ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross has been a busy man. Yesterday he presented ACSH’s position paper on the mentholation of cigarettes to an FDA panel considering a ban on the products. He also had an op-ed in Forbes.com on how the U.S.

An FDA panel has recommended expanding the indications for Merck & Co.’s human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil to include the prevention of anal cancer. The endorsement comes after a clinical trial that followed 4,065 men, 602 of them gay, for 36 months. At the trial’s conclusion, 3 percent of the gay men who received the vaccine had developed anal cancer or anal lesions, compared to 12 percent of the men who got a placebo.

The Food Safety Modernization Act, which would overhaul the U.S. food safety system, is moving forward without Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s amendment banning BPA from children’s products. Feinstein (D-Calif.) withdrew the measure Wednesday, telling reporters the American Chemistry Council had mobilized Republicans against the measure.

While today marks the 33rd annual Great American Smokeout, put away your firewood because this isn’t a call for a national bonfire, as the name might mistakenly imply, but is instead an event sponsored by the American Cancer Society that encourages smokers to drop the habit for 24 hours. By urging smokers to not puff on a cigarette for a whole day, the ACS hopes that this may be just the right kind of motivation to get them to quit permanently.

Last November, the FDA warned almost 30 beverage companies that produce alcoholic energy drinks that the agency would be investigating their safety and legality. Now a year later, the FDA has sent out new letters to four of these companies notifying them that adding caffeine to alcohol was unsafe and unapproved. In addition, the Treasury Department announced that these products cannot be legally shipped due to their mislabeling.

Last December, the U.S. Preventative Task Force, an independent panel of health experts, raised some controversy when it upped the age at which women should receive yearly mammograms from 40 to 50.

If pharmaceutical drugs were able to compete in a high school popularity contest, then Merck & Co.’s new experimental cholesterol medication anacetrapib would be voted “most likely to reduce the risk of stroke, cardiovascular (CV) events and death.” The novel drug is able to increase high-density lipoprotein (HDL), the “good” cholesterol, while simultaneously lowering low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol.

(Originally published in Forbes.com, Nov. 17, 2010)
Britain's health secretary just made a historic announcement.
In late October Andrew Lansley announced that the British government's drug rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), would be stripped of its power to refuse new medicines based on cost.

Dendreon’s pricey metastatic prostate cancer drug Provenge has won the approval of a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services advisory panel, which says the drug should be covered by Medicare. Cleared for U.S.

For the first time in 50 years, a new drug to treat lupus seems on the verge of coming onto the market. An FDA panel has voted 13-2 to recommend approval of Benlysta, used to treat sytemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, or lupus), an autoimmune condition.