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On the unseriousness of anti-choicers

Hilzoy and Megan McArdle have had an exchange over abortion, which includes, as these discussions always do, a ton of talking-past-each-other. This tends to happen, because anti-choicers tend to ignore the pregnant woman, and put all their attention on the well-being of the embryo (and my friend John B., a member of George Tiller's church, has a great post showing how this framing of the issue has influenced our national discourse on abortion). Pro-choice advocates are focused on the pregnant woman's rights, and have diverse views on the moral status of an embryo. This results in one…

Hooked on Hooking Up, Or What's Wrong With Conservative View Of Marriage

This is two years old (February 16, 2005) but still as provocative....(also my belated contirbution to the Blog For Choice Day) and I'll repost the second part of it next Friday. ----------------------------------------------- William Raspberry wrote an editorial in Washington Post last weekend (I picked a link to a syndication that does not require registration instead of dinosaurid WaPo) about the sexual practices of young people, mainly college people. This is not the first time he wrote on this topic. For instance, he wrote a column a few years ago, immediately after the release of the…

Maybe James Watson and Brad Pironciak could be friends

A little more than a week ago, scientist James Watson made a complete idiot of himself with some despicable and racist comments about the intelligence of white people and black people, and Greg Laden justifiably kicked his arse over the ill-founded statements. I was certainly surprised, then, to visit the official Rutgers University newspaper (The Daily Targum) website and see an opinion article by a freshman named Brad Pironciak who apparently has no idea what natural selection is, his piece being an idiotic espousal of Social Darwinism (although he didn't use the phrase that pays, "survival…

Wrong in principle, right on detail

I was all prepared to criticize a young atheist who refused to read the bible as literature in an English class. Newton South High School officials dropped a requirement to read excerpts from the Bible for one student last month, after he refused to read the Biblical passages as a literature assignment because he is an atheist. Jack Summers, a 15-year-old sophomore, said he objected to reading the religious text as part of an honors English class that also includes writings by William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, among others. "This is the word of God. People take this literally ... I…

Children dying early

They say starting the day with a good breakfast gives you a leg up on the rest of the day, so we thought we'd start out the week with some decent public health news. We're always bringing you bad public health news, which isn't what we want to do. We live for the news to be good. That's what we work for. So here's some good news. Well, I'd call it good news and bad news: UNICEF today released new figures that show the rate of deaths of children under five years of age continued to decline in 2008. The data shows a 28 per cent decline in the under-five mortality rate, from 90 deaths per 1000…

Palin comparison, IV: Troopergate

This is another in our Daily Dose of Sarah Palin, because even if John McCain didn't think it was that important to learn a lot about the person who might be the next President should some medical event befall the 72 year old cancer survivor should he be elected, most people want more information. Previous installments here. Today it's Troopergate. Governor Palin has a nasty problem Alaskans call Troopergate. It is under investigation by a bipartisan commission of the Alaskan legislature about whether she abused her power. Palin has reportedly lawyered up. The story is the kind of messy and…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: Enlightenment values

I'll give the clergy one thing: sermonizing can be hard work. Not always, of course. Some politicians and religious figures do it effortlessly, without thought, so to speak. Maybe I should leave off "so to speak." Without thought. Sometimes, though, it's hard to think of what to say on Sunday. But today isn't one of them. There was so much good material over the last week, choosing was difficult. Would it be the vacationers in Australia who got drunk together and started to argue evolution versus creationism? The English creationist wound up killing the Scottish biomedical scientist with a…

Study: Workers may experience cognitive impact of solvents long after retiring

The heath effects of occupational solvent exposure don’t always fade with time. A new study has found that years — sometimes even decades — down the road from their last workplace exposure, some workers are still experiencing very real cognitive impairments. “Cognitive problems are pretty common at older ages and even though they are really common, we don’t know much about what causes them or how to prevent them,” said study co-author Erika Sabbath, a research fellow at Harvard School of Public Health. “There’s a large body of evidence that solvents are this group of occupational chemicals…

Colorado community demanded health impact review of 200 proposed natural gas wells

The residents of Battlement Mesa didn't want their "Colorado Dream" ---the community's slogan----to turn into their nightmare.  The unincorporated 3,200 acre, residential community offers its 5,000 residents high desert mountain views above the Colorado River, and boasts of opportunities for hiking, birding, golfing, fishing and hunting.   But in 2009, Antero Resources identified the Battlement Mesa locale in Garfield County as a proposed site for 200 natural gas wells.   That move raised concerns among the residents on how hydrofracking projects might change their way of life.  They'd read…

