Ambrosia, Aisle Four

Autism - superpowers?

2010-05-06T06:43:00.001-07:00

I've always wondered about autistic types who are geniuses with numbers, music pitch, incredible attention to details, superhuman memory - why can't we use this to our advantage somehow?? Well, this idea is far from new and researchers have found some interesting revelations.

So lackluster are we 'normal' types in certain ways that apparently people without autism are called "neurotypicals." What's sad is that this article doesn't go into ways in which we can use this.

SciAm's Blindsight needs explaining

2010-04-30T16:48:00.001-07:00

Here's a real teaser from Scientific American. They've got a video and article of a blind guy who can navigate through a cluttered space, sidestepping objects and not crashing.

They don't tell you anything about this so-called 'blindsight,' except how blind the guy is. You have to subscribe/register to read more.

So I go on wikipedia and it doesn't have anything useful either about how this is possible, and after much googling, I finally find the explanation. Cheap trick, SciAm. He's not really blind. This isn't really special to blindness in general. It only applies to people who are not "blind" because their eyes do not function. Rather, they suffer from cortical blindness - they sensory information but don't process it correctly, usually due to damage in some part of the brain.

This was clever marketing on SciAm - something people at journalistic organizations always tell you, but I thought in the name of passing on knowledge this was kind of cheap, no? And wouldn't they figure that generally people will try to see if the answer's somewhere for free online elsewhere but leave SciAm with kind of a bad taste in their mouths?

Fat Pride Folk to be angry

2010-04-19T12:48:00.001-07:00

Yikes. A gene that makes people fat may also make people bad at problem-solving.

The fat pride community isn't going to like this one.

But how great would it be to have gene therapy solve this? Make people thinner AND smarter? The Chinese must be on to this already.

Tea Party Smarties

2010-04-13T10:10:00.001-07:00

Well this is a little weird. Turns out tea party backers are wealthier and more educated than average. Maybe the smart ones make the not so smart ones do the physical demonstrating for them? Guess that seems clever.

Health Bill and Race

2010-04-04T21:07:00.001-07:00

This new effort to consider characteristics like ethnicity to maximize the health bill is a pretty novel idea.

But since there is no race gene, would that complicate matters? Or will it be more like certain races are more likely to be overweight, because of income discrepancies? ...If that's the case it might make more sense to target that variable instead.

No more Botax, but Tan Tax

2010-04-01T08:55:00.001-07:00

So much for botax. I really liked the idea but I guess more people use tanning beds than Botox, and the cosmetic surgery industry has more lobbying power than the tanning industry, so we've got the tan tax now.

Of course now the tanning salons are up in arms about the 10% tax effective in July, which is to raise $2.7 billion over the next decade (compare to Botax which was 5% to raise $6 billion).

But unlike arguing that clients are average wage-earning Janes as the botox group did and that the measure would be sexist (86% of Botox takers are women), people are saying it's racist(against pale-skinned types), unfair (tax the travel industry too?), and targets mom-and-pop stores more (I'll give them that).

But ridiculously, some are saying that tanning is not all that bad for you (from the Indoor Tanning Association) and the tax interferes with what some people ocnsider a way to keep them healthy with Vitamin D.

First of all, 10% on a tanning session is $1 to $2. I don't know if that's much obstruction. Second, scientists have consistenly been calling out the dangers of tanning beds-that they're as poisonous as arsenic, they're so dangerous that there should be a minimum age of 18 requirement, and oh right they cause cancer to a scary high degree. So actually this tax is better than Botox. Making yourself look better doesn't add to the healthcare system burden, but giving yourself cancer does. Not to mention the number one reason why you get wrinkles is because of UV rays, not aging.

All this really shows it like climatologists, tannings salons need some better PR skills too.

Snow Brands Magic Fat-Fighting Yogurt

2010-03-29T11:42:00.001-07:00

Never mind feeling betrayed about yogurt using calcium as a reason for why it makes you lose weight. It might actually do the trick now so they can drop those snake oil tactics.

According to a recent study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, one type of bacteria - LG2055 was found to be the magic bug.

One of the largest dairy companies in Japan (besides us food schizo Americans, they always find the most interesting ways to trim the fat) called Snow Brand Milk Products had 87 people drink 100 grams of fermented milk twice a day, with no other change in diet. After 12 weeks, they had lost an average of 1 kg, 4.6% of bad fat (which surround internal organs) and 3.3% of fat-fat. Hips slimmed 1.7 cm, while waist 1.5.

Now before you rush to get this stuff, the company also caused the worst case of food poisoningin Japan in 2000, where more than 14,000 people got sick from old milk and failed to recall quickly. Then in 2002, a (now-dissolved immediately post-scandal) subsidiary called Snow Brands Foods labeled Australian beef as Japanese to receive government subsidies and five execs were arrested on fraud charges.

But EJCN is a respected journal, so hopefully there's nothing to fear.

Anti-Health Bill Folk

2010-03-25T20:06:00.001-07:00

Yikes. Some ammo for Democrats: tea party folk protesting the "socialist" bill with interesting literary skills.

Autism 0, Vaccine 2

2010-03-22T19:45:00.001-07:00

So last time in the Vaccine v Autism court battles, the court found that mercury preservative plus MMR vaccine does not equal autism.

Just on March 12, the same court also declared that there was no proof that the children's autism was caused by the preservative alone.

So just as we thought we were getting closer to resolving this (first the retraction, then the first ruling, now this ruling...) apparently vaccine-autism believers are now saying that it's just that children are receiving so many vaccines, it causes autism.

Well. I don't know about that. If the vaccine doesn't cause autism, why would more together be evil? Likening vaccines to collateralized financial derivatives seems a bit desperate. But hey, I'm no toxicologist. So if anyone's an expert about vaccines, I'd love to know.

Human Guinea Pigs

2010-03-10T07:22:00.001-08:00

Newscientist has a very interesting article today on metabolic syndrome. Apparently your body would rather you be obese than have excess fat build up in your bloodstream, by depositing fat and sugar somewhere safer. In other words, getting fat is a defense against unhealthy eating.

More interestingly, this was tied to another study which injected volunteers' bloodstreams with the amount of fat found in a large beef burger.

Well naturally, it got me wondering. Why would anyone volunteer to do this??

Always a favorite site, McSweeney's has an interesting interview with a human guinea pig ($8,000 a study, 98 percent are men...I think that might say something).

Sleep and Obesity Again and Again

2010-03-09T16:37:00.001-08:00

A study was published this month in the scientific journal Sleep on how you're at greater risk of being fat if you're sleep deprived.

According to researchers at North Carolina's Wake Forest University, if you sleep less than 5 hours, you (people under 40, that is) gained 1.8 kg or almost 4 lbs more than if you slept 6 or 7 hours.

On the other hand, sleep more than 8 hours and you gain 0.8 kg or 1.76 lbs more.

Two things I don't get:

1. Considering you burn more calories while you're awake, shouldn't you get fatter sleeping more? That is..if we're not spending that time eating/drinking Red Bulls.

2. These sorts of fat/sleep studies have been done so many times (here's one done six years ago by Columbia University in the same journal and another one five years ago in JAMA)..why is this still news?

H1N1 fallout

2010-03-06T21:59:00.001-08:00

This is why we need an improved health communication system, besides the sad display of unnecessary paranoia last year concerning H1N1. Whatever our new healthcare system is, this communication problem has to be addressed.

So at some point even after H1N1 vaccine paranoia instigators panicked everyone out of getting vaccinated, everyone clamored to get vaccinated first, got scared there wasn't enough to go around, and now there's too much of it, with the Dutch government trying to sell vaccines back to manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis. And why the Dutch ministry ordered 34 million doses-enough to give two shots to every person in the Netherlands-is beyond me.

Fertility transplant...T + 2 years

2010-02-25T08:01:00.001-08:00

For the first time, a woman who had her only ovary removed and frozen, then transplanted back again, successfully conceived naturally and gave birth. Oh, this all happened in Denmark and was published in 2008, but for some reason we are all noticing it now. Anyone know why?

Obama takes on obesity

2010-02-09T11:33:00.001-08:00

Obesity has been quite the ubiquitous, serious issue talked about for some time. And our government's realized that posting calories and banning trans fats (in NYC at least) might not be enough to keep us Americans from eating ourselves to death.

So here is a more unique government program created in some time: LetsMove is the new initiative, to be led by Michelle Obama, to promote healthy diets for children.

The program is a partnership between the US Departments of Treasury, Agriculture and Health, and Human Services, which will put in $400 million a year to make sure children eat the right kinds and right amount of food with more well-placed grocery stores and placement of healthy foods. How? Through "innovative financing" and grants.

Maybe they should just get rid of agricultural subsidies and save us $12 billion annually on higher food prices from backwards Great Depression-era protectionism.

Stem cell research gets a leg up

2010-02-08T14:33:00.001-08:00

Here's some good news for the $1.5 billion vitamin industry, especially for vitamin C, which makes up for the most of that market share.

According to a study published in Cell Stem Cell, a ton of researchers supported by grants and foundations in China, vitamin C is not useless! Apparently vitamin C can greatly in stem cell development.

Ever since scientists figured out how to turn human adult cells into stem cells in 2007, therefore bypassing that ethical issue, research still hasn't gone the way researchers hoped because it the transformation was frustratingly inefficient- only getting 0.01 percent of of cells to change into stem cells.

Well these researchers discovered vitamin C can speed up that process over 100 times, making transformation and thus research much more viable, and also increase chances of survival for the stem cell.

Besides that very interesting development, maybe even more intriguing is that this research was supported by 13 grants from China, with one of them, EFBIC RED, being related to China. One of my friends who works in biotech has been complaining about the dangerous shortage of grants in the US, despite this administration's friendlier attitude toward scientific research. So China has been drawing scientific talent instead.

But scientific research is one of those things that builds on other's research, and it doesn't really matter where that research came from except when it comes to patents. Maybe Obama knows this and is willing to take the backseat for now (since we are battling greater troubles). But either way we should really step it up soon or risk losing to China in more ways than Americans would like.

Gene therapy is the new steroid?

2010-02-04T07:41:00.001-08:00

In a report published today by three researchers in Science journal, steroids won't be the only thing athletes might be seduced by. Gene therapy might become, or already is, an untested and extremely risky way for athletes to gain an edge over competition:

"Some athletes and coaches will be tempted, prematurely and unwisely, to take advantage of results packaged by some as performance enhancement 'breakthroughs,' even if they are untested in humans and the only 'breakthrough' is faster or stronger mice."

