terrasig | April 17, 2008Dr Kimball Atwood IV at Science-Based Medicine and my long-time blogging colleague Orac have spilled oceans of e-ink on the institutionalization of alternative or integrative medicine in North America's top academic medical centers. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is now often called "integrative medicine" to intellectually justify the incorporation of evidence-free, anecdotal practices into the business of academic medicine. Of course, integrative medicine does co-opt a few areas of conventional medicine, like nutritional and psychological counseling, supported by an evidence…
terrasig | April 14, 2008Apologies in advance for just this quick link, but the topic is very timely given our highly-read post last week suggesting the repeal/modification of DSHEA, the primary US legislation directing the weak oversight of the dietary supplement industry.
Herbal Science International, Inc. and FDA informed consumers and healthcare professionals of a nationwide recall of twelve dietary supplements that contain ephedra, aristolochic acid or human placenta because they may present a serious health hazard to consumers [press release]. FDA has long regarded dietary supplements containing ephedra, a…
terrasig | April 12, 2008". . .you got marijuana in my lead."
Two great tastes that do not go great together (with apologies).
[Welcome Fark.com readers on 12 Oct 2008 - I comment on the recent story here and you can read our other posts on drugs of abuse here. Thanks for stopping by - APB]
A concise but fascinating medical detective story appears in the letters of this week's (10 Apr 2008) issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (free full text at the time of this posting.).
An astute group of physicians at Leipzig Hospital in Germany noted a local surge of young people presenting with classic symptoms of…
terrasig | April 11, 2008Another Wine Experience: North American Meritage
by Erleichda
The wine-dinner group met recently at a local unpretentious BYOB restaurant. We are surely fortunate to have so many of these restaurants in the vicinity for they curtail greatly our costs for dining out.
The theme for this evening's wine tasting was the blend of Bordeaux grapes known hereabouts as "Meritage." The term Meritage is a registered trademark, and red wines bearing this description must contain at least two of the grapes used in the mix found in the red wines from Bordeaux, i.e., cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet…
terrasig | April 10, 2008The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) allows herbal and non-herbal supplements to be sold in the US without demonstration of effectiveness or safety. Despite recent improvements in Good Manufacturing Practices required of supplement manufacturers, these products still pose significant risks to the population simply because the hands of regulatory authorities are tied - products cannot be removed from the market until there is evidence for lack of safety, meaning that consumers must first be harmed before FDA is authorized to intervene.
After cautions a couple weeks…
terrasig | April 9, 2008Neat-o.
The ScienceBlogs conglomerate came up with a great idea that is now being implemented: a RSS feed of the most interesting Sb posts as selected by so-called SuperReaders.
http://feeds.delicious.com/rss/SbReaderClub
Each blog submitted for approval two representative readers who would volunteer to submit the "best of" recent ScienceBlogs posts - after the mothership ruled out any overlap between nominated SuperReaders, a RSS feed was started and you can now see the top 5 recommended posts on the right sidebar of the Sb frontpage (to the right of "Wordburst" under TOPFIVE Reader's Picks…
terrasig | April 6, 2008Alamosa is a town of 8,500 residents on the west side of the Rockies in southern Colorado, equidistant to Denver and Albuquerque. You may sometimes hear of Alamosa described by Al Roker or other morning weather reporters as the "nation's icebox" in setting the low temperature of the lower 48 US states, a title for which it fights with Fraser, Colorado (home of Winter Park ski resort).
Alamosa is also a strikingly beautiful place in the middle of some unique geological features, including the nearby Great Sand Dunes National Monument, a massive group of dunes several hundred feet high…
terrasig | April 5, 2008I had only been blogging for four-and-a-half months when I got an e-mail two years ago today from someone named Katherine Sharpe at Seed Media Group in New York City. Seems they had started this ScienceBlogs.com thing a couple months earlier with 14 blogs, many of which I had already read regularly. I figured that Ms. Sharpe just wanted me for some reader focus group but after I read the e-mail again, it appeared that she was inviting me to join ScienceBlogs. We hung out the Sb Terra Sig shingle two months later, 9 June 2006, with a diatribe containing all you ever wanted to know (or didn'…
terrasig | April 4, 2008Actinomycin D was the first antitumor antibiotic isolated from Streptomyces parvallus cultures by the lab of 1952 Nobel laureate, Dr Selman Waksman, at Rutgers University. However, it took a young Chinese physician and the confidence in her by a future US Surgeon General for this natural product drug to positively impact the lives of children with cancer.
An unusually engaging Boston Globe obituary by Gloria Negri caught my attention this week that announced the death of pediatric oncology pioneer, Charlotte Tan (Hsu), MD, of pneumonia on 1 April in Brookline, MA. Dr Tan's 1959 paper in…
terrasig | April 2, 2008An open letter to the Framing Wars:
Can we start by just considering Chris Mooney as a person distinct from Matt Nisbet?
