Finally, a government health care policy everyone can get behind: Written prescriptions are going the way of the iron lung. Indecipherable written prescriptions have long been a source of frustration for pharmacists and patients alike. Now, the federal government is taking steps to encourage doctors to prescribe electronically; starting this year, holdouts will see cuts in their Medicare reimbursements.

Dr. Ross heads off to Williamsburg, Va on Sunday, where a conference called Evidence-Based Science and Regulation of the Tobacco Industry is being held. While there, Dr. Ross will moderate two different panels, one titled Tobacco Harm Reduction and Medical-Ethical Issues, and the other called The Swedish Experience, which will discuss the role Swedish snus has played in lowering the rate of smoking-related diseases in that country.

Those who have had their cholesterol levels tested are typically informed that there are two types of primary importance: LDL, or bad cholesterol, and HDL, which is the good kind. And while much research has determined that reducing LDL protects against heart disease and cardiovascular events, some doctors have wondered whether raising HDL actually achieves the same effects. However, earlier classes of drugs (Pfizer s Torcetrapib, most notably) designed to increase HDL failed to demonstrate any beneficial effect, and were thus abandoned.

We ve long known about the beneficial effects of statins in secondary prevention that is, their ability to effectively lower LDL cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke among patients already diagnosed with heart disease. But what about their role in preventing such adverse events in people with no history of vascular disease (also referred to as primary prevention)?

Who ever thought that a morning cup of coffee, which so many Americans rely upon in order to jump-start their day, could also forestall a meeting with the Grim Reaper? Well, according to the results of a new prospective study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, coffee drinking is associated with lower total and cause-specific mortality.

In a unanimous decision, an FDA panel voted Tuesday to approve the first rapid, over-the-counter HIV test. Already in use in professional health care settings since 2004, the OraQuick HIV test uses a mouth swab and returns results in about 20 minutes. Although the home test has only a 93 percent accuracy rate, the FDA advisory committee determined that the benefits of the at-home test outweigh the risk of false negatives.

Josh Bloom, Medical Progress Today 5/17/12
Why I Don't Write About Pottery from the Ming Dynasty

For those interested in the dangers of illegal medicines to both drug development and our health, check out this event tomorrow from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI):
Phake: The deadly world of falsified and substandard medicinesThursday, May 17, 2012
5:30 p.m. 7:00 p.m.
AEI, Twelfth Floor 1150 Seventeenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036 (Two blocks from Farragut North Metro)

It s one of the most dreaded aspects of a recommended preventive medical schedule: the colonoscopy. But a new study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, suggests that virtual colonoscopy without the harsh laxative bowel preparation, and which doesn t use a scope, might be just as effective as regular colonoscopy at detecting polyps in the colon as long as the polyps are large enough, that is.

For the same reason that he doesn t write about Ming Dynasty pottery, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof should not write about toxicology, says ACSH's Dr. Josh Bloom in a post on Medical Progress Today. We all have our own areas of expertise, and for Kristof, these include politics, foreign affairs, and economics. But readers have come to trust Kristof s opinions, and when he writes about a topic in which he has no expertise such as chemicals and pharmacology readers tend to continue to trust his conclusions.