And they aren't just speculating. From athletes begging for help from gene therapist Lee Sweeney and a doctor caught trying to give gene therapy to a fictitious American Olympic swimmer in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the market is certainly there. Plus two of these researchers have worked with the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, established more than a decade ago with International Olympic Committee funding.

So if there's going to be gene therapy doping, we need new tests since steroid doping isn't going to detect anything. And they're on that too, with WADA doing research into developing "biological passports" to monitor an athlete's biological profile over time.

You just wonder, with all this superhuman business going on, from Speedo LZR bodysuits to simply changing yourself biologically, what the point of sports will be. Watching people do incredible stuff with aids of all kinds? Then again I'm not a sports fan in the first place, so even without the doping I wouldn't know the answer.

Vaccines: Good For You!

2010-02-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

Autism to H1N1, I can't say enough how important vaccines are. And it's truly scary how few people are getting vaccinated now.

According to a study released today by the Trust For America's Health, the Infectious Diseases Society of America and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 50,000 people die from vaccine-preventable illnesses a year. This year, only a third of adults were vaccinated flu.

But again this might not be exactly newsworthy, since it happens a lot. In fact, this year had twice the number of people getting vaccines than usual, with H1N1 and FluMist spurring people to action.

So I'd love to see number of vaccine taken charted against flu cases. Unfortunately I don't have access to VaccineTrack by SDI, which seems to be the only thing that records vaccine data. Until I get my hands on the info, let's keep getting vaccinated anyway.

Vaccines & Autism

2010-02-02T10:00:00.001-08:00

I've always been skeptical of vaccine paranoia. Not only was all that fuss about H1N1 turned out to be just fuss, it looks like vaccines' link to autism might finally see its day of reckoning.

Andrew Wakefield is the one we can thank for all the hubbub about the vaccine-autism thing, when he came out with a paper in 1998 that said autism was a rare side effect of vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). So he recommended that the vaccines be given space out, a year apart.

Even when the paper came out, it was pretty controversial. But leave it to parents to shun vaccines altogether, despite countless studies proving the contrary (Danish study, Court of Federal Claims), with even people trying to rationalize such irrational paranoia. Thankfully though, parents might just stop needlessly endangering their kids to scare diseases like MMR (death, infection of spinal cord, swelling of testicles or ovaries, just to name a few).

In a statement by the editors of The Lancet last week, they found in an investigation panel that "several elements of the paper are incorrect," therefore fully retracting the paper from public record. Looking forward to seeing what anti-vaccine camp responds with.

Homeopathy, Beware

2010-02-01T20:45:00.001-08:00

Yesterday 400+ Brits took a "massive overdose" of homeopathic remedies to protest Boots' (their equivalent of our Duane Reade, but with better, actually fresh, food) endorsement and sale of homeopathic remedies.

Homeopathy has always struck me as a strange science, if science at all. The vitalist philosophy, born all the way back in 1796 to a German doctor, doesn't just concern all things herbal - it's based on a few (interesting) principles, some of which include the following:

1. Water has memory

2. Therefore diluting something with water makes it stronger, making some remedies so diluted that there aren't even any molecules from the original solution

These two are pretty much agreed upon actual homeopathic ideas. But certain homeopaths also adhere to others, like what ails you can cure you (ie caffeine - diluted, remember - to cure insomnia) and stuff involving pinning the patient with a piece paper with the remedy written on it, which borders on superstition.

Anyhow homeopathy is much bigger in Europe (compared to Americans, where most just think it's "something herbal..?"), where insurance covers it and even Sweden did some 5 year study and found it wasn't cost-effective enough to concern itself with the idea. It seems to be the biggest in India actually, where it's recognized as a national system of medicine.

Yesterday's stunt, called the 1023 campaign, was actually preceded by a letter of complaint the Merseyside Skeptics Society sent to Boots protesting homeopathy a week ago. So I guess there are other people besides me who aren't exactly convinced of homeopathy's efficacy.

They don't really say why they're targeting Boots and not homeopathic manufacturers and physicians themselves. Maybe Boots sells so many of the homeopathic remedies, that Boots is where MSS can dent?

It's hard to tell as the company was taken private in ₤11.1bn takeover in 2007 by now-Executive Vice Chairman Stefano Pessina, so sales figures on homeopathic or even health products aren't available. But he did say in May 2009 that the health and beauty division had sales of ₤6.2bn, so looks like there's a lot at stake, anyway.

Well I guess since this is not taking place in the US, few Americans care. I don't know if I believed much in homeopathy in the first place, but who knows about these things? Just as long as another philosophy doesn't get in the way of you getting medical attention or care when you need it (vaccines, surgeries, which MSS says severe homeopathics do cut out), I don't see why it's so bad. They just better not touch acupuncture, because I tell you that stuff really works.

FDA Crackdown on Fake Botox

2010-01-31T12:38:00.000-08:00

As scary as fake Botox is, the FDA has been doing something about it! ..Only recently, though.

It started in November 2004, when four people became paralyzed with severe botulism poisoning in Florida. The difference here though, as opposed to unfortunate Faith He's case, is that this was a doctor who was passing it off as authentic Botox.

Since then, the FDA started cracking down, and the whole thing turned into 210 investigations against health professionals, 31 arrests and 29 convictions of individuals who "purposely injected an unapproved, cheaper substitute toxin for FDA-approved Botox Cosmetic into nearly 1,000 unknowing patients."

They actually tracked down (one of) the sources of this lethal stuff to a California lab, which also sold to an Arizona distributor, from which doctors would buy at a lower price (they marketed it as a cheaper alternative) and sell to patients at the usual $470 per vial, adding to the paranoia of the modern consumer. One giveaway though: the vials were clearly marked as "For Research Purposes Only, Not For Human Use."

Using distribution records, the FDA found that at least 200 healthcare professionals ("from Manhattan to Las Vegas," says one special agent) bought the stuff, and "many" (not most) have been prosecuted.

So what to do when we next desire to expunge those dastardly wrinkles from our stressed-out foreheads!? The FDA doesn't help much. It 's the same "use a trusted professional, ask about the source" routine, but nothing's keeping those doctors from refilling authentic vials with the cheaper, paralyzing stuff.

I guess you only find out when the price of beauty goes terribly high and you find yourself mute and helpless with lockjaw, or need a stomach tube to eat, or respirator to breath. Maybe those wrinkles aren't so bad after all.

Barefoot Study

2010-01-28T17:19:00.001-08:00

I always thought there was something to be learned from barefoot running, and now there's a new study supporting the practice.

It appeared in the Nature scientific journal today, but was actually accepted a month after my post. Conducted by eight researchers from different medical and engineering schools (Harvard to Kenya to Glasgow to Ann Harbor), the study is the first to use 3-D infrared tracking to study foot strike patterns. They looked at three groups:

1. People who had always run barefoot

2. People who had always run with shoes

3. People who had switched from shoes to being shoeless

And the study actually proved our shoes really have changed our strides (in a way that years of evolution didn't prepare us for)...which can obviously lead to a lot of problems. SciAm's actually got a few of their quite astonishing pictures.

And it confirms another study published last week in the Journal of Injury, Function and Rehabilitation which found running in athletic shoes increased pressure on knees by 38 percent, and on hips 54 percent.

Anyway I got those Vibram shoes over winter, and other than this healthy-feet reason, I really don't know why I got them as I haven't exercised since..some time last summer. So I've really just been living through Ted. Maybe I'll get around to staving off obesity, and once I do, I'll let you know.

(Lack of) Reproduction In NYC

2010-01-27T10:07:00.000-08:00

Just a thought out of left field:

I always wondered, with so many smart, attractive, ambitious types here, why NYC has so many single women.

That men might prefer less powerful women, might be a clue.

Botox, The New WMD

2010-01-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

When it comes to beauty, some people don't mind taking risks when they'd be cautious otherwise. It just might be all the unnatural, photoshopped perfection getting to us.

Late last year, my mom's "facialist"—Faith He from China who opened her own relatively successful salon in Seattle about nine years ago—was indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for injecting women with fake cosmetic procedures products. As in fake botox, restylane, etc. And she wasn't licensed to do so with the real stuff either.

Apparently an acquaintance of my mom's was getting (re?)married and wanted everything done. And when a laser-peel wasn't doing the trick, she wanted more. And of course, the facialist obliged. (Might be a Chinese reflex—go to Asia and you'll find people will tell you they can do anything you ask for. Whether they can is a risk you are taking, as I found when the broken watch I took in for repairs was even more broken, or when my resulting perm more closely resembled the sheep outside than the model in the picture I brought).

Anyhow, it turns out the products the facialist was using (may or may not be to her knowledge) was unregulated, fake stuff from China, as this woman found out when it coagulated above her cheekbone and a dermatologist sucked some out for inspection.

Ah China, always churning out the most interesting things. But it gets even more interesting, when the WaPo came out saying how the black market for Botox may be more dangerous than suburban housewives getting lumpy cheekbones.

According to WaPo, the essential ingredient in Botox—botulinum toxin Type A—is the most toxic substance known to man. It just might be the new weapon of mass destruction of choice. A grain-sized amount could kill a 150-lb adult, apparently. But a terrorist would have to get hundreds of vials of Botox ($470 a pop) to kill one person. The only reason why we're still pondering anthrax and uranium is that botulinum's quite allergic to heat, degrading the moment the temperature goes up.

This black market, however, poses a new threat. Especially when you consider this:

James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, two scientists found that a biologist with a master's degree and $2,000 worth of equipment could easily make a gram of pure toxin, an amount equal to the weight of a small paper clip but enough, in theory, to kill thousands of people.

Thankfully so far it seems the only people the stuff goes to are youth-seeking types, but obviously unregulated or no, the products can be made with the real stuff. Then we've got more than lumpy cheeks to worry about.

Fat Pride and Cost of Health Care

2009-12-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

Obesity is nothing to laugh about when we're talking about shortened life spans, but also means $$$ for our country's health care costs.

According to this study from November by the United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association and Partnership for Prevention via America's Health Rankings, we're looking at $344 billion in 2018, or more than one in five dollars spent on health care if trends continue. This means spending attributable to obesity will quadruple. And if we held the obesity rate to its current level, the country would save nearly $200 billion a year by 2018, which is $800 per adult.

By 2018 Colorado would be the only state where less than 30 percent of adults would be obese. But in Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota, more than 50 percent of adults would be obese.

(What's most tragic is that, according to AMR again, the United States has the highest death rate from treatable conditions of 19 industrialized countries.)