Aetosaurs and whistle-blowing, the saga continues

Long time readers will, I'm sure, recall Tet Zoo's role as whistle-blower back in April 2007. The article that started all the trouble - The armadillodile diaries, a story of science ethics - was posted here. Well, as you'll know if you've seen today's Nature, a new article by Rex Dalton brings this story to wider attention... For those who haven't read the original Tet Zoo article and can't be bothered to do so now, the story is - to put it very briefly - that Spencer Lucas and some of his colleagues (Andy Heckert, Justin Spielmann and Adrian Hunt) at the New Mexico Museum of Natural…

Mama and Papa Bank Rock: Behind the Green Plastic Mesh

tags: northern cardinals, Cardinalis cardinalis, birds, Central Park, Image of the Day You do not have to be a photography expert to notice that the only thing in focus in this image is the green mesh in the foreground and even then you might have to enlarge it to see that it is so. To appreciate why I relish this photo a detailed explanation is necessary. Of course that might be said about many of my other images too but none more so than this one: at least so far. Image: Bob Levy, author of Club George [larger]. The photographer, Bob Levy, writes; You will, I hope, recognize that there…

Broken water pipes and asbestos exposure in Houston

My fellow blogger Celeste Monforton has been working for the past several months with the Houston worker center Fe y Justicia to respond to outrageous employer behavior that exposed construction workers to asbestos and raised questions about how the city selects contractors. Earlier this week, Jeremy Rogalski and his investigative team colleagues at KHOU 11 News released a news story documenting what occurred. Last summer, a heat wave and drought in Texas dried out the soil so much that underground voids put pressure on Houston's aging water pipes. Six hundred water mains broke, creating an…

Honduran women’s and labor rights organization wins APHA Occupational Health and Safety Section’s International Award

By Garrett Brown and Bob Jeffcott A group of brave women’s rights and labor activists in San Pedro Sula, Honduras were the recipients of the 2016 International Award of the Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). The distinction was formally announced at the association's annual meeting. Lynda Yanz, Executive Director of the Maquila Solidarity Network, based in Toronto, Canada, traveled to Denver, Colorado to accept the award on behalf of the Honduras Independent Monitoring Team (EMIH) at the November 1st awards luncheon. EMIH team (L to R):…

My morning at Mensa

Yesterday, I blitzed through a tiny slice of the Mensa meeting in Denver. My time was really tight, so after arriving on Thursday for a fabulous Pharyngufest, I only got to sit through two talks in the morning session before mine, and then whoosh, I was off to the airport and hurtling through the sky at 475mph to get back home. I had time to look through the program at least, and I hate to say it, but Mensa meetings are better organized than the big meetings of most atheist groups I've been to (this is a peeve of mine — atheists give bad meetings, although I'm sure Margaret Downey will prove…

Curry's wide Sargasso Sea of Stupidity

This entire episode is so depressingly stupid that I almost threw the post away. But, courage! As my title suggests, this is a morass of stupidity, of interest only to the navel-gazers within the incestuous world of climate blogs. Anyone with an interest in the actual science should steer clear. Metaphorically: if you're starting from one side of the Sargasso Sea and wish to reach clear water on the other side, you're better off going round rather than pushing through and clearing an endless buildup of weed off your rudder. The motive for this was, now that I have a moment from the rowing to…

Arctic Methane Emergency Group?

From Climate 'tech fixes' urged for Arctic methane I find ameg.me who say: AMEG POSITION DECLARATION OF EMERGENCY We declare there now exists an extremely high international security risk* from abrupt and runaway global warming being triggered by the end-summer collapse of Arctic sea ice towards a fraction of the current record and release of huge quantities of methane gas from the seabed. Such global warming would lead at first to worldwide crop failures but ultimately and inexorably to the collapse of civilization as we know it. This colossal threat demands an immediate emergency scale…

Ruse on Religion

Michael Ruse has this interesting op-ed in the Florida newspaper The Tallahassee Democrat. He begins: This has been a good year for evolutionists. First, at the end of 2005, a judge in Pennsylvania - a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush - decreed that so-called Intelligent Design Theory is not genuine science and hence cannot be taught in publicly funded science classrooms. Intelligent Design Theory - Creationism Lite - is the latest attempt by religious fundamentalists, biblical literalists, to argue that the origins of organisms were not evolutionary but the result of…

What is the "pause" in global warming?

