terrasig | February 23, 2007A new daily alternative medicine show is about to be launched on the Healthy Living Channel.
The Healthy Living Channel announced today it is adding to its line-up the widely popular "Nutritional Living with Dr. Ward Bond," a half-hour daily television series dedicated to nutrition, herbal medicine and alternative therapies designed for viewers seeking healthier lives.
"Nutritional Living with Dr. Ward Bond" airs weekdays at noon ET on the Healthy Living Channel, which is distributed through satellite and cable TV in the United States.
When it comes to where I'd turn for information on…
terrasig | February 20, 2007Jake Young at Pure Pedantry has put together the "Oscars edition" of Grand Rounds for this week.
The best of this week's medical blogging makes for great reading, but I got a kick out of Jake's explanation of the Oscars that precedes the proceedings.
Thanks, Jake, for including our post on patients searching to purchase sodium dicholoracetate (DCA).
terrasig | February 18, 2007Lack of health insurance, or selective lack of drug coverage by some insurance companies, has created a large, Internet-based market for cheaper prescription drugs. There have been many warnings about the risks of buying one's drugs on-line from such sources from the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry but those warnings, especially from drug makers, are often viewed as self-serving.
This week, however, saw two examples of Internet drug-buying gone wrong that highlight the risks of purchasing medicines on-line.
On Friday, the US FDA released a warning to consumers that some who purchased…
terrasig | February 17, 2007If I live to 93 and someone holds a mirror up to my life, I wonder how proud or embarrassed I would be.
In my weekend reading, I realized that I never commented on the passing last month of former Florida Democratic Senator, George A. Smathers. He was 93 and left this world largely revered by today's Floridians.
I bring up Smathers because of my educational links to the State of Florida, my previous writing on Florida civil rights leader Stetson Kennedy, and the melding of Smathers and Kennedy by Woody Guthrie in a song written to drum up votes during Kennedy's unsuccessful write-in campaign…
terrasig | February 16, 2007The Friday Fermentable has been the unfortunate victim of my aim to lose some weight by cutting alcohol out of my diet. Since mid-November, I have lost 14 pounds but am now permitting myself two glasses of wine on each weekend evening. Hence, I am choosing carefully.
(I should note, for the record, that a dear cancer research colleague of mine remarked upon hearing of my new "diet," that "it is irrational for any scientist to intentionally remain sober, especially in this funding climate.)
So, in easing back in, The Friday Fermentable shall be short and will derive from today's "Tastings"…
terrasig | February 15, 2007The Department of Anatomy at SIU Medical School was kind enough to link to each of us cited by Nature last July among the top 50 blogs written by scientists.
Here's to hoping that more widespread acceptance of blogs stimulates other scientists to start their own.
terrasig | February 13, 2007Such was the tagline of a review of Amy Stewart's new book, "Flower Confidential," as written by George Anders in last weekend's Wall Street Journal.
Ms. Stewart, however, is a danger-seeker. In "Flower Confidential" she tests her love by grabbing her reporter's notebook and her passport and traveling to Latin American farms and Dutch markets to explore the commercial flower business.
The result is a quirky but entertaining book. Each chapter becomes a test of wills. Can our happy narrator keep her faith as she learns the ugly truths of an industry with $40 billion a year in global sales? Or…
terrasig | February 11, 2007PharmGirl just called me into the living room to see the reunion of the defining band of my adolescence. Roxanne. Wow! Holy hell, is Stewart Copeland still an amazing drummer? Sting and Andy playing their original guitars.
Why do I feel like they have aged better than I?
terrasig | February 10, 2007...has been the number one Google search term leading people to the blog this week - and that worries me.
As I wrote about a week ago, dichloroacetate, or DCA, is the molecule tested recently by a team at University of Alberta for its ability to slow the growth of human lung cancer in immunocompromised rats. Among DCA's action is the ability to prevent cancer cells from producing lactic acid via aerobic glycolysis, a process used by more than half (but not all) tumors. Scientists continue to debate whether this process is a cause of cancer, or just a byproduct of malignant cell…
terrasig | February 9, 2007My apologies to those regular readers who may have noticed my recent case of blogger's malaise. A combination of family sicknesses and having to write a fair bit for the day job seems to have interfered with this week's blogging.
So, what to do? Link to other worthy blogs!
This gives me an opportunity to introduce our fairly-recent addition to the ScienceBlogs corral, Karen Ventii and ScienceToLife. Karen is a late-stage biochemistry Ph.D. student down the road apiece at Emory University and posted earlier this morning on the FDA decision to reclassify the prescription diet pill, Xenical (…
terrasig | February 3, 2007I've stood at the periphery of the dichloroacetate (DCA) story mostly because my attention has been needed elsewhere as of late. However, I was very interested in the blogosphere attention given to the Cancer Cell paper from a group led by Dr Evangelos Michelakis at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. The University of Alberta has now set up a website with links to all press coverage on this report as well as a donation page for those who want to support further clinical studies of DCA for cancer.