This is why I was so surprised to read about Fat Pride Communities about a month ago, who are saying healthy should be the goal, and not thin. A lot of these ideas are also advocated in The Obesity Myth, a book written last year by U. Colorado law professor Paul Campos (something I find interesting as Colorado is the only state with an obesity rate-18.5%-under 20% in the entire US).

Campos writes the following:

First, it's a fake problem. Second, the solutions for the problem are non-existent, even assuming the problem existed. Third, focusing on making Americans thinner diverts resources from real public health issues....The correlations between higher weight and greater health risk are weak except at statistical extremes. The extent to which those correlations are causal is poorly established. There is literally not a shred of evidence that turning fat people into thin people improves their health. And the reason there's no evidence is that there's no way to do it.

Which is pretty much what the Fat Pride Community is saying. But I don't understand how an obese person losing weight-the healthy way, not the liposuction way (which has shown to not make a difference on LDL/bad cholesterol, blood pressure, among other things)-has not been shown to be healthy. Now WebMD isn't the final arbiter on this, obviously, but I challenge you to find someone who will tell you an obese person who loses weight via a healthy diet and exercise regimen is worse off.

And then while Campos may be right that it's hard to lose weight (make a fat person thinner), that doesn't mean our latest efforts of prevention are for nothing. From requiring restaurants to post calorie-content to schools banning junk food, well, I completely support these efforts.

Then you look at how 77% of obesity is due to genetics, and the rate at which we've seen obesity spread, and Fat Pride is saying size discrimination is the same as race discrimination?

In the last few decades we've managed to turn this many people fat. I don't see why we can't do anything to reverse ourselves or prevent more damage.

Obesity is the new lung cancer

2009-12-05T17:43:00.001-08:00

Eating more than you burn is worse than smoking, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday.

Declines in smoking in the last 15 years increases today's 18-year-old's life expectancy by 0.31 years, while rising obesity reduces that expectancy by 1.02. So we're looking at a net loss of 0.71 years.

According to the lead author of the study, Susan T. Stewart, in the last 15 years smoking rates declined 20%, but obesity rates increased 48%. So if this continues, nearly half of our population will be obese by 2020.

Her 48% number corresponds with the CDC, which also breaks it down into race groups as well.

Well my free trial to NEJM expired months ago and for some reason NYU will only give the abstract summary of the study, so I've yet to figure out how to get my hands on the entire thing. What I'd like to know if the study takes into account the diminished life expectancy of those who get secondhand smoke, which would be an obvious factor. After all, you don't get fatter by breathing next to fat people. But whatever the accurate number is, I'm sure it wouldn't change the overall message, which is a message we've been hearing for a long time now.

But according to another study last year published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, why obesity happens is attributed 77% to genetics as opposed to environmental factors (prevalence of fast food and poor exercise habits). Which you can take it to mean that obese people are only marrying other obese people, adverse selection ("moderately overweight" women are more fertile), or our environment of cheap transfat calories (read Michael Pollan's books for convincing info on this, or Fast Food Nation, although it was written 5 years ago) has truly become horrendous for your health. This question is unanswered by the researchers themselves.

Hopefully we'll get closer to genome therapy for an "obesity cure" and keep away from the olestra and oily stools (here too). But considering most diseases as far as we know are multi-gene disorders and following the death of 18-year-old gene therapy patient Jesse Gelsinger caused by a massive immune response to the virus vector used to transport the gene into his cells, continue your healthy habits and don't bet on a magic pill just yet.

Philip Morris' $300 million verdict

2009-11-28T15:36:00.001-08:00

Big Tobacco's high dividend payout strategy might not be working.

A Florida Circuit Court last week awarded a former smoker, 61-year old Lucinda Naugle, $300 million in her lawsuit against Philip Morris (NYSE:PM), finding wheelchair-bound Naugle, who now has emphysema after smoking from age 20 to 45, 10% guilty and the cigarette manufacturer 90% guilty for compensatory damages. Philip Morris shares dropped 1.2% $18.98 on Friday at the news and haven't been doing too well since.

This was actually a case that came out of the so-called "Engle Progeny lawsuits", when in 2006 the Florida Supreme Court vacated a 2000 verdict in a class action lawsuit (Engle v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co). And while the $156 billion verdict was overturned (this lawsuit involved 700,000 smokers) the court allowed plaintiffs to file individual claims and use the liability findings from the trial.

So Naugle's verdict was the 10th Engle verdict this year and 8 out of 10 of these verdicts were against Big Tobacco, although Naugle's was the largest of all of them. And Philip Morris isn't done yet-there are about 8,000 more waiting for their day in court.

Obviously Philip Morris is crying foul, saying the decision is unconstitutional since it allowed the jury to look at previous jury findings and evidence unrelated to Naugles.

You might wonder how this sort of thing comes about. After all, I thought the MacDonald-made-me-fat lawsuits were far and wide decried as pointless. Haven't we had these cases before?

Actually we have: just in 2007 in Philip Morris v. Williams, the Supreme Court overturned an Oregon jury’s award of $79.5 million in punitive damages. This wasn't because the smoker should've known about the harmful effects of smoking though. Rather the Court ruled 5-4 that "the Constitution's Due Process Clause forbids a State to use a punitive damages award to punish a defendant for injury that it inflicts upon nonparties."

This meant that it's unfair for Philip Morris to be held responsible for harm to strangers since the charges would be limitless as well as arbitrary. Which would explain the Engles decision.

If Philip Morris loses the appeal, it'll obviously be a bad sign for Big Tobacco, even if $300 million could be considered small fries when you think about the $206 billion the seven largest tobacco companies agreed to pay in a 1998 nation-wide settlement.

Sex Change Limits in Thailand

2009-11-26T19:30:00.001-08:00

In 2007 a willowy, gorgeous 21-year old student Thanyarasmi Siraphatphakorn won the Miss Tiffany Universe pageant—for being the most beautiful transvestite in Thailand.

There are no official numbers for how many transsexuals exist in Thailand. By some estimates it could be around 10,000, with one doctor saying he does procedures three times a week (half of them foreigners), and others say as many as 20% of schoolboys call themselves a transsexual even without a sex change operation, causing one school to install transsexual bathrooms, with a logicial bathroom sign:

I've always wondered about transsexual prevalence, when it seems Asians (at least in the states) are much more conservative than Westerners. Transsexual rights campaigner Suttirat Simsiriwong says, "Thai society and culture tend to be very sweet, very soft, and the men can be really feminine, if we tend to be gay, many of us tend to be transgender" and that the number of transsexuals in Thailand are no more than transsexuals elsewhere. According to the American Psychological Association 1 in 11,900 men and 1 in 30,400 women are uncomfortable being in the body they were born in and wish they were of a different sex.

Maybe transsexuality in Thailand is like bisexuality in Manhattan. And with prices like $1,000 to $6,000 to become a woman (a three-hour procedure), it's no wonder there are so many so-called "katoeys" in Thailand.

So today, the Thai Department of Health issued rules to limit sex change surgeries and make candidates think more carefully about their decisions, which are irreversible:

1. Candidates must be at least 18 (this rule was always in place)
2. Candidates must cross-dress for one year after informing a doctor of the initial decision and undergo hormone therapy
3. Candidates must undergo a mental evaluation before the surgery, obtain approvals from two psychiatrists, and attend follow-up visits with a psychiatrist after the surgery.

There are absolutely no numbers I could find about how much Thais have spend on sexual reassignment surgeries, and not even how many undergo SRS. While I am pretty sure any of those looking to do this are very certain of their decision, and an SRS isn't exactly the same as getting a tattoo, these rules should eliminate any of those "I'm drunk so let's do it" type of decisions.

Anyway I'm guessing waking up the next morning and wishing you hadn't castrated yourself is probably kind of devastating. In any case, I think these rules are a great call.

Healthcare Bill & Botax (cont.)

2009-11-22T14:42:00.001-08:00

So the Democrats pushed their healthcare bill through last night and it is one step closer to law, after it's approved by the Senate, then reconciled with the House bill and finally President Obama.

But some people are saying this could be good for the industry, citing brothels and tobacco as examples:

1. Nevada brothels actually wanted to give tax revenues to the state: Anytime you’re going to take tax money, the state’s not going to view you as a relic and put you out of business,” said a lobbyist for the Nevada Brothel Association. Legislators were unwilling to accept.

2. Because of the vast amount of taxes the US government has been taking from Big Tobacco, it actually gives Big Tobacco considerable political clout. They even did a study on this in Korea, where they found the more a local government derived revenues from tobacco companies, the less likely it was to participate in anti-smoking campaigns.

While in these two cases it makes sense that the cost of taxing your industry is worth the benefit of political influence, I don't know if the plastic surgery industry is comparable. First, plastic surgery doesn't cause cancer (at least we don't think it does yet) and it's also not exactly like prostitution either.

Well I emailed the big companies (Allergan, Johnson & Johnson, Medicis, etc) asking them about their views. They haven't gotten back to me yet but I think the plastic surgery industry's complaints about this tax answers this question about political influence.

Healthcare Bill & Botax

2009-11-19T11:47:00.001-08:00

So the Democrats unveiled their healthcare bill today. It all looks great -the Congressional Budget Office calculates that the legislation, which will expand coverage to 31 million more Americans by 2019, also will reduce $138 billion in deficits over the same period.

One interesting provision though, hasn't escaped critics, even though it was buried somewhere in the bill's 2,074 pages: there's a 5% federal tax for cosmetic procedures (not including surgeries to correct deformities or injuries). Estimated to raise $6 billion the next decade after it begins in January, the tax along with cuts to the federal Medicare system would help Reid’s $848 billion healthcare bill meet two benchmarks set by President Obama—keep the ten-year cost under $900 billion and ensure it doesn’t exacerbate federal budget deficits.

This kind of tax isn't new. New Jersey did it in 2004 but after it only raised $7.5 billion of the estimated $24 billion, they repealed it, then Gov. Corzine vetoed the repeal, and it still only raised $11 million in 2007.

So plastic surgery supporters have been up in arms about this, with several complaints:

1. It's sexist: 86% of patients are female

2. It really doesn't target the rich: According to the American Society for Plastic Surgeons, 30 percent of patients have an annual income of $30,000 or less and 41 percent make between $30,000 and $60,000. Only 13 percent earn at least $90,000.

3. People who get plastic surgeries also don't burden the healthcare system, contribute to ballooning costs of Medicare nor are these procedures covered by insurance. It's far from being a sin tax at all.

Reid’s tax proposal nonetheless put pressure on an industry already concerned about the economic downturn. According to ASAPS, cosmetic procedures plunged 12 percent last year to 10.2 million, compared to a two percent growth the year before.

