Tag: FDA

Aug 17 2008

In Case You Missed The Latest Friday Night FDA News Dump…

It’s a long standing tradition for government agencies to publicly release findings, rulings and studies they’d rather just as soon not discuss any further on Friday nights.  Who follows news on the weekend?  And by Monday morning, the story is already 3 days old – or in other words, ancient history…

Of course, those of us who know these things know that Saturday morning’s news will always contain a few interesting items.

Here’s the latest, courtesy of the FDA –

A controversial chemical commonly found in can linings, baby bottles and other household products does not pose a health hazard when used in food containers, according to a draft assessment released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday.

FDA scientists said the trace amounts of bisphenol A (BPA) that leach out of food containers are not a threat to infants or adults. The agency acknowledged that more research is needed to fully understand the chemical’s effects on humans and noted “there are always uncertainties associated with safety decisions.”

The FDA previously declared the chemical safe but agreed to revisit that opinion after a report by the federal National Toxicology Program said there was “some concern” about its risks to infants.

There go our “watchdogs” in action again, watch them regulate!  Maybe they’re “saving their powder”.  Then again, this is the FDA we’re talking about here…the agency so clueless that they apparently just play “spin the bottle” whenever there’s an outbreak of food poisoning, or just place blame on the first thing that comes to mind.  I’m still waiting for them to blame the next salmonella outbreak on gerbils, because a top agency official may have a 3-year old daughter who fears small rodents.

Crossposted from La Vida Locavore, more below the fold…

Jan 04 2008

Obama Strikes At Mass Killers

Don’t get me wrong.  I would prefer the southern populist who wants to go after some real bad guys.  But even John and Elizabeth Edwards might take heart from this pioneering legislation offered by Barack Obama.

Genomics and Personalized Medicine Act of 2006 (Introduced in Senate)

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            (2) Personalized medicine is the application of genomic and molecular data to better target the delivery of health care, facilitate the discovery and clinical testing of new products, and help determine a patient’s predisposition to a particular disease or condition.

           (3) Many commonly-used drugs are typically effective in only 40 to 60 percent of the patient population.

           (4) In the United States, up to 15 percent of hospitalized patients experience a serious adverse drug reaction, and more than 100,000 deaths are attributed annually to such reactions.

           (5) Pharmacogenomics has the potential to dramatically increase the efficacy and safety of drugs and reduce healthcare costs, and is fundamental to the practice of genome-based personalized medicine.

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(7) The cancer drug Gleevec was developed based on knowledge of the chromosomal translocation that causes chronic myelogenous leukemia, which is characterized by an abnormal growth in the number of white blood cells. The mean 5-year survival for affected patients who are treated with Gleevec is 95 percent, which contrasts to a 5-year survival of 50 percent for patients treated with older therapies…

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/…

Dec 28 2007

Another War We Are Losing

While Afghanistan sinks back into the muck of religious extremism that frightened even the ayatollahs in Iran, the leaders of the de facto Kurdistan are rediscovering what sort of friend they have been relying on with Turkey being aided in its genocide of Kurds by the U.S.. South America’s democracies in open revolt against the hegemony of the norteamericans, a far more important war than all of those combined is flagging under assault from the left and corporate interests.

That is the War on Cancer initiated by that old reprobate, Dick Nixon.

Dec 25 2007

The Doctor and The Dying Woman

“I am dying, doctor.  What should be done?”

“Get better parents next time.”

Most everyone here has probably read of the “dying woman,” Kathy Stengl, who is confronting presidential candidates.  The following is just one account:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/…

[Mike Huckabee] greeted her. She told him of her diagnosis and a need to redirect health care spending.

“Actually, that’s what I did in Arkansas,” Huckabee said. “We started moving our whole state system toward prevention.”

Stangl asked what he would do as president to change the national health care system.

Huckabee responded that it must start with federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

The preacher did a bit better than Dr. Ron Paul might have done but not much.  If Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (Lam) is a genetic disease, as suspected, the only prevention would be preventing the birth of those with the defect.  Since Huckabee is a right-to-lifer, one might shudder at his proposal for prevention.

Nov 23 2007

Room of Doom

I passed by that Room of Doom every day for two weeks when I was working at an odd job between classes.

It was a terrible place but when I first went by I had no reason to know the terror lurking within.

Parents brought their children to that room.  The children had received a death sentence that no lawyer could mitigate.  The children had received a diagnosis of juvenile leukemia.  There was no cure, not even a treatment.  All that waited for the children was an early painful death.

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