Long story made short, DCA is a mitochondrial respiratory modulator that reduces lactic…
terrasig | February 1, 2007Between the news offices for New England Journal of Medicine and NIH's National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), you have no doubt already heard the report that topical application of lavender and tea tree oil-containing products has been linked with gynecomastia in three boys.
Yes, imagine being a private practice pediatrician whose 10-year-old male patient presents with "firm, tender breast buds measuring 3.5 cm by 4.0 cm in length and width and 3.5 cm in depth, with stretching of the areolae." In fact, imagine being the parent...or the boy himself.
In all three cases,…
terrasig | January 31, 2007Pharmaceutical chemist, Derek Lowe, at Corante's In the Pipeline notes that yesterday was the end of his employment at the Wonder Drug Factory due to a site closure. I've admired Dr Lowe since I began reading blogs because he puts a human face on the travails of a bench-level pharmaceutical industry researcher. His thoughtful discussions of chemistry, the industry, and careers for young scientists has put Derek at the top of my reading list most mornings.
Despite the missteps often attributed to pharma execs or marketers, Derek shows that the average pharma scientist is just like the rest…
terrasig | January 28, 2007
It was a very cold morning in North Florida (in the teens/low 20s Fahrenheit) as I walked in to class during my second semester of graduate school. I vaguely recall some concerns about the launch of Challenger that morning because of the cold and I believe it was scrapped once before, this highly-touted launch of America's first schoolteacher in space.
1986...This was before the ubiquity of the internet and I didn't have a radio in our small lab. The first I heard of the disaster was while standing on the med center cafeteria lunch line when a visually-impaired gentleman asked me what I…
terrasig | January 25, 2007In an insult to dietary supplement companies who at least try to play by the rules, a company has agreed with the US FDA to recall its product because it might work too well:
FDA and Ebek, Inc. notified healthcare professionals and consumers of a voluntary nationwide recall of the company's dietary supplement because the product contains tadalafil, a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction.
Yes, you read correctly: if the herbal product doesn't work, just add an actual prescription drug to the concoction. Tadalafil is better known in the US as Cialis. In fact, this adulteration of herbal "…
terrasig | January 24, 2007I don't even know where to begin with this beautifully-crafted but very sad article in today's Wall Street Journal (sub req'd..sorry) by Suzanne Sataline.
This has all the features that are sure to send PZ Myers and Orac convulsing in a corner somewhere. As detailed in FDA allegations from an ongoing investigation as reported by Sataline:
A Pentacostal minister physician touting cancer cure rates of 60% or better, without chemotherapy
The sale/promotion of dietary supplements and herbal formulas, sometimes along with diets inspired by Biblical descriptions, at hundreds to thousands of…
terrasig | January 24, 2007If you've been perusing ScienceBlogs.com over the last week or two, you'll note that some bloggers are trying to make their sites even more accessible to the casual reader by introducing a description of basic concepts within their respective fields.
I used to teach a 60-90 min lecture to the public in one of the "Mini-Med School" public education programs that have sprung up at medical schools around the world, condensing key concepts in pharmacology and drug action into bite-sized morsels.
Topics included:
What is a drug?
Where do drugs come from?
Why does a drug work for some people and…
terrasig | January 22, 2007The 2007 NC Science Blogging Conference came off as a great success thanks to the vision, passion, and general butt-busting of Anton Zuiker, Bora, Brian, and Paul and the sharing of wisdom by all the speakers. A fellow health professional-turned-journalist remarked to me that professional meeting planners couldn't have done a better job. Organization, advertising, facilities, securing sponsor support, and publishing a blog anthology would have been overwhelming to a group five times the size. Thank you all!
A comprehensive list of posts surrounding the entire conference was put together by…
terrasig | January 19, 2007Now this is bloody lovely: supplement consumer watchdog ConsumerLab.com reports that some multivitamin supplements are contaminated with lead, with one at concentrations 10 times above acceptable California exposure limits. Jacqueline Stenson at MSNBC does a good job of putting this all in perspective:
Of 21 brands of multivitamins on the market in the United States and Canada selected by ConsumerLab.com and tested by independent laboratories, just 10 met the stated claims on their labels or satisfied other quality standards.
Most worrisome, according to ConsumerLab.com president Dr. Tod…
terrasig | January 18, 2007This is a recipe for disaster: a demographic prone by need to polypharmacy, also using supplements, etc., without informing their primary care provider.
A joint study by AARP and NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine reveal that nearly three-quarters of patients over age 50 do not discuss their use of complementary and alternative medicines and other over-the-counter medicines with their doctors.
"We know that people 50 and older tend to be high users of complementary and alternative medicine, but this study was the first to explore gaps in communications regarding…