On Thursday after the proposal was announced, shares of Botox and breast-implant maker Allergan Inc. (AGN) declined 2.3 percent to $58.56 and shares of competitor Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp. (MRX) fell 2% to $23.46.

Flibanserin: Women's Viagra, Finally

2009-11-16T14:35:00.001-08:00

In another instance that differentiates men from women, we now are one step closer to a female Viagra, more than ten years after sildenafil citrate in the form of Viagra came onto the market in 1998 from Pfizer Inc.

This new women's drug is called flibanserin, developed by a private Germany-based pharma company called Boehringer Ingleheim. This is the same company that brought us Flomax, used to treat enlarged prostates which can block the flow of urine (luckily for Boehringer the U.S. patent for Flomax actually expired last month).

The reason why it took this long to develop a drug to treat Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD) in women is because, as many of us-men and women-will have learned by now, women's sex drive is usually controlled by the brain whereas men's are more physical. So sildenafil worked by increasing blood flow to that crucial male appendage whereas a drug to work on something as complex as the ~~human~~ female brain is much harder to develop.

In fact flibanserin was discovered much as sildenafil was-an usually large number of trial patients would keep the drug even though it didn't work too well as an antidepressant, or what it was initially developed for. So Boehringer started to look into its usefulness in promoting female sexual desire, and presented positive findings today.

Competition's pretty close though: There's another drug still in safety testing called LibiGel, developed by Illinois-based BioSante Pharmaceuticals, which BioSante expects will be submitted for approval and launched sometime in 2011. The thing is LibiGel is an actual topical gel you apply on your arm once a day to deliver testosterone into the blood stream, since testosterone deficiency has been found to decrease female sex drives. Concerning Boehringer's progress with flibanserin, BioSante CEO Stephen M. Simes said it is "important and exciting medical news" for women.

If men are any indication, the quarter after Viagra came out, Pfizer's profits rose almost 40%, and the patent is still in effect (this hasn't discouraged China, although China's not exactly famous for patent protection anyway).

Plus we women are lucky enough to get menopause at some point (this development actually comes at an interesting time when cultural references of cougars have really been proliferating), and even with as many as a quarter of pre-menopausal American women suffering from HSDD according to a study last year, this sort of drug should be very well received.

Glue in You: Kryptonite & Heart-Surgery

2009-11-12T17:23:00.001-08:00

Doctors can now use glue to aid bone healing in open-heart surgery after a pilot study of 20 patients in Canada today. Now if you get heart surgery, they won't have to stitch wires into your breastplate (according to this guy ScienceDaily talked to, it can be pretty terrible when the wire breaks - squeezing toothpaste and breathing was understandably torture). Now while I couldn't find any information on how often the wire breaks, this glue is great anyway since it helps you heal faster.

The study was also supported by the company that created the glue - Doctor's Research Group, founded by Richard Deslauriers (degrees in mechanical engineering and medicine) in 1997, based in Connecticut, who started the company in an old stamping factory with a couple engineers. Now they've got 600+ people on just the sales team, according to this venture summary. The glue, called Kryptonite, was developed in 2005 and has been approved in 31 countries including Canada, the USA and Europe. This should be good news for us when heart disease is still the leading cause of death (although it might hand that title over to cancer - "malignant neoplasms" - someday), according to the CDC:

Bone glue isn't a new thing, but apparently Kryptonite's 18 times stronger than one brand of bone glue on the market, PMMA (which gets hot when used). There's also Plexur P Biocomposite (cleared by FDA in 2007) and Stryker Simplex P Bone Cement (used in orthopedics since 1973).

It's not clear why Kryptonite was the first to be used for heart surgery but the glues do differ in little ways: For example Plexur's been used more for bone graft extending and bone filling, made from phosphate, calcium and proteins, whereas Kryptonite's made from fatty acids and calcium carbonate, the same compound that pearls and eggshells are made of. Plus applications of these things are done step by step (ie Plexur was used for bone grafts, then ankle surgeries, and then applied to the spine last year), so maybe DRG beat everyone else to the chase.

DRG says sales for Krytonite have been 1 million in Europe but they're private, so there's not much data available. Plus they don't even have a website up. But according to an interview back in 1999, they've got some other patents for a mishmash of products with similarly interesting names:

• Echoplus digital signal processing stethoscope allows doctors to record heartbeats and preserve them for comparisons during future patient visits. Physicians can also slow or speed recordings to better observe patterns.

• The only combination bone screw and suture anchor system, Sherlock, which reduces time in the operating room.

• The Piranha self-drilling bone screw.

• The Lockjaw 15-minute intermaxillary fixation system, a flexible direct bonding arch bar, for use in open-mouth surgery, which reduces operating-room time and reduces exposure to infection.

• The Hummer combination reflex hammer and tuning fork

It should be interesting to see where else we can apply bone glue, but for right now I'm glad it's out there as one more thing in the doctor's toolbox when they're splitting you open.

H1N1 Roots of Paranoia

2009-11-07T16:26:00.001-08:00

I found it strange that despite all the evidence to the contrary, people are so paranoid about the H1N1 vaccine. But it seems a lot of this nervousness stemmed from a 1976 vaccine fiasco, where the government initiated a national vaccination program against a pandemic, by the same H1N1 strain we're seeing today, which never materialized (one person was killed by the strain and 13 were hospitalized).

But in the 48 million Americans (or 24% of the population) who were vaccinated that year, 532 developed Guillain-Barré syndrome, where a person's own immune system attacks the nerve system which can lead to paralysis. Most recovered but 25 died with some suffering lasting damage. This fiasco is what Glenn Beck bases his skepticism of the H1N1 vaccine on (October 8th, 2009 in his radio program), which Politifact then disproves and takes apart nicely.

There's only been findings of a causal relationship between the 1976 vaccine and GBS, with no one knowing how it happened (scientists don't even know how GBS is caused, in general). Vaccines, however, have come a long way in the last 30 years, and there's been millions of Americans since who have been vaccinated every year with no link to GBS. Not to mention you're more likely to get GBS from the flu itself than from its vaccine, according to a study this Januar y, and your best chance of avoiding GBS is to get vaccinated, according to another study in 2007. Note that this is also a published study, unlike the unpublished studies naysayers dig up.

So NewScientist sums up the odds this way:

"The risk of getting Guillain-Barré from a flu vaccine is almost certainly less than 1 in a million; the risk of getting it from flu itself is more than 40 in a million. Swine flu is estimated to have killed 800 people in the US already, or more than 2 in every million so far. And during the first wave of swine flu this summer, 1 out of every 20,000 children aged 4 or under in the US ended up in hospital."

But obviously doubts linger from this, as the 1976 fiasco sparked over $100 million in lawsuits against the federal government, since to quicken the vaccination process the government granted immunity to vaccine manufacturers while shifting the burden liabilities on itself. Still, litigation worries decimated vaccine manufacturers: in the 1970s there were 25 vaccine manufacturers in the US but by 2004 there were only five.

But while the manufacturers in 1976 didn't take shortcuts, the US government has really stayed in the safe side, sticking with tried-and-true methods when it comes to vaccine. So I'm referring to those vaccine skeptics who keep repeating about the dangers of adjuvants (which makes vaccines more potent) and thimerosal (a preservative).

The US has sacrificed quantity for adjuvant-free vaccines (while Europe allows adjuvants) and evidence of the danger of thimerosal in vaccines is lacking. Not to mention there are H1N1 vaccines that are thimerosal-free anyway for those who are still concerned. SciAm has an interesting piece about how anecdotal evidence can undermine scientific results.

This isn't to say concern about H1N1 isn't warranted. H1N1 is truly a strain to be reckoned with. It really does hit the younger population more than the elderly - harking back to the 1918 flu where young people died violently by the masses - where 79 percent of US cases are younger than 30, and 2 percent are older than 65. Pregnant women are also in that high risk group with 6 percent of US cases being pregnant women while pregnant women make up about 1 or 2 percent of the population, although strangely there's no data on how hard pregnant women are hit with seasonal flu. And it turns out H1N1's a new strain which binds deeper in the lungs than ordinary flu.

But what's interesting is that this "younger people" phenomenon might be attributed to the 1976 vaccine as well as the 1918 flu. According to a study last month (published by the New England Journal of Medicine) by several researchers, a senior author being CDC Influenza division member Jacqueline Katz, those who were around to be exposed to the 1918 as well as the 1976 strains (both in the H1N1 family) "have some level of cross-reactive antibody" to the current 2009 strain, finding that folks older than 60 are more resistant to this year's H1N1 virus, and those who had the 1976 vaccination are even more resistant. Funny how those skeptics missed all this, hm?

H1N1 Paranoia

2009-11-06T14:10:00.001-08:00

It seems like this can't be ignored anymore. I tried to avoid it so as to not beat the dead cat since it's been crazily publicized since April, but it's a topic this health blog can't ignore anymore: H1N1.

I initially thought H1N1's overly-publicized nature would mean there's nothing new to be added to the conversation. But there's actually a lot of misunderstanding concerning H1N1, especially its vaccine. This on the left by Jessica Hagy about sums it up.

Concerns about this vaccine has just become unwarranted paranoia. 47 percent of Americans say they would take it, and amazingly 47 percent say they wouldn't, according to Pew Research Center.

Where's this coming from??

For starters you've got people from Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan saying things like "the Earth can't take 6.5 billion people. We just can't feed that many. So what are you going to do? Kill as many as you can. We have to develop a science that kills them and makes it look as though they died from some disease" to Bill Maher twittering (Sept. 26) to his 60 thousand followers, "If u get a swine flu shot ur an idiot."

Then you've got the crazies at watchdog group VacTruth alleging that the entire thing is a government cover-up (with unsaid motivation), citing an unpublished study in Canada saying getting the seasonal flu vaccine doubles your chances of getting H1N1 flu. Of course the CDC refutes the study and there's also an Australian study which did not find such a link. Confusion about where the vaccine was developed is also pretty clear when "who developed H1N1 vaccine" pops up as a google search suggestion as you type it.

But there isnt' ~~a whole lot of~~ any evidence showing the H1N1 vaccine is any more dangerous than your usual flu vaccines, especially compared to evidence showing the contrary. The only thing I could find is skeptics repeatedly accusing the H1N1 vaccine for being "fast-tracked" and being made by shortcuts, without proof, sometimes saying the vaccine was developed by dubious manufacturers, again with absolutely no evidence for it.

On the other side, the CDC, WHO, FDA and manufacturers all say the vaccine has been developed no differently from usual seasonal vaccines. The only reason why there's a separate H1N1 vaccine is seasonality: it takes 6-9 months to create a flu vaccine and H1N1 came onto the scene obviously when no one predicted it. If it had emerged onto the scene a few months earlier, there would've just been one flu vaccine instead of the two we see now (here's a great H1N1 timeline which explains it nicely).