A new paper (commentary) on the so-called "pause in global warming" puts it all together. First let's establish this as a starting point. When climate science contrarians refer to a "pause" or "hiatus" in global warming, they usually mean that the process of warming of the Earth's surface caused by the human release of greenhouse gas is not a thing. They are usually implying, or overtly claiming, that the link between CO2 and other greenhouse gas pollutants and surface warming was never there to begin with, and previous warming, warming before "the pause," was natural variation. Many even…

NSA Claims That Linux Journal Is A Forum for Radical Extremists? THIS MAY BE FAKE (Updated)

When I first became a regular user of Linux, several years ago, I tried out different text editors and quickly discovered that emacs was my best choice. By coincidence, about that time I ran into an old emacs manual written by Richard Stallman in the dollar section of a used booksore. In that edition, near the end of the book, was a section on “Mail Amusements.” This documented the command “M-x spook” which adds “a line of randomly chosen keywords to an outgoing mail message. The keywords are chosen from a list of words that suggest you are discussing something subversive.” (I note that the…

Herd Immunity Catastrophe: We are ALL at risk because of anti-vaxers

Let me break down the overall scheme of vaccination, real quick. You get exposed to a dead/weakened/chunks of a pathogen (virus, bacterial toxin like tetanus, etc). Your body reacts to the vaccine 'invader' and triggers an adaptive immune response. Your adaptive immune system 'remembers' what it has seen, so when you are exposed to the real virus/bacteria/etc, it is already ready, and kills the pathogen before it can make you sick. That is the ideal situation. Sometimes your body just ignores the vaccine.  The vaccine is dead, so it degrades before your body even sees it, much less develops…

Ruse's Atheism Book

I've started reading Michael Ruse's book Atheism: What Everyone Needs to Know, published by Oxford University Press earlier this year. Ruse is a philosopher at Florida State University, but he has turned himself into something of a crackpot over the last ten years. He's edited two books with ID proponent Bill Dembski, has picked foolish fights with his colleagues, and has engaged in laughably over-the-top rhetoric towards the New Atheists. Most memorably, he once said in an interview: “And this is why I think the New Atheists are a disaster, a danger to the wellbeing of America comparable…

Hitchens on Thomas Paine

A few weeks ago, Christopher Hitchens delivered a lecture on the subject of Thomas Paine, the "unacknowledged founding father" who was "the greatest Englishman and the greatest American", as he put it. It is well worth reading. There is no more fascinating man than Thomas Paine, in my view. He was an integral part of two of the three most famous revolutions in the history of the world (American and French, with the Russian revolution being the third), and in many ways was the conscience of both. It was Paine who agitated most strongly for a revolution against the British King George III, even…

The Mystery of "Supersolid" Helium

One of the other ScienceBloggers is prone to complaining in the back-channel forums that we don't have enough bloggers who work in some subfield of biology or another-- we need more left-handed shrew ecologists, or some such. This is, of course, patently ridiculous. What we need is a physics blogger from the condensed matter world, so we'd have somebody to explain what's up with "supersolid" helium: Superfluidity was discovered in the liquid phase in 1938, when Pjotr Kapitsa - who shared the 1978 Nobel prize for the work - found that liquid helium-4 suddenly behaves as if it has zero…

Impossible Thruster Probably Impossible

I've gotten a few queries about this "Impossible space drive" thing that has space enthusiasts all a-twitter. This supposedly generates thrust through the interaction of an RF cavity with a "quantum vacuum virtual plasma," which is certainly a collection of four words that turn up in physics papers. An experiment at a NASA lab has apparently tested a couple of these gadgets, and claimed to see thrust being produced. Which has a lot of people booking tickets on the Mars mission that this supposedly enables. Most physicists I know have reacted to this with some linear combination of "heavy sigh…

The Problem With Urban Fantasy: I Want The Ponder Stibbons Story

Most of my fiction reading at the moment is done while rocking SteelyKid to sleep at night, using a Palm as an e-book reader. This does not really lend itself to the reading of weighty Literary Novels, but rather lightweight genre trash. Which means I've been reading a bunch of "urban fantasy," because that is the default mode of trashy genre fiction at the moment. I'm kind of souring on the (sub)genre at the moment, though. I've read a bunch of Patricia Briggs's Mercy Thompson novels, whose "My Awesome Werewolf Boyfriend" interludes are really beginning to grate. I barely made it through the…

Acute mountain sickness in the exit row?

