A fascinating article in the New York Times last week told the story of Matt Zerden, a student at Harvard Medical School who was troubled when he heard his pharmacology professor repeatedly promote the benefits of cholesterol drugs and seemed to belittle a student who asked about side effects.
Last week, the US Supreme Court struck a blow to the pharmaceutical industry when they ruled that litigants may sue for damages if they are harmed by unsafe drugs—even if the drug manufacturers have satisfied federal regulators.
The Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog group that exposes problems in government, has learned that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has quietly reduced their enforcement of federal quality regulations at laboratories that develop medical devices. The FDA’s inspections of “good laboratory practices” dropped dramatically in the past few years: from 33 in […]
The next time you have a case of diarrhea that lasts a day or more, chances are very good that you have food poisoning. Nearly 25% of Americans suffer a foodborne illness each year. Scientists have counted more than 250 food-related types of illness, which can range from viruses to bacteria to parasites.
The headlines were uniformly negative—“Vitamins Are Useless!” An “observational” study at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle looked at over 161,000 post-menopausal women, ages 50-79. Of the multivitamin supplements taken, none were counted if they were above tiny “recommended daily allowances,” and all reporting was done anecdotally. After eight years, researchers concluded there was […]
A new petition, endorsed by AAHF as well the Organic Consumers Association (http://www.organicconsumers.org/), the Life Extension Foundation (http://www.lef.org/), Citizens for Health (http://www.citizens.org/), and the Consumer Wellness Center (http://www.consumerwellness.org/), and created by Mike Adams and Natural News (http://www.naturalnews.com/) will be delivered to every member of the House and Senate as well as the office of President […]
Columnist George Will first sounded the alarm on January 28. As he reported, the stimulus legislation now approved by Congress and signed into law by President Obama “create(s) a council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. This is about medicine but not about healing the economy. The CER would identify (this is language from the draft report […]
In a recently published peer-reviewed study, researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of Florida found that in major medical journals, more pharmaceutical advertising is associated with publishing fewer articles about dietary supplements. The research also noted that more pharmaceutical company advertising resulted in the journal having more articles with “negative […]
On February 6, the FDA made history by approving the first drug made with materials from genetically engineered (GE) goats. Last month the Agency issued guidelines covering how it will regulate products from genetically altered animals, despite controversy about this technology. The bottom line is that this stamp of approval comes with little knowledge of […]
Ralph Moss, PhD, author of the CancerDecision newsletter, has brought attention to a proposed change in Medicare rules regarding payment of anticancer drugs.