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Do You Know Where Your Medicine Came From?

January 6, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Foreign, Inspection-Free Drugs in Your Medicine Cabinet

Headaches. Insomnia. Anxiety. American medicine cabinets are packed with remedies for these common maladies. And up to 40 percent of them are manufactured overseas (along with 80 percent of active ingredients for pharmaceuticals). But a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that in fiscal year 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration visited just 11 percent of the 3,765 foreign factories it is responsible for inspecting — compared to 40 percent of domestic factories. In 2008, the GAO found that the FDA took two to five years to follow up with foreign plants ... Read More

‘Fair Trade’ Chocolate Perceived as Healthier

January 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

It’s that time of year when weight-conscious people, determined to shed the pounds they put on during the holidays, pay closer attention to food labels. While the savvy are skeptical of overreaching health claims, newly published research suggests an entirely different assertion can lull us into caloric complacency. It finds socially conscious consumers are more likely to perceive a chocolate bar as being low in calories if it is labeled “fair trade.” “Ethical food claims can bias consumers to see poor-nutrition foods in a healthier light,” reports a research team led by ... Read More

Was Lou Gehrig’s ALS Caused by Tap Water?

January 5, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Rudyard Kipling called it “Hell’s Half Acre,” a geothermal wonderland where people could fall through the Earth’s thin crust or be poached by steamy hot springs and geysers. Most visitors to Yellowstone National Park’s Midway Geyser Basin stroll the wooden boardwalks, but a few hike a short, steep side trail that reveals a bird’s-eye view of the entire valley, including Grand Prismatic Spring, which can be fully appreciated only from above. Mustard-yellow and vibrant-orange mats spread like tentacles from the turquoise pool. “Not even the most talented artist could imagine ... Read More

Placebo Effect Stronger Than We Thought?

January 4, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

In July 2001, the Amgen Corporation announced the failure, in a second-stage clinical trial, of an experimental drug to treat Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative illness that affects nerve cells in the brain. Such a failure was hardly unusual; only a minority of the drugs that undergo trials make it to the marketplace. But for Perry Cohen, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s several years before, at age 50, the announcement brought both surprise and disappointment. Cohen, an MIT-trained PhD who had spent decades advising health-care organizations on how to evaluate medical care, had ... Read More

Feds Poke Hole in Needle Exchange Funding

December 20, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The U.S. Congress passed a sprawling spending bill over the weekend — a massive piece of legislation that will fund the federal government for the next nine months — that contained a number of social riders that have gone largely unnoticed in this holiday season of tax standoffs and shutdown threats. One in particular should trouble advocates of evidence-based policy: Congress has once again banned federal funding for sterile syringe exchange programs. Public health advocates consider such harm-reduction programs a crucial tactic in halting the spread of HIV/AIDS. Research suggests ... Read More