The problem I see is that Chris is suffering blogospheric vitriol far beyond his own comments because of his association with Matt Nisbet. To the best of my knowledge, Matt Nisbet is a communications professor trying to make a name for "framing" as an academic area of research in his discipline (I've only met him once). As I lack academic credentials in his discipline, I am inadequately prepared to pass judgment as to the scholarly gravity of such an area of study. In a…
terrasig | April 2, 2008One of the drawbacks to writing under a pseudonym is that when people around you do well, it's sort of dodgy how you can use the blog to congratulate them publicly. In fact, dear readers might ask: "Why bother putting this up on the blog?" Well, I'm just proud - like a parent - like an anonymous, proud parent.
In my various iterations of adjunct professorship, I get to interact with some really tremendous students in the health sciences - some I even convince to come do some lab work or some literature projects in the name of our national medical research agency. Some do both - and a…
terrasig | March 30, 2008In attempting to re-engage my academic brain stem, I've been doing a little continuing education the last couple of weeks at various forums hosted by the University-That-Tobacco-Built. Last week I had the pleasure of attending a forum of the Duke student organization, Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE), that featured four academic leaders (who were women) and Bora Zivkovic discussing non-bench science careers.
One of the panelists was an old colleague, Dr Rochelle (Shelly) Schwartz-Bloom, an award-winning neuropharmacologist and educator in the Duke Department of Pharmacology &…
terrasig | March 29, 2008A paper in last month's issue of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery reported that US drug approvals during 2007 were the lowest number since 1983. (17 new molecular entities and 2 biologicals; see this figure for 1996-2007 data.) The review cites increased regulatory action as a factor in this reduction, especially following high-profile post-marketing safety issues with blockbuster drugs like Vioxx or Avandia. But other commentators have noted other problems such as the science of drug discovery in pharma being overridden by managers or the reluctance to develop agents for diseases that afflict…
terrasig | March 27, 2008Only time for a short post today but many news outlets are just now picking up on a 12 March WaPo article by David Segal on the 10th anniversary of the US FDA approval of the erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra. As we noted in yesterday's post, the active ingredient in Viagra, sildenafil, is so popular that even dietary supplement manufacturers are doping their products (illegally) with it and other related compounds.
While some may be cracking silly jokes today, Segal's article focuses primarily on the complexities of the female side of sexual relationships and the challenges in psychology…
terrasig | March 26, 2008No, it's not a song by Foreigner - these are the names of two products "promoted and sold over the Internet for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED) and for sexual enhancement."
In yet another instance of a trend that would be comical if not so serious, the US FDA has announced that "Blue Steel" and "Hero" supplements contain chemical relatives of sildenafil, the active constituent of the prescription medication Viagra.
"Because these products are labeled as 'all natural dietary supplements,' consumers may assume that they are harmless and pose no health risk," said Janet Woodcock, M.…
terrasig | March 24, 2008Last week we spent some time discussing the shortcomings of the generic vs. brand name drug debate, focusing on an example of non-bioequivalence between the antidepressant Wellbutrin XL and its generic competitors.
Three days later, I then received an e-mail from one John Procter about a movement to get Washington to move forward on the approval of lower-priced generic biotechnology drugs now that original branded products are facing patent expiration. One source indicates that a $20 billion market value of biological products will be coming off patent by 2015. The US FDA has been reluctant…
terrasig | March 22, 2008I usually don't do these kinds of linkfests but we're on the road for a Pharmboy family Easter weekend and there are a few items of interest that slipped through my fingers recently. Here are a few things that readers may enjoy this weekend:
Bora's blog gets its 1,000,000th visitor
Go over and offer congratulations to Mr Community.
Get a tetanus shot first, and be sure to use clean nails.
Adding new meaning to "get off the cross, someone else needs the wood," WSJ Health Blog alerts us to ritual crucifixions in the Philippines. By the way, belated congratulations to our Health Blog…
terrasig | March 20, 2008The safety and effectiveness of medicines and other health products is dependent upon their proper use, particularly the proper route of administration. There are reasons why products are labeled as "for topical use only" or "do not swallow" - two recent warnings from the US FDA illustrate these issues.
Allergic Reactions with Use/Misuse of Denture Cleansers
The FDA recently announced reports of one death and 72 other adverse reactions in individuals who ingested denture cleansers meant to be used in a container with one's dentures removed. A crucial oxidizing agent, salts of persulfate,…
terrasig | March 19, 2008Two political posts in two days. Apologies to those who come here for the science but these are the issues getting my attention and energy this week.
Billy Bragg is a special guy in my life and this song from 2002 was particularly prescient.
In memory of those lost in the 11 September attacks, the Spanish 11 March bombings, the thousands of allied forces and Iraqi people dead and injured, and all around the world whose needs have gone unmet in exchange for financing an unguided and unnecessary war. . .