The vaccine manufacturers are also are usual manufacturers (Sanofi, Novartis, CSL, MedImmune, with a full list of all vaccines approved in the US here), and H1N1 vaccine ingredients are listed on the FDA website. And it's not like the government's using these big companies as a front for shadier manufacturers - they are really the ones making the stuff with auditors and financial statements showing profit windfalls (especially Sanofi and Novartis) for Big Pharma because of H1N1 vaccine production.

CBS even took a tour at the Sanofi plant (the only vaccine plant in the US) showing that these vaccines aren't just made in someone's backyard or some shady undeveloped country, if you go to the right place (ie steer clear of website scam s and don't depend on what the FDA calls "fraudulent H1N1 products" like tea and vitamins to cure you or help much. Plus you know what I think about vitamins and flu) to get vaccinated. On top of that, there's a ton of monitoring to ensure the safety of vaccines.

As for the alleged "fast-tracking," Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, stressed back in September, "We want to do our job as quickly as possible. When we say that we fast-track things, it means that we streamline the bureaucratic process; there is no question that we would compromise on the quality and safety of vaccines.” And for those who think pandemic vaccines are more dangerous than seasonal vaccines because they're less tested and took shortcuts to develop, the only difference is actually just who pays for it - pandemic vaccines are paid for by the government, whereas conventional vaccines are paid for by ordinary health services.

If you're still wary, Ben Sherwood's got a great piece at HuffPo about unwarranted paranoia which definitely rings true:

"Yes, life is risky. Often, we choose to overlook scary facts every day and go about our lives. And even when there are simple, easy ways to minimize dangers, we frequently don't bother

."

Well, last year right after I got tonsillitis (not a pretty illness, got it in China and went to four different hospitals) I became VERY susceptible to the flu, getting it about three times in four months last spring. So let me tell you as a person very acquainted with the flu, you don't want to get it. Please do bother getting the vaccine, if not for yourself then for herd immunity. (Actually this herd immunity study found that people who were vaccinated were more likely to get measles, and it turned out to be because of herd immunity..which just might be the reason for the Canadian study?)

Barefoot running

2009-11-02T15:09:00.000-08:00

Just this weekend a friend of mine made his goal of finishing the 26-mile New York City Marathon in under four hours. Looks like staying in on Halloween was worth it.

I'm not a runner. Well to be accurate, not even an exerciser. It's terrible, I know. Even just running a couple miles today would probably make my heart explode. But back in London as an undergrad classes were pretty easy, so to alleviate the crushing boredom and to work off those daily, insanely delicious scones with clotted cream, I started running. Of course I'd just get lost and end up jogging around greater London for 3 hours (there was no one to ask - out of hatred of crowds and fear of heat stroke I'd jog at 11pm despite a friend trying to arm me with pepper spray and a tracking anklet).

My heart adjusted but that wasn't even a problem compared to my feet and calves. I had never endured soreness like that from my lost-jogging. And my friend RAN 26-miles. Which is why I became so interested in barefoot shoes when I read this story in NYMag last spring.

Adam Sternbergh lists several pieces of evidence that modern footwear is bad for our feet, making us run in a way that completely contrary to what nature intended, including this 2007 study which found that before we started wearing these shoes (not the 1700s but our caveman days) we had healthier feet and this 1991 study which found you're more prone to injuries with expensive shoes (meaning more padding and obstructions to your natural gait) than cheap ones. Apparently padded shoes interfere with our natural gait and rolling of the foot from the heel to the arch to toes pushing off from the ground, making us spend 5% more energy walking with shoes and increasing the pressure on our feet and knees.

But wandering around barefoot in NYC is asking for trouble, so now there are shoes as mainstream as the Nike Free (introduced in 2005) to more fringe-ier types like the Vibram Five Fingers (introduced in the US in 2006), from an Italian company that at first wanted to design shoes for boaters and kayakers. Then it won the 2007 Time award for best inventions.
They're not exactly Louboutins but I've been intrigued to try them for a while now, (even though they're $85) if I were still a lost-jogger.

Is barefoot running truly good for you? There's actually a lot of debate, with a study even admitting there's not enough evidence to know for sure, despite previous studies. Even the guy that barefooters hold up as the prime example, Ethiopian Abebe Bikila who won the first of his consecutive Olympic gold medals barefoot in 1960, donned a pair of Asics in the Tokyo Olympics and set another record. And barefoot running has recently gained a cult following, with people like Ken Saxton leading the way. There are even blogs about the barefoot experience like Ted's.

What people are saying now is that you should ease into barefoot running, and it seems everything should be in moderation, especially when some people are just biomechanically imperfect, which is really just stating the obvious.

But the barefoot business is booming. According to the NYT, barefoot shoemaker Terra Plana expects to sell 70,000 shoes this year, double from last year, and Vibram says its FiveFingers shoes have tripled every year since it was introduced here in 2006, expecting this year's US sales to be $10 million. That might be small fries in a $17 billion athletic shoe industry but given the growth, its a clear trend to watch.

Gravity and Insemination

2009-11-01T08:19:00.000-08:00

This past Thursday researchers in Amsterdam published in the British Medical Journal that 15 minutes of lying down after artificial insemination could be very helpful.

Artificial insemination has been around for a long time, ever since Arabs used it for horses in the 14th century and Dr. John Hunter in England performed a successful human procedure in 1790 via syringe. By 1941 over 10,000 women became pregnant through the procedure, and by 1955, it was 50,000.

This new discovery about helping insemination along reminds me about this Friends episode, where one of the quirkier characters, Phoebe, lies upside down on a couch in hopes of increasing chances of pregnancy. Back then (1998), we laughed.

I think before we became used to the idea of artificial insemination and started thinking about it, couples would usually stay prostate post-natural insemination. So we never thought about gravity and insemination. Maybe it was just something nature intended all along, and it wasn't until we humans came up with test tube babies that we needed to rediscover things that came so naturally.

But I have wondered about long-term consequences of frozen eggs and sperm, of growing embryoes in a petri-dish a couple days before planting it into a person. How could something so unnatural turn out okay? Well so far it seems the world's first test tube baby, Louise Brown, is alright, having just had her own baby, naturally, three years ago. But scientists have observed in 2004 (yes, almost half a century later we started doing this stuff) that birth defects happen 1.4 to 2 times more often in what they call births through "assisted reproductive technology."

I suppose a cleft lip doesn't do much to discourage a couple desperate to be parents. We've got plastic surgery. And maybe cerebral palsy isn't so discouraging either. We've got private nurses and drugs. And spontaneous abortions? Maybe we'll come up with more drugs to get rid of those too someday.

Oh, To Be a Koala: Battling Fat & Diets

2009-10-24T10:27:00.001-07:00

This week has seen a lot of fat-loss-related news. Now I used to be infatuated with biology in high school and if I weren't going to school for finance, I would've happily done pre-med. So let me share a secret with you that I learned from my favorite teacher Mr. Fenoli. First day of class he hammered in something he hoped would save us girls (he wasn't sexist...it was an all-girls school) a lot of time with: to lose weight, burn more calories than you eat.

I've always wondered about fad diets. The above mantra is so simple and common sense, so what's wrong here? Funny how one of the things that saved us from death in our caveman days is now the sixth leading cause of death according to the Center for Disease Control's latest data (2006). But I guess people know smoking kills/causes sallow skin and acne/reduces sperm count and they do it anyway.

So this new cookie diet is one fad that's as ridiculous as the others and another testament to our national eating disorder (but it's not all our fault-our political leaders started a cheap food farm policy in the 70s and it worked too well: US farmers now can produce 500 more calories per person per day and logically a lot of that went into our guts). To follow this new diet, simply eat six cookies and one meal totaling 1,000 calories every day. How this is better or healthier than just counting calories but eating balanced meals (that's plural) is beyond me.

This week was also when we found a new weight-loss drug, liraglutide, to be more effective than the one we had- orlistat of Alli and Xenical. There's no mention of orlistat's pleasant side effects of leaking oils and suffering from stool incontinence. Rather, with this new wonder drug you might be more likely to vomit. And we all know that's a pretty effective weight loss method itself.

So liraglutide's already been approved in Europe and is being sold as Victoza by Denmark-based big pharma company Novo Nordisk. They seem to be doing pretty well since the drug was approved this April.

While there's no information on how many people used orlistat when they didn't need to (weren't obese nor were diabetes patients), I would guess there were a lot of people using it as a shortcut to get fit for summer. I doubt liraglutide will be any different.

Also consider that it seems plain vanilla diet supplements are not enough when we can get prescription drugs. We still like our diet replacement meals though, according to Euromonitor International. And Americans really like spending money to replace old fashioned self-control.

Why is it this hard? If you want the full answer, read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. To illustrate the "dilemma" Pollan references a thirty-year-old paper written by UPenn researcher Paul Rozin titled "The Selection of Foods by Rats, Humans, and Other Animals," contrasting the koala's choiceless, thought-free approach to what's for dinner (nothing but eucalyptus leaves) with an omnivore's, where possibilities are endless and for which we need large brains to ponder about.

Because we aren't koalas, however, we'll always be tempted with that hot dog, that cheesecake, that steakburger. But because we are also gifted with modern technology that is the iPhone calorie-counting app, please don't turn yourself into a malnourished cookie monster. Just move more than you eat. And another tip: As Pollan puts it in the opening of his second book, In Defense of Food -

Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Lashes to Maybe Literally Die For

2009-10-22T17:04:00.001-07:00

This spring I visited Taiwan to see about resuscitating my Chinese by applying to Normal University's summer program (although I got in, I stayed in NYC for some entrepreneurship experience instead). This was about at least the tenth time I came, my parents hailing from Taiwan and taking me on trips to Asia EVERY year since I was three...no hyperbole here.

Two things struck me as most different from my previous trip last summer. The first was how much traffic increased (no doubt a sign of economic recovery after China somewhat unfroze relations by, for example, allowing direct flights between the two just last year in June of 2008-great help when there's such heavy trade on the line). The deterioration then was so apparent I thought there was some China-esque anti-pollution government mandate in effect when for an entire string of weekdays major roads were void of traffic even during rush hours.

But, and here comes the blog-related stuff, the second most visible change was how many girls were wearing eyelash extensions.

