terrasig
Posts by this author
May 24, 2007
I seem to have missed this NYT article over last weekend. Following from the continuing appearance of diethylene glycol in glycerin imported from China, yet another consumer product is found to be adulterated, again in Panama:
Diethylene glycol, a poisonous ingredient in some antifreeze, has been…
May 23, 2007
The 2 May issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute has an interesting news article on the advancing use of arsenic trioxide against a variety of human malignanices, mostly cancers of the blood.
The medical uses of arsenic reach back more than 2,000 years, but only recently has Western…
May 19, 2007
It's nearing the beginning of June, the traditional time for increased stock trading based on results presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting (1-5 June in Chicago). The meeting is often the first time that the general public learns of the progress of cancer…
May 18, 2007
Actually, sharks do get cancer but a 15-year-old book by William Lane led people to think otherwise, launching investigation of shark cartilage as a source of antiangiogenic, anticancer compounds. While there is one promising shark cartilage extract (Neovastat) in clinical trials for multiple…
May 16, 2007
Time is short today so here are two quick picks of blog posts well worth reading on topics related to our normal discussions:
Joseph at The Corpus Callosum discusses a paper and a news report on putting drug safety risks in objective perspective relative to other risk behaviors we encounter daily,…
May 13, 2007
My Mom did all the great 'Mom' things and was also instrumental in my career choice. After I started grade school, she started feeling out a career in nursing by working as a secretary in the emergency room department of a local hospital. She decided to go to nursing school when I was between 9…
May 12, 2007
Via my colleague, PharmCanuck, comes news of an in-depth radio program on dichloroacetate (DCA) that aired this past Tuesday on CBC's, "The Current." As a reminder to readers who aren't already bored senseless of my discussion of this chemical, DCA is a small molecule freely-available in the…
May 11, 2007
The practices of Mannatech distributors were the focus of a detailed article in this morning's Wall Street Journal by Suzanne Sataline.
The Issue: Some consumers are using Mannatech nutritional supplements to seek relief from serious medical problems.
The Background: The company's free-lance…
May 9, 2007
Via the Knight Science Journalism Tracker at MIT, I was directed to one of the best-written articles on melamine contamination of pet food and animal feed.
David Brown at the Washington Post is the guilty party whose article appeared Monday. Brown does a terrific job of explaining how the…
May 9, 2007
Between melamine and diethylene glycol, most of my attention this past week has been on unsafe food and drug additives in products imported into the US and other countries. Nicholas Zamiska has an article in today's Wall Street Journal detailing this widespread problem: China, India, and Mexico…
May 8, 2007
As noted in my Sunday post on the New York Times article on diethylene glycol (DEG) contamination of glycerin used for cough syrup, the US FDA has warned pharmaceutical manufacturers, compounding pharmacies, and repackers to test glycerine stocks for the toxic glycol.
Frequent commenter, Joe, noted…
May 7, 2007
My namesake and North American father of pharmacology, John Jacob Abel, was a celebrity in absentia at the recent Experimental Biology meeting of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET). In Nature, Jill Adams reported on an effort to mark the 100th anniversary of…
May 6, 2007
I wrote back in December about poisoning deaths in Panama due to a cough syrup substitution with diethylene glycol, a cheap industrial solvent that is toxic to the kidneys and nervous system when ingested. This same solvent was the cause of over a hundred deaths in the US in 1937, leading to…
May 4, 2007
In a fitting end to what became simple math week here at Terra Sig, an article by Tara Parker-Pope in the Wall Street Journal addresses the issue of supersized alcohol portions. A subscription is required so I'll quote heavily.
Considerable data has accumulated to suggest that there are health…
May 3, 2007
The other day I noted news of the Texas compounding pharmacy mistake that led to three deaths when an injectable colchicine preparation was found to be ten times more concentrated than labeled. Several readers commented on the reasons for the mistake, but I may have found another.
