In February, ACSH commended the efforts of North America’s only “safe injection site” — Insite — for successfully reducing the number of new HIV infections in Vancouver, B.C. by 52 percent since 1996. Now a new study published in The Lancet shows that Insite is also contributing another form of harm reduction: decreasing the number of deaths from drug overdoses.

New studies supply some confirmation that whether you're overweight or in shape, a sedentary lifestyle can cut years off your life, even if you work out multiple times a week, and whether you re overweight or trim. Last year, an American Cancer Society study of 123,000 Americans found that men who sat more than six hours per day in their leisure time had a 20 percent higher death rate than those who spent less than three leisure hours sitting down.

According to a new study published in the journal Cancer, patients with early stage, low-risk thyroid cancers should think twice before allowing their doctors to prescribe standard radioactive iodine-131 (RAI) treatment.

As an unscientific follow-up to last week’s interminable “toxic sugar” story is another chemophobic rant from The New York Times. This time it’s about chemicals involved in the hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking) process used to release natural gas from shale deposits deep underground.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizens’ Health Research Group, has never met a drug he didn’t hate. Now, Dr. Wolfe is grabbing headlines with his group’s petition to the FDA calling for the ban of orlistat, a weight-loss drug, which may be purchased over-the-counter. Xenical (the same drug in a higher dose), is available by prescription only and was approved in 1999. He also wants to ban Alli, an over-the-counter therapy approved in 2007.

In a classic example of mixing up cause and effect, Harvard University researchers exonerated diet sodas and other artificially-sweetened beverages from previous studies linking their consumption to diabetes.

The FDA is requiring drug makers of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blockers to include an additional warning to their product label, cautioning of an increased risk for Hepatosplenic T-Cell Lymphoma (HSTCL), a type of blood cancer primarily reported in adolescents and young adults on TNF blockers.

Much to the delight of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) continues to trumpet scientifically senseless and burdensome regulation to “protect” children from so-called toxic chemicals. Sen. Lautenberg has been trying to revamp the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 since 2005, and his crusade continues now with his introduction of the Safe Chemicals Act of 2011.

The results of a study released last week conducted by researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix found that 47 percent of beef, chicken, pork and turkey samples were contaminated with Staphylcoccus aureus (S. aureus), a bacteria linked to illnesses ranging from mild skin infections to life-threatening diseases.

Josh Bloom, Medical Progress Today Spotlight Feature April 14, 2011
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