Now Asian obsession with longer eyelashes has been around for a long time, with Asians having characteristically (and being one myself, let me say frustratingly) short, straight and sparse fringes. I've even emailed Jared Diamond, the author of my favorite book Guns, Germs and Steel, on this subject about the origins of human societies. I'll let you know if he responds. Maybe Asia just wasn't as dusty back then so we didn't need as many eyelashes. Then again there is no race gene so it might be anyone's guess.

So from this we see that several innovations to enhance eyelashes have stemmed from Asia from the famously infallible $19 Shu Uemura eyelash curler and their insane false eyelashes (loved by the likes of Jennifer Lopez who had custom-designed fox or mink ones to wear to the Academy Awards in 2001 with a "Tokyo Lash Bar" that's been making waves in the industry) to Imju's Fiberwig, the first mascara that uses fibers and a formula to form individual tubes around each lash. I also saw heated eyelash curlers in the aisles of Watson's (aka Rite Aid of Asia) and had been bringing them back for friends a decade before beauty retailer Sephora had them here.

So plain mascara isn't good enough anymore, as about half of Taiwanese girls I saw there had obviously glued on a pair of fakes-a big change when I only noticed them on Sogo and Xin Guang San Yue department store salesgirls last year. When I asked a girl about her false set, she just said everyone else had them and saw it as no big deal.

(But they are if you consider these things are a couple bucks (to $20) a set, you've got to take the time and effort every morning to glue the lashes on and risk tearing out a few real ones, and they're as reuseable as fake nails.)

While I couldn't find specific numbers to find out exactly how much sales in these things have risen, there's a lot of news on this new focus on eyelashes not just in Taiwan but in the US.

In fact, there's been talk about a "mascara indicator" to replace the "lipstick indicator," which Estee Lauder Chairman Leonard Lauder coined when right after 9/11 deflated the economy he noticed lipstick sales were stronger than usual. But the indicator was debunked this year when it seemed lipstick was actually not impervious to the economy, tanking six percent earlier this spring. On the other hand, according to WWD, mascara sales jumped 6.68 percent which made some hail mascara as the new indicator (with a methodology about indicators which I have major beef against, but that's a whole other story). This mascara trend was noted as early as last October by the WSJ. Although no specific mascara data is available (NYU doesn't have access to NPD group unfortunately), Euromonitor International shows (big surprise) the US leads the pack with Japan in second when it comes to spending on lip and eye make-up products.

But now, it looks like the West is leading the craze for lusher lashes with our own way - tools and harmless inky black stuff, a method used for centuries, is no longer good enough. We need prescription drugs!

So in the last year, we've been seeing a lot of new lash-growers on the market.

Latisse was the first-a prescription drug for nothing but longer lashes brought to you by Allergan, the people that gave us Botox. Latisse is made from a prostaglandin (in this case, Bimatoprost), a chain of fats that's used to treat glaucoma. Actually, it was glaucoma patients who discovered this eyelash side effect in their battle against blindness. So now we've got perfectly healthy people like Latisse spokesperson Brooke Shields using drugs that glaucoma patients have no choice but to use.

Allergan's Latisse actually came out this year (and was slapped by the FDA for downplaying risks on its website last month) but it wasn't the first to discover prostaglandins' effect on lashes. Jan Marini Skin Research came out with their first lash booster back around 2005 but then the FDA had US marshalls seize $2 million worth of the stuff in 2007 when it turned out JMSR never applied for FDA approval (some say Allergan tipped them off) for including in the casual product a drug that could cause eye inflammation and BLINDNESS from nerve damage.

Of course JMSR had their own version of events saying they had discontinued sales in 2006, and then introduced a new version last year that now just vaguely lists among ingredients "proprietary peptides" and "other essential factors." Other similar products touting the same effect are Revitalash, Peter Thomas Roth's Lashes To Die For, Lilash (all of which use prostaglandins) and Talika's Lipocils (which has all natural ingredients and being a previous user, I can't say whether it works).

But here's the bad. Peter Thomas Roth warns its unsafe to use the product if you're pregnant or under 18. Latisse's possible side effects are darkened eyes (as in pupil color), itchy, dry or red eyes, red eyelids, darkened skin where the solution is applied. Allergan also cautions that contact lens wearers should remove their lens and wear them 15 minutes after application, and also for users to discontinue use if "visual acuity" is compromised (ie you turn blind).

I was turned off by the products when I read the "don't use if pregnant or under 18" warning. And anything that might compromise your eyesight is probably not the best-it might be depressing if you use what glaucoma patients use and turn into an eye-problem patient yourself. Until we see what happens after long term use (for me, that's around 50 years, at which time I probably won't care so much about the length of my lases), I think I'll stick with plain old mascara.

Speaking of NyQuil: Supplements and Multivitams

2009-10-15T20:59:00.001-07:00

This NyQuil case was a good step toward closer scrutiny of supplements, and thinking about it again, there's another misconception I'd love to address:

Not all supplements are created equal.

Those cheap, one-tablet-a-day multivitamins? You might just consider them garbage when you're talking about whether you're even absorbing any of it, whether the manufacturer is lying about how much is in them, or worse if they contain poison.

While numbers are hard to come by when you're trying to figure out how much a human body is absorbing (called "bioavailability") from a specific source and the FDA says repeatedly that it's not their responsibility to regulate, you can be sure it's a business that needs regulating, especially when it's a $22.75 billion business from last year alone (Americans spent $7.54 billion) according to Euromonitor International.

ConsumerLabs actually found that taking whatever cheap multivitamin out there can be useless or dangerous: 52 percent of the multivitamins it examined were contaminated with lead, didn't disintegrate properly, or had more or less of certain ingredients than indicated on the label.

Such is the seriousness of this matter that there is a nonprofit organization called U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) devoted to testing multivitamins and certifying ones that are safe and worth taking (this certification is displayed on the packaging).

Then, if you're thinking about taking multis even if they don't prevent the common cold because they might prevent long-term, more serious illnesses, it's no good there either. In 2006 scientists in the State of the Science Conference at the National Institutes of Health found after extensive trials that the "evidence is insufficient to prove the presence or absence of benefits from use of multivitamin or mineral supplements to prevent cancer and chronic disease."Obviously this wasn't such resounding news as year-on-year growth of multivitamin sales was higher from 2006-2007 than the year prior according to Euromonitor International. Or we didn't get the memo until the next year, which had a lower rate of YOY growth.

But if you're really bent on getting your vitamins and can't go the fruit and veggie route, get the USP certified stuff and stop drowning yourself in OJ once you're sick (not that oranges are even in the top five most Vitamin C-packed raw fruit list - Barbados cherries are first, then guavas, currants, kiwis, and longans, then lemons according to nutritiondata.com). Or more effectively, just invest in some all-natural hand-sanitizer. I would consider it more effective and safe than cultivating expensive pee and lead pills.

NyQuil, Vitamin C and Multivitamins

2009-10-14T18:56:00.000-07:00

I can't talk enough about viral sicknesses after being completely enraptured by the infectious but unliving genetic structures in high school after reading stuff like The Great Influenza by John Barry and The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. That was the only type of terror I could happily handle, being so traumatized by movies like The Ring that I used to lie in bed in the middle of the night debating whether or not to get up and pee.

So here's a third post on the subject of fighting viruses in about a month...because it is very important:

You MUST know that gorging on massive quantities of Vitamin C when you're sick will not doing anything except maybe give you the runs. Vitamin C does not cure the flu.

This myth about Vitamin C curing common sicknesses is something I vehemently would love to eradicate with pleasure, so much that I used to troll Yahoo! Answers for the opportunity to warn people about this.

Well, we are one step closer to greater enlightenment, when today the FDA told Vicks to stop putting Vitamin C in NyQuil, since leads people to believe the FDA has evaluated the vitamin's efficacy when in fact (and big surprise) the agency's experts have found that Vitamin C does not cure the common cold. That this is clearly stated in the third line of the NYT article is even better.

I became aware of this pervasive misconception when in high school I read a small blurb on the subject in Newsweek's Periscope section (which ceased to exist this year), debunking both Vitamin C as well as Echinacea, saying that Zinc, instead, has been shown to slow growth of rhinoviruses (common cause of the cold) in recent studies at Wesleyan and as early as 1974. And then while Zinc hasn't exactly been completely debunked with several conflicting studies, there have been health concerns about taking too much of it, leading to the recall of Zicam earlier this year.

This is on top of last year's lawsuit in March against Airborne, which settled, paying $23.25 million to compensate for marketing itself as a cure of the common cold.

So where did the myth come from? Linus Pauling, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist (1901-1994) who wrote a book in 1970 exalting the benefits of Vitamin C without any scientific evidence. Even Pauling's biographer, Thomas Hager, said to Newsweek here that "he seemed to be prescribing a major change in dietary habits without much evidence."

I told my dad about this but old habits die hard with a fervent believer, so whenever he tells me to knock back a couple Airborne tablets when I'm feeling sick I just let him go on. After all, the placebo effect is undeniable, especially with major scientific proof to actually see it in action...so just forget about all this if you can't stand to see the light and you'd rather stay in Plato's cave.

Plastic Surgery Beauty Pageant

2009-10-10T10:14:00.001-07:00

Plastic surgery is becoming as common as any other beauty routine, and it is far from a exclusively American trend, as I found out after a business school-sponsored trip to South Korea junior year. One of the first things they told us at orientation in Korea was 1. the country's lack of garbage cans despite the litter-free streets (clean and less wasteful culture?) and 2. EVERYONE's had plastic surgery done, with fourteen-year-olds getting their eyelids done. Well, everyone being 30 percent of all women. Which is as common as braces in the States.

So even though plastic surgery has been down in these economic times with surgeries in the states having fallen 15 percent from 2007 to 2008 (the same thing is happening in S. Korea too) while we Americans are still spending a ton on it (like $10 billion. See below), I guess with the ubiquitous nature of the trend it would be inevitable that one day we would have surgically-enhanced beauty pageants. Which is what happened Friday in Budapest, Hungary.

In the world's first plastic surgery beauty contest called Miss Plastic Hungary (winner Réka Urbán at left, who's a hostess and had only her breasts done just this year, won a new apartment...her surgeon won a prize also), the only requirements were to be female, at least 18 and to have undergone at least one cosmetic surgery. And organizer István Venyige asked that the surgeries not be too "extreme."

Of course the judging might not have been too level since contestants weren't grouped by what they had enhanced, but it's the world's first pageant of its kind so there's room for improvement. Or Venyige (not much information available on him unfortunately. I'd be very curious to know what his stake is in the biz) just wanted the publicity and didn't care.