The source…
May 3, 2007
For five decades, the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) has been an national resource for science education and teacher development in the somewhat unlikely setting of Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition to a variety of print resources, often developed with NSF support.
Among their…
May 2, 2007
While the blogosphere buzz is the potential anti-obesity therapy put forth by Ron Evans' group to turn on PPAR-delta, I was reminded of shortcomings in our nation's drug distribution system from the FDA Medwatch program. (I've written about this topic before here and here.).
The latest alert…
May 1, 2007
Today's edition of the NCI Cancer Bulletin features another natural product clinical trial, this time for depsipeptide in T-cell lymphoma.
Depsipeptide (Romidepsin or FR901228) is an early histone deacetylase inhibitor isolated from fermentation of Chromobacterium violaceum. Several histone…
May 1, 2007
A few weeks ago, I commented on the increased action by the US FDA against unapproved drugs that have been used for decades but were never subjected to today's formal framework of preclinical and clinical safety and efficacy trials (most recent action here).
Over the last couple of months, FDA has…
April 29, 2007
This sad story harkens back to my days as a pharmacy prof when students would argue for points on an incorrect pharmaceutical calculations exam by saying, "well, only the decimal point was off."
A pharmacy erroneously made a drug 10 times more potent than intended, which killed three people who…
April 26, 2007
By now you have already heard that my ScienceBlogs colleague, Shelley Batts of Retrospectacle, has been threatened with legal action if she did not remove published figures from a blog post. Shelley had a nifty post on a recent paper in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture detailing…
April 25, 2007
A proprietary extract of black cohosh (Actea racemosa) sold in the US and Europe as Remifemin has long been purported as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy in menopause and perimenopause. Several trials have questioned the efficacy of this herb (one discussed on this blog) and the NIH…
April 23, 2007
More Canadian press leads me to put up another post on dichloroacetate (DCA), the inhibitor of mitochondrial aerobic glycolysis that is being promoted as a freely-available cancer "cure." Like many compounds tested in animal models of human cancer, DCA treatment reduces the size of human lung…
April 20, 2007
If you've been to Aspen, Colorado, for a scientific conference you have no doubt made the bike ride down valley to the venerable Woody Creek Tavern for margaritas and such. (The ride back to town is a wee bit more challenging, by the way.) The Aspen Times now reports that the Tavern is up for…
April 20, 2007
In the comment thread of my recent post about Herbalife, the multilevel supplement marketing company, I brought up the company's association with Dr Louis Ignarro who shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the…
April 19, 2007
Even when I'm not blogging (like this week, for example), I tend to be doing things behind the scenes related to the blog such as responding to reader mail. In looking for sources to respond to a reader about herbal multilevel marketing firms, I came across an interesting site that tracks media…
April 16, 2007
EPA agrees to cut lead in kids' products
The lawsuit also followed the death of 4-year-old Jarnell Brown of Minneapolis, who died last year from acute lead poisoning by swallowing part of a heart-shaped charm bracelet distributed by Reebok International Ltd. The child's death was ruled accidental,…
April 15, 2007
The weekend version of the Wall Street Journal (sorry, sub reqd) included John Gribbins' list of influential science books that also make for good literature. Gribbin trained originally as an astrophysicist and recently finished writing his 100th book.
The list:
1. On the Loadstone And Magnetic…
April 13, 2007
Despite living in a state with a heavy military economy, the closest I've come to knowing the sacrifices of Iraq War service personnel is through my ScienceBlogs colleague, Mike Dunford, of The Questionable Authority. While his wife is delpoyed in Iraq, Mike is in grad school looking after their…
April 12, 2007
I wish I could claim responsibility for this essay but the mega-props go to Roy M Poses, MD, of the team blog, Health Care Renewal (blog mission statement: "Addressing threats to health care's core values, especially those stemming from concentration and abuse of power.").
Last week, Roy wrote, "…