Have you ever wondered how well-pressurized airlines keep the cabin of the average commercial flight? I have. So, in my gadget days, I once took my altimeter on a flight and learned that on my particular flight the cabin was pressurized to the equivalent of an altitude of 7200 ft (2195 m) above sea level. At the time, I was living at about 8000 ft (2438 m) so I never gave thought to the fact that a prolonged flight might produce symptoms of acute mountain sickness in otherwise unacclimatized individuals predisposed to the disorder. Now, in research supported by Boeing and published in last…

Alarmism? What alarmism?

A friend of mine, who has a pretty well-exercised brain, tried to get under my skin the other day by invoking the specter of climate change "alarmists," suggesting that we've been there before and should reserve a fair bit of skepticism for anyone who says the sky is falling. Which is true, to a point. No one wants to be dismissed as an alarmist. But then he brought up Paul Ehrlich and the famous "population bomb" as a classic example of alarmism that amounted to nothing. I fear my friend has bought into one of those fables that continues to dog the environmental movement. This post is an…

Voting for science; science for voting

Anyone who's spent even a modest amount of time and effort investigating the battle over the teaching of intelligent design creationism in the country's classrooms will recognize the argument that an understanding of evolution is essential to a decent science education, let alone a degree in biology. And so it is. But many of the same proponents of banishing creationist clap-trap from public schools, myself included, often extend that argument beyond science into the wider cultural and economic spheres. And there things get a little muddy. A proper understanding of evolution is the…

A physicist agrees with me!

So I guess they can't be all bad. Yesterday, I chastised Michio Kaku severely for stepping out of his expertise as a physicist to say something stupid about biology. James Kakalios agreed with me, and sent along a little essay about the subject that also makes the point that expertise is important. In Defense of Elites James Kakalios Following the recent mid-term elections, the consensus of many pundits is that this past November the American public sent a strong message of "anti-elitism." The good news is that nothing could be further from the truth. Americans are certainly not anti-…

The Catholic Church still doesn't get it

The Catholic Church still doesn't get it By Adrian Liston No matter how many revelations of child sex abuse by Catholic Priests come out, the Catholic Church still doesn’t get it. Take, for example, this story told by the Archbishop of New York, in which he recounts a (probably apocryphal) encounter with an angry man at an airport. According to the Archbishop, the ex-Catholic said that he cannot look at a Catholic Priest without thinking “sexual predator”. The Archbishop’s response is telling, as he thinks only of the “shame and damage of the wound” that had been inflicted on himself with…

Genetic neoteny - how delayed genes separate human brains from chimps

Be it in sports or comedy, they say that timing is everything. In evolution, it's no different. Many of the innovations that have separated us from other apes may have arisen not through creating new genetic material, but by subtly shifting how the existing lot is used. Take our brains, for example. In the brains of humans, chimps and many other mammals, the genes that are switched on in the brain change dramatically in the first few years of life. But Mehmet Somel from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has found that a small but select squad of genes, involved in the…

The death and resurrection of IRGM - the "Jesus gene"

The world of genetics is filled with stories that are as gripping as the plot of any thriller. Take the IRGM gene - its saga, played out over millions of years, has all the makings of a classic drama. Act One: setting the scene. By duplicating and diverging, this gene thrived in the cells of most mammals as a trinity of related versions that played vital roles in the immune system. Act Two: tragedy strikes. About 50 million years ago, in the ancestors of today's apes and monkeys, the entire IRGM cluster was practically deleted, leaving behind a sole survivor. Things took a turn for the worse…

Pop Science: The Chemistry Behind Red Bull's "Wings"

Energy drinks are ubiquitous these days. They have become a multi-billion dollar industry....even Nelly has a drink called "Pimp Juice" and Lil John has "Crunk" energy drink. Advertised to improve stamina, energy, and mental power....what's not to love? By far the most popular of these drinks is Red Bull, which is a Austrian/Thai fizzy apple-flavored jolt. But what is really in these energy drinks, or more specifically, what is the reason that Red Bull "gives you wings?" And, can it be good for you? (More below the fold...) The ingredients of Red Bull (per 250 mL serving) include: 27g sugar…