But officially, why the pageant? Venyige says on his website that cosmetic surgeries in Hungary are not widely accepted. While there's not much reliable information on surgeries broken down by country, a Medical Treatment Abroad Survey said Hungary, along with India and Turkey, were the most popular cosmetic surgery destinations for UK patients.

But Venyige could also be comparing Hungary to the US, where we make everyone else look like puritans. According to the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS), in 2006 there were 5,655 or 50 percent more breast augmentations (most popular in Europe and the States) compared to the prior year. Britons also apparently spent almost $1 billion (£497) total on surgeries in 2006.

Now compare that to the US, where in the same period we spent an estimated $10 billion on surgeries! But that's pretty easy to believe when as early as in 1997 we had 101,178 breast augmentations and last year we were up to 355,671. It might just be like the alarm clock thing where Americans are a lot more open to (sometimes shameless) self-improvement.

Anyway angry protesters aside, this is a small but interesting development toward acceptance that we have come a mind-blowingly far way from our caveman times. It sounds like science fiction when we're creating smarter, more (artificially) beautiful versions of ourselves. What about IQ tests on Adderall? Art contests on LSD?

Drug competitions might sound dangerous but it's comparable to plastic surgery. We're not just altering our minds but also bodies. And people seem to forget that plastic surgery is, well, surgery. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) say the plastic surgery fatality rate is 0.25%, comparable to the overall surgery fatality rate, and this is from the pro-plastic surgery folk. Then the FDA says that liposuction deaths could be higher than deaths from car crashes.

Whatever the rate I'm sure we can all agree it is a pretty unfortunate way to die when some out have no choice but to undergo surgery. So I hope people remember that before they opt for it that plastic's a pretty terrible way to die.

Allergan's Free-Speech Suit Against FDA

2009-10-03T20:19:00.001-07:00

For the first time a drug maker, Allergan (NYSE:AGN), filed suit Thursday against the FDA and US government for violating the First Amendment of the right to free speech.

Currently, drug companies are prohibited from communicating anything related to uses of a drug that is unapproved by the FDA. But once a drug is approved, doctors can prescribe the drugs for uses other than what the drug was approved for. In this way the Botox-manufacturer wants to legally share with doctors what it calls "truthful and relevant" information concerning off-label uses of Botox such as dosing, patient selection criteria, and injection technique.

Allergan contends that 1 out of 5 drugs in the US are prescribed for off-label uses, and although the company won't disclose what that statistic is for Botox, it does say that half of Botox prescriptions are for medical, rather than cosmetic, reasons.

Regulatory authorities have approved botox not just for wrinkles but for 21 indications in 80 countries, including eyelid spasms, excessive sweating, crossed eyes and neck contortions. But doctors still prescribe Botox for unapproved uses such as facial spasms and headaches.

Whatever the ruling will be (NYT cites analysts who believe Allergan won't really pursue the lawsuit and is just using it as leverage for wiggle-room in providing off-label information), there's no doubt other drug companies are watching closely. But I doubt Allergan can win this one. After all, if drug companies are able to share such information with doctors, the FDA will have to investigate whether that information is true, so what's the point? The FDA might as well just approve it for that use anyway. Or will it be that the FDA-approved uses are more thoroughly approved than the non-approved uses because approving everything will take too long? Or if companies are just allowed to say whatever they say is "truthful" who will have the time to monitor those claims? It just doesn't seem viable either way.

And Allergan's investors seem to know it too. The company's shares fell 1.77 percent when the market closed Friday at $54.96.

Cephalon's Smart-Pill Sale Tactic

2009-10-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

Biopharmaceutical company Cephalon (NASDAQ:CEPH) announced last week that the FDA will review its sleep disorder drug, Nuvigil, for treatment of jet lag. If it is approved (the decision is expected by December 29 this year), Nuvigil will be the only FDA-approved treatment for jet lag. However, Nuvigil is just a improved version of Cephalon's flagship alertness drug, Provigil (in the same "brain pill" class as Ritalin and Adderall), which was introduced in 1998. There are actually no head-to-head clinical efficacy trials comparing the two drugs, but Cephalon claims Nuvigil lasts longer in a 24-hour period.

Launched in the US markets in just June this year, Nuvigil is really Cephalon's answer to Provigil's potential generic drug competitors. And Provigil is worth protecting for the company, accounting for 54.9 percent of Cephalon's revenues in the US and 48.9 percent internationally in the first half of 2009. This is a 16 percent increase from the same period last year. However the increase was more due to a 10 percent price hike, offset by a 3 percent decline in prescription growth.

And let's look at this price hike, because you can be sure the company's focused on squeezing as much money out of this as quickly possible. But the tactic Cephalon has been using to protect sales quite clever...although described as shameful by some.

The company increased the price of Provigil by 28 percent last year in March according to WSJ, a 74 percent total increase from four years before that (this year, Provigil's about 10 bucks a pill), and has been offering Nuvigil at a 11 percent discount. And it's been working: in July Nuvigil had around 6,000 prescriptions a week, in a 50-50 split between new users and Provigil-to-Nuvigil users. 40 percent of new prescriptions were also supported largely by coupons, as CFO Kevin Buchi said in the 2Q earnings call in August.

Cephalon has also had run-ins with the Federal Trade Commission on antitrust and misleading marketing issues. In a case that is yet to be settled, the FTC alleges that the company broke antitrust laws by paying generic drug manufacturers $200 million not to flood the market with generics before 2011 or 2012. Then last year, Cephalon plead guilty to a criminal misdemeanor, paying at least $440 million for promoting three of its drugs, including Provigil for uses other than its FDA-approved treatment of sleep disorders.

This also comes at a time when, according to The Christian Science Monitor this May, 10 percent of American college students use prescription mind-enhancement drugs as study aids. The British science journal Nature also ran a survey in April 2008 of 1,400 people in 60 countries, finding that 20 percent had used such drugs for nonmedical reasons (only half had prescriptions for the drugs they were using), and even though half reported unpleasant side effects, 4 out of 5 "thought that healthy adults should be able to take the drugs if they want to." This view is shared by the editor of Nature as well.

The only largely publicized danger so far that the drugs may be habit-forming. Cephalon doesn't deny it, pointing out that Provigil has disclaimers warning exactly this. But this "danger" isn't saying much considering how everyone knows cigarettes are addictive but smokers love their cancer sticks regardless. Now imagine cigarettes that give you the effect of coffee on steroids. I doubt there will be much resistance to that, even if they are addictive. But given our inability to see long-term consequences, I wouldn't be surprised if we find 50 years from now that those who do use such drugs are more likely to suffer from brain disorders. After all, these users are trying fix what ain't broke.

Andrew von Eschenbach

2009-09-28T11:16:00.001-07:00

Thinking again about this ReGen matter, I realized I didn't pay much attention to where focus should be due. And it seems there is some dirt to be re-exposed here.

So we turn to former FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach. Described by some as a "silver-haired, lasso-tongued" Bush family friend, von Eschenbach actually has a history of conflicts of interest and political dealings, two of which I think are pretty severe:

1. Providing a false written testimony on events concerning approval of the antibiotic Ketek, which has been linked to 18 deaths and at least 134 cases of liver damage. In 2007 the FDA finally revised their review, adding a black box warning to the drug, the strongest form of warning.

2. The anti-diabetic drug Avandia scandal: von Eschenbach stunningly stripped power from FDA safety supervisor Rosemary Johann-Liang after she approved a black box warning of the risk for congestive heart failure. Eight years later the FDA issued an alert about a 43 percent increased risk for heart attacks and increased risk of death.

Questions were also raised about a triple conflict of interest by simultaneously being part of the FDA, National Cancer Instutitute as well as C-Change, a forum for cancer organizations that von Eschenbach founded. And he was even accused of "complete and utter disrespect for congressional authority and hence the law" by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA).

So I find the focus on the four Congressmen a bit surprising. Who thinks the FDA is completely unbiased from political pressure? And who doesn't believe companies use lobbying to their benefit? It seems the Congressmen weren't defiling the virgin as much as they were paying the prostitute. And where the Chinese executed their FDA director Zheng Xiaoyu for bribes (okay, he did take more than $832,000 and did approve fake drugs), von Eschenbach got off comparatively easier when Ketek and Avandia killed people too. Plus when even the ReGen story broke out, not much attention was paid to von Eschenbach. I just hope Obama's pick, Margaret Hamburg (appointed this May) will be a step in the right direction.

ReGen's Menaflex and the FDA

2009-09-25T13:51:00.001-07:00

For the first time the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday has publicly admitted a process of approval might have been unduly influenced by politics. The FDA accused four New Jersey congressmen and a former FDA of questionable conduct in the approval of Menaflex, a knee device manufactured by Hackensack, N.J.-based ReGen Biologics (OTC:RGBO).

In the preliminary report, the FDA acknowledges that although it is not unusual for members of Congress to inquire about a constituent's application, it describes the involvement of four New Jersey democrats — Reps. Frank Pallone and Steve Rothman and Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg — in the ReGen matter as "highly unusual" in persistence and interest.

The Director of FDA's Office of Legislation called the pressure as "the most extreme he had seen" and acquiescence to this pressure as "unprecedented in his experience" while the Assistant Commissioner for Accountability and Integrity described daily interactions with the Company's political consultant as "increasingly tense."

Furthermore, the FDA points the finger at the FDA Commissioner, Andrew von Eschenbach, M.D., who was pushed to intervene by the Congressmen and therefore took charge of matters usually under the control of the Review Division or Center Director. Von Eschenbach even agreed to a 90-minute meeting with ReGen executives, who appeared to want von Eschenbach to review Menaflex himself.

Anyway, of course on Friday ReGen gave its own press release making clear that the quality of its device was not the primary topic under question, as opposed to the FDA approval process which was the source of controversy. CEO Gerald E. Bisbee, Jr. calls the scientific evidence for the device "solid" and reminds us that 3,000 in Europe and the U.S. have had successful Menaflex surgery.

What ReGen conveniently does not mention though, is that the FDA reports although ReGen had repeatedly complained of "unfair treatment" when Menaflex did not receive the positive reviews from various groups of scientists reviewing the device, there was absolutely no finding of "unfair treatment" and the proceedings "did not substantially prejudice ReGen in any event."

Then, the report continues, instead of ReGen appealing the unsupportive reviews according to standard appeal procedure, the Office of Legislature simply began receiving phone calls from the Congressmen complaining about the "unfair" reviews.

I guess that might work when according to lobbying watchdog website opensecrets.org three ReGen exectuvies had given $26,000 to the four Congressmen in political contributions (in fact, ReGen became the third largest donor for Rep. Steve Rothman, picture at left, in 2008. ReGen wasn't even the top 100 top donor list for Rothman in 2006).

