A new study published in The Lancet finds that hydroxyurea, a cancer drug which has been used used to treat sickle cell disease in adults and adolescents since 1995, is also safe and effective for infants. Researchers — part of a team led by Dr. Winifred Wang of St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis — studied 193 infants and toddlers, ages 8 to 19 months, at 14 U.S.

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 is currently being reconsidered after a House sub-committee last week approved a proposal that would lessen the stringent requirements for expensive testing for lead and phthalates in products that might be used by children. By most accounts, the proposal is a sensible revision of a law that was in large part an overreaction to a 2007 scare engendered by excess levels of lead in toys imported from China.

A potential ban on menthol cigarettes got some momentum, based upon three studies published in the latest edition of The American Journal of Public Health.

An article appearing in the Los Angeles Times reveals the extremes to which desperate parents will go to help their autistic children. These all too often include alternative and unproven therapies, purveyed by charlatans seeking to exploit their legitimate fears and even guilt.

We reported on a study in November about the marked efficacy of Gilead Sciences, Inc.’s HIV drug Truvada for protection against the transmission of HIV between male partners. Now a new trial carried out by researchers with the HIV Prevention Trials Network shows that such preventive anti-retroviral protocols dramatically reduce HIV transmission in heterosexual couples.

In 2007, a large 33.5-million-dollar trial, known as the COURAGE trial, found that percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) offered fewer benefits over drug therapy for the treatment of stable heart disease.

Yet another new study will have people questioning the safety of medications long believed to be as harmless as rainwater. Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle studied about 65,000 older men and women in Washington state and asked them about their use of painkillers in the past decade.

A startling headline warns that patients may be at risk of heart attack or death following even short-term treatment with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). But before you start tossing out bottles from your medicine cabinet, know that the study researchers acknowledge that not all NSAIDs are implicated. For example, naproxen (Aleve), was not associated with a greater risk of recurrent heart attack or death.

Published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, a new study led by Dr. Nadir Arber of Tel Aviv University found that people taking Pfizer’s anti-inflammatory pain pill Celebrex (celecoxib) were less likely to develop polyps in their colon, but they did experience a higher risk of cardiovascular problems.

Dr. Gilbert Ross in The American Spectator, May 11, 2011
The hijacking of Earth Day