terrasig | January 17, 2007While I wait for my copy of Dan Hurley's book, "Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry," it is interesting to read the media reports on his interviews and the responses from the dietary supplement industry.
While the Natural Products Association has simply responded with a measured, educational piece that does not mention Hurley by name, the Council for Responsible Nutrition was all over the wires today dismissing the book as, "not credible."
Some of the most thoughtful discussion today came from CBS News's Public Eye site and a post by…
terrasig | January 16, 2007Dan Hurley's new book, "Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry," has the industry on the defensive.
Cited by Katie Couric's two-part CBS News series on dietary supplements and excerpted today in the New York Times, Hurley seems to have created a buzz reminiscent of Marcia Angell's similar indictment of the prescription pharmaceutical industry.
Hurley's book is already #953 on Amazon and had been picking up heat from supplement advocate bloggers since before it was even released on 26 December.
Unfortunately, I was not privy to the…
terrasig | January 16, 2007Brazilian researchers have been experimenting with an gel containing an algae-based anti-HIV compound designed for use by women to prevent the spread of the virus.
Derived from the Brazilian brown alga, Dictyota pfaffii, two papers are available the describe the isolation and biological activity of the most active of the components, the dolabellane diterpene 8,10,18-trihydroxy-2,6-dolabelladiene. The compound does indeed appear to inhibit HIV reverse transcriptase at concentrations (about 16 micromolar) that can be maintained in a vaginal gel preparation.
Human trials are expected to being…
terrasig | January 15, 2007I couldn't think of much to write today until I saw Mike The Mad Biologist post a speech from Dr King to striking Memphis sanitation workers in 1968.
Economic justice is the general theme, but there is little more moving than the oratory of Dr King.
Mike didn't highlight this quote, but let me do so here:
We are going to also say, "You are even unjustly spending five hundred thousand dollars to kill a single Vietcong soldier, while you spend only fifty-three dollars a year per person for everybody categorized as poverty-stricken." Instead of spending thirty-five billion dollars every year…
terrasig | January 14, 2007A thoughtful reader of mine and Kevin MD's just brought to my attention the plight of six members of a California family who apparently ingested Amanita phalloides (deathcap) mushrooms following a New Year's Day outing.
Jondi Gumz of the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported today on the circuitous route the attending physicians took to obtain a source and FDA emergency approval to try an intravenous formulation of an herbal medicine from Europe.
Using Google Scholar, a search engine of scholarly literature, he [Dr Todd Mitchell] found a promising avenue of treatment: Extract from milk thistle, a…
terrasig | January 12, 2007...for supporting ScienceBlogs.
I normally don't pay much attention to the adverts Seed posts around this joint (and I joined Sb just after the "volcano episode"). However, checking the "Last 24 Hours" channel, I was pleased to see that the Colorado Tourism office has bought some ad space.
Karmen (Chaotic Utopia) and the recently-departed Kevin Vranes (NoSeNada) are both holding down the fort out West while I'm an expat. (Oops, Karmen reminded me below that new Sber, Chris Chatham, at Developing Intelligence is also a CU-Boulder grad student - sorry Chris.)
Not to hump the ad too much,…
terrasig | January 12, 2007So, Shelley tagged a few of us with this fun meme. Mark and PZ have followed suit.
I am swamped with real-life work, as my posting frequency has shown as of late. I've neglected my New Year's resolution to stay in better touch with my family, then promptly missed my brother-in-law's birthday. Then I completely missed National Delurking Week.
So can I just fire off a simple meme response and be done with it? Nope.
I had to remind myself of how library call numbers work, then look in the Library of Congress subject index to figure out what prefix best fits Terra Sigillata ("R" is Medicine - "…
terrasig | January 10, 2007This blog was established originally to discuss the promise of natural products in human therapeutics, particularly to identify those herbal medicines that might have some potential for utility as medicines. However, a quick review of my posts reveals a majority of reports of negative outcomes of efficacy or other problems with herbal medicines.
Well, as many of my readers and fellow bloggers down under are aware, the situation in the US is not unique. According to this news report out of Australia:
Popular folk remedies such as aloe vera and lavender oil may not possess healing properties…
terrasig | January 9, 2007The BCS Championship Bowl in Glendale, Arizona - the Tostitos Bowl....lovely.
Anyway, I have to admit the the opening kickoff return for a TD by Ohio State had me thinking the same as all the critics: the Gators can never win the big game.
Well, I was wrong...in a big way.
Gainesville, Florida, is now home to the men's collegiate champions in both basketball and football.
Ahhh, to have been slurping oysters and tossing back a few brews last night at the Purple Porpoise....
Congratulations, gentlemen.
And for another take on collegiate athletics, see yesterday's excellent essay by Matt Nisbet…
terrasig | January 8, 2007Like some ScienceBloggers, but not all, I have been unable to get a post to go through our MovableType interface for several days. There appears to be some offending code in some of my text but the powers-that-be are still working on it.