Machines Learn How Brains Change

In last week's Science, Dosenbach et al describe a set of sophisticated machine learning techniques they've used to predict age from the way that hemodynamics correlate both within and across various functional networks in the brain. As described over at the BungeLab Blog, and at Neuroskeptic, the classification is amazingly accurate, generalizes easily to two independent data sets with different acquisition parameters, and has some real potential for future use in the diagnosis of developmental disorders - made all the easier since the underlying resting-state functional connectivity data…

Strategies In Memory: Temporal Dissociations in Prefrontal Activity In Long- & Short-term Memory

Early neuropsychology research indicated that long-term memory and short-term memory were separable - in other words, long-term memory could be impaired by damage to the hippocampus without any corresponding deficits in short-term memory. However, this idea has come under scrutiny in recent years. Neuroimaging technology has demonstrated that the same network of brain regions is active in both long-term and short-term memory tasks, suggesting that these regions may interact more than previously assumed. As noted in Speer, Jacoby & Braver's 2003 article, estimates of either type of…

Did Donohue make the mistakes that Lott claimed?

In his 6/9/03 posting, Lott claims that Donohue has made a "large number of easily identifiable mistakes". Even if true, such mistakes pale into insignificance compared with the coding errors that Lott made but will not admit to, but let's examine Lott's claims and see how many mistakes he has successfully identified: he implies that David Olson's paper was so flawed that Olson and Maltz had to withdraw the paper. Lott has correctly identified a slip up by Donohue, since the paper has not been withdrawn. I checked with Donohue and he informs me that what he…

A moment frozen in time - fossil fish trace solves paleontological puzzle

One of the fossil fish I found in the Green River Formation of Wyoming. I had my doubts about whether we were going to reach the quarry. The Toyota Yaris my wife and I had rented for our excursion through Utah and Wyoming was not designed to handle the rough dirt roads which wound their way through the grassy hills of the Equality State, but eventually the outcrop of grey-and-yellow rocks came into view. It was part of the famous Green River Formation, an approximately 42-53 million year old slice of earth's history known to be rich in fish fossils. It did not take long to start finding…

Blogger Challenge 2007: how's your team doing?

The 2007 DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge is in its last few days, which means there may be enough data to start identifying trends as to which ScienceBlogs readers are the most generous: By scientific discipline: Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles is our lone full-time physical sciences blogger with a challenge this time around. He's more than halfway to his goal, but if you physics, astronomy, chemistry, and math types think you can do better vote with your donations and give Chad a boost. Two of the brain and behavior blogs that mounted challenges actually met them (Retrospectacle and Omni…

Goldilocks, a Very Cold Winter Night, And a Strange Sense of Empty-ness

So we arrive at the cabin, and something seems amiss. With each new clue uncovered, we are at first disturbed, then aghast, and finally, astonished. None of it made very much sense until we found the note. Wow. The note. The reason we were there at all was to drop off an old refrigerator and to check on things. There are two cabins, one semi-heated for winter, the other closed down, and into the second of these we would haul the fridge, staying for the night in the first. Someone noticed a bag of cans, mostly soda, and some beer bottles, not our brand, sticking out of the snow. Since…

Surveying Your Spirituality

The other day, in response to a meme, I confessed to being a theist. I seem to have chosen a good time to do this, as many of my (non-theistic) fellow ScienceBloggers are discussing the matter. (Here and here are just a few examples.) I suppose I should explain. Since the holidays are approaching and, whether you are religious or not, there is a surplus of stress about, I'm going to try to keep it on the lighter side. My brother, Tristan, ran across this quiz a few months ago, which attempts to match a person with the nearest spiritual beliefs. I'm usually rather skeptical about web-based…

Down from the Mountains

If there were ever a post to elude a specific category here on ScienceBlogs, this would be it. If it were simply a "hey, I'm back from the mountains" post, I could stick it under "Chatter". But sometimes, visiting remote regions, like mist shrouded mountains or vast, dry swaths of blowing sand can cause one to reflect on many things.... including the big picture, the synthesis of it all. I did quite a bit of that this past week, including when I saw the comments on my Schrodinger's Apple post. When I set it to repost, I didn't expect such thoughtful response. I'd like to address those…

What do you do when you hit on a girl in a bar and she's not interested?

