A large government study has found that fewer teens and young adults view heavy smoking as a high-risk activity.
This week, ACSH s Jody Manley and Dr. Gilbert Ross sat in on the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee s (TPSAC) preliminary hearing on the safety of dissolvable tobacco products such as RJ Reynold s Camel Orbs lozenges and Altria s dissolvable tobacco sticks. While these products were pioneered by Star Scientific s Arriva and Stonewall about ten years ago, Star applied for FDA approval of their lozenges as reduced risk tobacco products earlier this year. However, the FDA does not currently have regulatory authority over dissolvable tobacco products.
A New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) perspective piece on electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) would have you believe that FDA-approved cessation methods like the patch are a superior means of quitting smoking compared to e-cigarettes and, therefore, smokers should not rely on these relatively new electronic devices to kick the habit. But as ACSH s Dr.
Josh Bloom, National Review Online July 21, 2011
The CDC vs. Life-Saving Vaccines
On his TobaccoAnalysis blog, Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the department of community health sciences at Boston University s School of Public Health, criticizes the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee (TPSAC) for failing once again to make a recommendation to the FDA regarding a possible ban on menthol cigarettes.
Commissioned by the Obama administration to recommend which preventive medical services should be covered under the nation s health care overhaul, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) an independent, nonprofit organization reported yesterday that all U.S.-approved birth control contraceptives be included as part of that list.
Tuberculosis (TB) test-kit manufacturers were castigated by the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday, while their sales in developing countries were placed under immediate ban due to unacceptable levels of wrong results and perverse financial incentives to boost sales, according to a WHO statement.
A new study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology analyzed the medical records of almost 92,000 U.S. adults and concluded that taking cholesterol-controlling statins is not associated with a higher risk of cancer. But whoever said there was such a link to begin with? asks ACSH s Dr. Gilbert Ross.
In a new National Review Online op-ed, ACSH s Dr. Josh Bloom takes issue with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention s (CDC) unprecedented decision to conduct a national four-city listening tour to garner the public s opinion on whether the agency should include a recently FDA-approved bacterial meningitis vaccine for infants as young as nine months as part of their schedule of recommended vaccines.
In a drug trial that would prove an advance for both HIV prevention and biotech, European scientists are testing the efficacy of an anti-HIV antibody that was cultivated via a genetically modified tobacco plant. The biological product, produced by the EU-funded Pharma Plant, would be used as a vaginal microbicide to prevent sexual transmission of HIV; it is currently being tested in 11 healthy women in Britain.