Thanks so much for checking in - I hope to have problems resolved shortly. (Hopefully, this minimalist text will post correctly.)
terrasig | January 3, 2007It's been over two years since I saw a notice for a conference entitled, "Developing an Adverse Event Reporting (AER) System for the Dietary Supplement Industry," in St. Paul, MN, sponsored by the Center for Dietary Supplement Safety at the University of Minnesota and the Utah Natural Products Alliance. At this conference, I first heard of the support of the dietary supplement industry for an adverse event reporting system similar to the MedWatch program for prescription drugs.
In general, industry representatives I spoke with justified their support with the expectation that herbal products…
terrasig | December 28, 2006President Ford and his family have a special place in the heart of Coloradans, in part for helping to popularize the Vail Valley ski resorts - the "Western White House," as it was then known.
Little-appreciated outside Colorado is that the Fords continued to contribute to the Vail and Beaver Creek areas long after the president left office. The Rocky Mountain News reports Mr Ford visited his Beaver Creek home as recently as this past July but had to call the trip short due to the 8100 ft altitude and his health difficulties.
For me, the greatest legacy of the Fords in Colorado is the Betty…
terrasig | December 27, 2006A week after my colleague Orac posts on the conundrum of bringing religion into medicine, Michael Conlon reports on a nurse's book about how religious and cultural influences can compromise medical care:
Any nurse can walk into a bad situation. The one Luanne Linnard-Palmer can't forget came as she readied a little boy for a blood transfusion only to be told by his mother "You know you're damning his soul to hell!"
The child's mother was a Jehovah's Witness, a faith that rejects blood transfusions. Her son had sickle cell anemia and had become extremely weak.
"It blew me away," Linnard-Palmer…
terrasig | December 25, 2006To all of our readers, near and far, please accept our warmest best wishes for peace and happiness today and in the upcoming new year.
If the other end of this internet connection finds you in a warm home and/or in the company of loved ones, consider yourself fortunate.
Looking forward to returning to science and medicine, but be sure to take time today for yourselves and be grateful for what you have.
terrasig | December 23, 2006In the US? Nope.
In England? No, sir.
In Australia? No, mate.
In Canada? No, eh?
Where??? In the United Arab Emirates.
terrasig | December 22, 2006The Wall Street Journal's Science Journal correspondent today "bestows holiday gifts" (sub req'd) on researchers, drugs, and other approaches that have advanced health and medicine, or set it back.
Given yesterday's discussion of the failed efficacy trial for black cohosh, I chuckled at this one:
To the herbal supplement called saw palmetto, taken by some 2.5 million men in the U.S., which failed to help urinary problems any better than a placebo: a framed copy of the 1994 law that lets dietary supplements be sold even if there is no evidence of their efficacy.
The funny thing is that I wrote…
terrasig | December 21, 2006As we discussed briefly on Tuesday, trial results published in the Annals of Internal Medicine revealed that alternative botanical supplements containing black cohosh were without benefit relative to placebo in treating the vasomotor symptoms (e.g., hot flashes, night sweats) of peri- and postmenopausal women.
The Cheerful Oncologist followed up with a post entitled, "Oh M'Gosh! Black Cohosh Squashed and That's No Bosh!, where Doc Hildreth cited another 2006 study from Mayo Clinic investigators demonstrating lack of efficacy of black cohosh extracts against hot flashes. (He noted later that…
terrasig | December 20, 2006Hearty congratulations go out to fellow ScienceBloggers Orac (Respectful Insolence) and PZ Myers (Pharyngula, like I needed to tell you) for their respective wins in the categories of Best Medical/Health Issues Blog and Best Science Blog, respectively, of The 2006 Weblog Awards. Also nominated in the science category, and all with a nice showing, were Mixing Memory, Deltoid, and Good Math, Bad Math and The Cheerful Oncologist in the med/health category.
Since we would fall in the category that Orac led, I wanted to draw the attention of Terra Sig readers to an excellent recent example of the…
terrasig | December 19, 2006Here is the NIH press release of a study published in today's Annals of Internal Medicine.
I'll have to take a closer look at the specific formulations of the supplements tested (two of which contained black cohosh extracts) and study design before commenting more extensively. The trial was supported jointly by NIH's National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
terrasig | December 19, 2006Terrible news this morning, but not entirely unexpected given the complete ignorance of science in the case of medical personnel charged with intentionally infecting children with HIV in a Libyan hospital. The defendants have again been sentenced to death.
Luc Montagnier -- the French doctor who was a co-discoverer of HIV -- testified in the first trial that the deadly virus was active in the hospital before the Bulgarian nurses began their contracts there in 1998.
More evidence for that argument surfaced on December 6 -- too late to be submitted in court -- when Nature magazine published an…