The FDA is now revisiting the approval of the device. But with efficient market theory beautifully at work here, the company's stock price has responded accordingly, crashing from $2.00 earlier this month to a low of $1.01 on Friday, closing at $1.25. Down because of the news, and still down because of shareholders' realization that the company might use lobbying rather than a device's benefits to speak for approval. ReGen has been posting losses since at least 2005, but a revisition of approval might be good for potential troubles it may save.

OncoMethylome blood screening

2009-09-20T16:19:00.001-07:00

Liege, Belgium-based molecular diagnostics firm OncoMethylome Sciences (EBR:ONCOB) announced today it has developed blood tests that can screen for colorectal cancer (CRC) with 90% accuracy. The blood test screens for genetic markers of the disease (SYNE1 and FOXE1, if you must know) and is extremely inexpensive-as little as $10 per test.

Compare that to the only options today: complex procedures and/or unpleasant examinations (colonoscopy, fecal analysis) which can only be performed by experienced practitioners with expensive equipment. Therefore potential patients are often discouraged from undergoing examinations; according to cancer.org, only 40% of CRCs are detected at an early stage since at this stage CRC usually does not even have symptoms. After CRC has spread regionally, only 68% of patients are expected to survive past 5 years. So such a blood test is great news, especially when CRC is the third-most common cancer in the U.S. (accounting for 9% of all cancer deaths).OncoMethylome also said it is currently in talks with large companies concerning licensing rights. With such a breakthrough, the firm should be able to ink a profitable deal, and OncoMethylome needs it.

Just end of last month when the Euronext Brussels-listed company reported its half-year 2009 financial results, it disclosed that revenues in the first six month of 2009 fell 17 percent to €1.3 million from €1.5 million in the first half of 2008. It was then that CFO Philip Devine said that same day in an interview with Reuters that OncoMethylome was inking deals with other companies for its blood-screening cancer test and that contracts "are not signed but ready to be signed."

CleanWell

2009-09-19T11:52:00.000-07:00

One more weapon can be added to the inner-germophobe's arsenal, and we are one step closer to controlling organisms and viruses that have plagued us since the beginning.

The first ecofriendly, all-natural hand sanitizer brand CleanWell is launching a Foaming Desktop Hand Sanitizer sometime this month, Marketing Director Holly Bornstein said last week in an interview with CleanWell partner Honest Foods. Currently all CleanWell products are in spray-form only, and with a new product for those who prefer foam sanitizers, CleanWell's popularity should receive a substantial boost.
Not that it needs it, though: introduced just in February 2008 by a San Francisco start-up, CleanWell has been wildly popular, being offered in fine retailers from Target to Wholefoods and used by chemical-wary moms to green types to President Obama himself (who became a fan on the campaign trail). CleanWell was also a finalist in the 2008 International Design Excellence Awards. I myself just discovered CleanWell while waiting to check out at Whole Foods (1 oz. selling for $2.49).

This is well-timed given the rising concerns about alcohol and chemical-based santizers, from dry skin to alcohol-poisoning (several sanitizers are frangranced for child-appeal, but dangerously so) to environmental damage (released last month, a report on the toxic, hormone-disrupting sanitizing agent Triclosan found in 76% of all liquid soaps to be one of the most frequently detected chemicals in US streams according to the US Geological Survey).

To get down to it, what makes CleanWell different from the recent plethora of alcohol-free sanitizers assaulting the market (Viraban, SafeHands, Soapopular, Pro-Tex and Hands2Go which all use benzalkonium chloride) is it's active ingredient: Thyme oil. Thus CleanWell is void of ingestion risk and the "Poison Control Center" label, being 100% natural and biodegradable. However it is just as effective, killing 99.99% of germs including E. coli, Salmonella, Staph and MRSA bacteria as well as flu viruses. Even better, its patented formula of plant oils is derived from rapidly renewable natural resources and sustainably grown without pesticides or fertilizer.

So remarkable was the product that with the support of the global design consultancy Ideo, CleanWell went from concept to design within two years.

What started the idea was when the founder, Sam DeAth (last name not published on CleanWell website for obvious reasons), discovered his son Conor had Severe Immune Deficiency (a.k.a. "Bubble-Boy Syndrom") and almost all of their household products contained toxins that were just another tax on Conor's already struggling immune system. Thus working with his mother Joy, an aromacologist, and scientists at a environmental micriobiology laboratory, Mr. DeAth spearheaded the project to develop the formula. Then with the help of Dr. Larry Weiss (now Chief Technology Officer) and Ideo, CleanWell came into the market.

And with good timing, too. According to data company ACNielsen in a USAToday article last year, "through late 2006, sales in supermarkets and drugstores alone were up 14.4% from 2005 to $70 million, with Purell the market leader at $36.6 million. That growth built on a huge 53.5% rise in 2005." Then with swine flu on the news this year, demand for sanitizers skyrocketed: from April to August Americans spent 54% more on sanitizers in stores than in 2008.

Outbreaks Near Me

2009-09-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

In a new turn of technology fighting the spread of viruses (which have plagued organisms as long as living cells have existed), the free online information system HealthMap has introduced an also no-fee interactive iPhone app which collaborates with iPhone's GPS service to give you real-time outbreak information or alerts in your area as well as the ability to send in tips on outbreaks.

What's unique about this system is that it mines the internet and media to track diseases, taking into account official and unofficial sources. With the iPhone app, individuals worldwide can participate in disease surveillance.

The system covers data on over a hundred of the most common infectious diseases in 137 countries. Reuters estimated earlier this month that HealthMap's website averages 10,000 users a day but rose to 150,000 when the H1N1 swine flu epidemic broke out this spring.

HealthMap is directly funded by google.org and was created in 2006 by by John Brownstein, assistant professor at the Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP), and Clark Freifeld, software developer at CHIP. The two first conceived of the idea of HealthMap after noticing that the earliest reports of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak came not from official laboratory or health reports, ministries and records but from local news media and similar unofficial reports.

To most, this might seem common sense. Yet our existing infectious disease surveillance networks largely rely on data gathered from official sources and agencies and therefore often suffer from surprisingly incomplete coverage and data flow (and this would explain why local reporters knew about SARS in the province of GuangDong, where it started, before officials did). HealthMap thus attempts to bridge this gap. According to their overview published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journal, HealthMap aggregates and filters through reports from 20,000 websites, averaging 300 reports a day with 85.1% of these sources being news media sources. The system then uses algorithms to determine the relevance and accuracy of reports.

Then in 2008, HealthMap received $3 million in funding from google.org to improve and expand HealthMap's coverage by intensifying collaborations with the Program of Monitoring Emerging Diseases (ProMED), a network of the International Society for Infectious Diseases (ISID). At the time of the gift, Google.org had granted over $23 million in funding as part of its "Prepare & Prevent" initiative.

What's unique about their new app though, is that it's completely ad-free and so isn't making any money from this when it seems they could be making a lot (although they do make it very clear on their website and the app about their Google support). I really scoured for information on a breakdown of how they are using this grant, but aside from vague focus points, there is really nothing on whether they intend to keep this nonprofit afloat on pure donations or simply Google.

I have no idea why they wouldn't go the ad way but maybe it's to save screen space so you can be fully alert to the newly-infected swine flu cases exploding viruses just a couple blocks next to you, who knows. In any case, HealthMap is proven to be widely used so getting users isn't an issue (which I think is really the major obstacle for any business), especially in this environment of hand-sanitizer-loving paranoia, so I would be very interested in seeing how this model plays out.

Zeo Sleep Coach

2009-09-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I read about an alarm clock I am very keen to try. This new gadget, called Zeo, came out July 6 this year and consists of a patented, wireless sensor attached to an elastic headband, and its bedside display clock. This sensor monitors your brain waves to wake you up at the optimal phase of your sleep.

Touted as a personal sleep coach, Zeo also offers sleep analysis to improve your snoozing habits. Its memory card can hold thousands of nights of sleep and you can upload the data to Zeo's website to see how long it takes for you to fall asleep, your patterns of of light, deep and REM sleep, and how often you woke up during the night, perceived or unperceived. Zeo then gives you a "ZQ" score to summarize the quality and quantity of your sleep. With the $399 price tag, Zeo also comes with a 6 month service of an actual online sleeping coach who will help you analyze your data and advise on ways to improve your ZQ.

The idea of a machine waking you up at a certain phase of sleep is certainly not a very new one, as research on REM began as early as 1953 and by 1968 two sleep researchers, Allan Rechtschaffen and Anthony Kales, developed an "R&K sleep scoring manual" based on the various sleep cycles.

However it was only in this decade that actual consumer products came into fruition. Zeo in particular is the creation of three young Brown graduates, Jason Donahue, Ben Rubin and Eric Shashoua. Based in Newton, MA, Zeo succeeded following five years and $14 million of research and development after its 2005 prototype, SleepSmart, proved to be too clunky to appeal to investors. The three had actually incorporated Axon Labs (now named Zeo, Inc.) in 2003 to create SleepSmart, financing the project themselves with help from several informal investors as well as two grants: $12,500 cash from the Brown Entrepreneurship Program (out of 18 participants) and an $1,800 grant from Brown's National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (twice yearly out of 300 applicants). Today, newly-named Zeo Inc.'s current major investors include Trident Capital ($1.6 billion under management) and iD Ventures ($340 million under management).

For now, Zeo is the first of its kind of brainwave-smart alarm clocks and is only sold on its website, www.myzeo.com. Shashoua also told Fortune last month in August that they plan to expand to Australia, where he says sleep deprivation is almost as much of a problem as it is in the States.

I find this a bit odd, as according to this year's OECD Social Indicators report, the United States is the second-most rested country (averaging 518 minutes of sleep per day) after France (530 minutes). Australia is in fifth place. Perhaps it just seems Americans are more likely to shell out for self-improvement than Koreans, Japanese and Norwegians are, which I can believe.

Coincidentally, one of the few (distant) competitors on the market, aXbo, is actually from Australia and created by a German designer. However, I restate "distant" since aXbo, like another competitor, SleepTracker, is a wristband that monitors only your sleep movements, has only one night of memory space so you must upload your data nightly, and you must also estimate and tell it when you are asleep. aXbo has a display clock whereas SleepTracker is indistinguishable from a chunky digital watch.

aXbo currently sells for $349 and SleepTracker for $102. So really I don't know why anyone would go for aXbo if it's as expensive as Zeo but does what SleepTracker does. But until there's more user feedback on these products, we won't know for sure. There is a lot of curiosity out there though, so I am guessing it won't be too long until we find out.