penny-an-ounce tax on a wide variety of beverages — including sports and energy drinks and bottled teas, among others. The monies raised via these proposed taxes are aimed, ostensibly, at helping the fight against [...]
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Josh Bloom in The New York Post, 5/3/13 "Searching for the wrong miracles"
The US pharmaceutical landscape has changed rapidly and radically over the past decade with dire consequences. Companies have exited en masse from research in traditional disease areas, plunging headfirst into cancer research.

An infant has died of whooping cough in Florida a tragedy that underscores just how important it is to get vaccinated.
The 6-week-old baby boy was too young to have gotten his first pertussis vaccine, but not all of his family members were up to date with theirs, Sarah Matthews, an epidemiologist for the Orange County Health Department, told the Orlando Sentinel.

The drip-drip-drip of scare stories, tirades and advertisements warning us about toxic, hazardous and cancer-causing chemicals has turned into a deluge of late. It is impossible to watch a TV news show or read a magazine or turn on your computer without being warned, over and over again, that if we don’t do something, the sky [...]
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It’s no secret that the world is facing a terrible scenario as antibiotics that used to be very effective in treating bacterial infections are failing one by one due to the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria. And as if this problem wasn’t bad enough, the cessation of most antibiotic research by major pharmaceutical companies all but guarantees that this problem will become far worse. [...]
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