One possibility would be to get stinking drunk, then later, find her and her male companion and run them over with your car. At this point, we can't be sure that this is what happened, but the circumstantial evidence suggests that this may have been the nature of Kandyce Stoffel's tragic death Monday in Minneapolis. Kandyce was a student at UMN, about to graduate, and the driver, John Robert Peterson, a high school tennis coach. One other person was hurt in the incident. The only reason I even know about this is because I've been doing something unusual (for me ... these days) ...…

Let's hide that embarrassing conflict in American culture

For many years, the NSF has been producing a biennial report on American attitudes (and many other statistics) about science called Science and Engineering Indicators. This year, as they have every year, they got the uncomfortable news that a majority of our compatriots reject human evolution and the Big Bang (that last one might have been partly because of the dumb way the question is phrased). What's different, though, is that for the first time the NSF has decided to omit the fact. This is very strange. It is a serious problem in our educational system that so much of the public is vocal…

NEJM Blasts Bush's Stand on S-CHIP

In the most recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, there is a perspective piece by Sara Rosenbaum that bluntly describes how the Bush Administration's opposition to S-CHIP (the State Children's Health Insurance Program) is based on ideology and not economic cost (italics mine): Why would the President veto bipartisan legislation that does precisely what he insisted on -- namely, aggressively enroll the poorest children? One might blame the poisonous atmosphere that pervades Washington these days, but other important social policy reforms have managed to get through. One answer…

Annals of McCain - Palin, XXVI: a little ACORN, a Big Lie

The fatuousness of the McCain-Palin campaign's attack on ACORN, a national organization that fights for the rights of low income citizens is matched only by its hypocrisy. McCain has been a past supporter of ACORN and McCain was a keynoter at a recent ACORN sponsored conference. McCain has no quarrel with ACORN. It is just another tactic in his desperate battle to win the election and he doesn't care who gets hurt as long as he gains. Classic McCain. Unprincipled, dishonest and dishonorable. Not new but a pattern that goes back to his youth. For years, including years when McCain was an…

Non-pharmaceutical interventions for a pandemic: getting it right (with Addendum from John Barry)

A Commentary by John Barry (author of The Great Influenza) in CIDRAP News and accompanying meta-commentary by CIDRAP Director Mike Osterholm highlight an interesting controversy about a JAMA article by Michigan's Howard Markel and colleagues. Markel's article was a detailed compilation of public health responses to the 1918 influenza pandemic in 43 cities in the US with the aim of telling whether any was associated with better community outcomes. The Markel paper bore the following conclusion: These findings demonstrate a strong association between early, sustained, and layered application of…

Savannah Newspaper Slams Imperial Sugar Executives

Tom Barton, the editorial page editor of the Savannah Morning News, blasts the behavior and attitude of the Imperial Sugar CEO John Sheptor and other senior executives in the wake of last week's Senate hearing and the July 25 announcement by OSHA of a $8.8 million penalty against the firm.  Thirteen inviduals were killed in the combustible-dust disaster, three remain hospitalized and 33 other workers were injured. In Heads should roll at Imperial, Barton writes about how two former Savannah families used to own and operate the sugar refinery:  "...workers were treated like extended…

The "Skinny Shot" and Media Accountability

This is the third of 6 guest posts on infectious causes of chronic disease. By Whitney Baker While working out at the gym last night, I was perusing the latest SHAPE magazine to help pass the time. In it, I read a small article about researchers finding an association between Adenovirus-36 and human obesity. Since I am in the infectious disease field, I was already aware of this proposed link- an infectious cause (or contributor) for obesity. But for the millions of health-conscious readers hearing of this for the first time, what would they make of it? Would they have visions of…

Reducing Conflicts and Increasing Transparency: Why so difficult?

 By Susan F. Wood, PhD  Two things appear to be major bones of contention in determining the final version of what is now named the "FDA Revitalization Act of 2007" (FDARA).  And they both related to public transparency and public accountability.  The first is the limitation of financial conflicts of interest by FDA Advisory Committee members.  The House has adopted language that limits  the ability of FDA to grant waivers to members of Advisory Committees (AC) who have financial conflicts to only 1 waiver per meeting of a committee.  This was identical to an amendment offered on the…

Low Grades for Voluntary Chemical Reporting

By Liz Borkowski  Here in the U.S., people seem to like the idea of our government ensuring that weâve got clean air, clean water, and healthy workplaces, and that our exposure to toxic substances is limited. However, we also keep electing politicians who make it hard for federal agencies to ensure these things. Weâve written before about problems at OSHA, where workers suffer from preventable harm while officials emphasize voluntary compliance at the expense of standard-setting, and at FDA, where a rush to review new drug applications leaves post-market drug safety under-resourced. While…