Clinical drug trials are going global as big pharma seeks to further cut costs while also accumulating “treatment-naïve” patients who may be more suitable for testing new drugs. In an article for Reuters, Ben Hirschler discusses the pros and cons of outsourcing clinical trials to countries such as Poland, where the number of patients involved in trials has risen fivefold between 2005 and 2009. In Hungary, that number went up three-and-a-half times during the same period.

A new study in The Lancet led by Dr. Corinne Vons of the Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Paris and Université Paris XI finds that assessing the need for surgery in appendicitis patients using radiological tests (such as CT scans) is not sufficiently reliable to avoid surgery by treating with antibiotics. Currently, uncomplicated appendicitis is treated solely with antibiotics, while complicated appendicitis requires surgery because the appendix is perforated.

The first lines of Dominique Browning’s op-ed in yesterday’s The New York Times gave us a glimmer of hope that the newspaper was finally starting to publish sound science opinion pieces about the baseless controversy surrounding bisphenol A (BPA). Initially, Ms.

For the second time in as many days, we’d like to give a tip of the hat to ACSH advisor and Boston University School of Public Health Professor Dr. Michael Siegel for his essays on two different smoking-related policies. As we noted in yesterday’s Dispatch, Dr. Siegel’s perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine considered the problematic issue of mentholated cigarettes.

Despite hopes to the contrary, a new study demonstrates that neither Vitamin E, selenium, nor soy can prevent or even slow the development of prostate cancer. Unlike an earlier study, which reached the same conclusion but studied men who were at no increased risk of prostate cancer, this Canadian study focused on over 300 men who already had evidence of pre-cancerous cells. Regardless, the results were the same: “To our chagrin, there was no benefit,” said Dr.

In yesterday’s Los Angeles Times, William Weir offers a thorough overview of the dangers of increasingly prevalent counterfeit drugs. It’s a topic ACSH covered in its 2006 report, Counterfeit Drugs: Coming to a Pharmacy Near You.

An article yesterday in USA Today — which has apparently decided to become the bête noir of chemicals — demonstrates that even so-called “science journalists” are ill-informed about the risks (or, rather, lack thereof) associated with flame retardants used in household products. Unfortunately, their misinformation helps the public stay confused and afraid of useful and safe chemicals.

Asthma rates in the U.S. have increased over the past ten years, according to the CDC. However, as Ileana Arias, principal deputy director of the CDC says, no one quite knows why: the increase of 4.3 million Americans with asthma since 2001 comes even as air quality has increased and smoking rates have decreased. And since researchers have adopted different means of measuring asthma incidence in the population, a direct comparison to rates in the 1990s isn’t possible.

Dr. Gilbert Ross in The American, May 5, 2011
Better Living Through Chemistry

Two perspective pieces addressing the menthol cigarette problem appear in today’s New England Journal of Medicine. One, by ACSH advisor and Boston University School of Public Health Professor Dr.