The FDA Concludes 'Love,' Despite Being Extremely Toxic, Is Not an Ingredient
Love is infamously hard to define. But according to the man, it is absolutely not an ingredient.
European Scientists Agree: Homeopathy Is Pure Quackery
There are a lot of ancient medicinal cures that we no longer use. We don’t consume dried mummy powder, for example. We generally don’t use leeches (though there’s still at least one present-day use). But somehow, some so-called medical practitioners are still employing homeopathic medicine, a discredited 18th-century…
Why a Drug Company Is Selling Patents to a Native American Tribe
Some especially strange and unprecedented news broke late last week: Drug company Allergan sold the patent for its medication Restasis to the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe in Upstate New York. The tribe will exclusively license the drug back to the company, saving the potentially vulnerable patent from the competition of…
CDC Finds Lead Poisoning in Child Who Wore 'Homeopathic Magnetic Hematite Healing Bracelet'
Homeopathy is, at best, worthless and potentially dangerous. Lead poisoning is always bad and dangerous. Lead poisoning from a supposedly homeopathic product is thus ultra-terrible.
Common Antiseptic Chemical Can Harm Important Cell Function
There are many bad things to worry about. Be it climate change, diseases, rabid dogs or ticks, life is just chock full of worry. So, here’s another thing: virtually everything in your medicine cabinet. Sorry :(
Why the FDA Can't Fix the Opioid Crisis
Opana was a painkiller twice as strong as Oxycontin. Like most opioids sold in the US it was easy to snort, until one day it wasn’t: Its manufacturers, Endo Pharmaceuticals, rigged it with crush-resistant technology in 2012. Within months the largest HIV outbreak in Indiana’s history was underway—addicts had taken to…
The FDA Is Cracking Down on the Doctor Marketing 3-Parent Babies
John Zhang, a New York fertility doctor, wanted to push the boundaries of science and fertility by giving women at risk of passing on serious genetic conditions a chance at healthy kids through an IVF technique that uses the DNA of three people. But on Friday, regulators at the Food and Drug Administration issued a…
FDA Considering Forcing Companies to Reduce Nicotine in Cigarettes to Non-Addictive Levels
In an effort to reduce tobacco-related disease and death, the US Food and Drug Administration says it’s considering a plan to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes—a major regulatory shift that’s already causing turmoil for conventional cigarettes companies at the stock market.
Scientists Push Back Against Booming Genetic Pseudoscience Market
The premise behind Yes or No Genomics is simple: Genetic disease is typically caused by a variation in at least one of the many thousands of genes in the human genome, so knowing whether your DNA code contains variants could suggest whether your health is at risk. And for just $199, the scientists at Yes or No…
Did an FDA Panel Really Just Approve the First Gene Therapy Treatment?
This week marked a major milestone in medicine: On Wednesday, a Food and Drug Administration panel unanimously recommended the approval of the first CAR-T therapy, a pioneering new cancer drug from Novartis that genetically engineers a patient’s own white blood cells to recognize and attack the cancer cells invading…
A Third of New Drugs Hit the Market With Side Effects No One Knew About
Let’s say you’ve got some pretty severe arthritis pain. Your doctor prescribes you the same anti-inflammatory they’ve prescribed everyone else, and it works! This new drug has given you new life! But then, you start hearing disturbing news reports—the same drug seems to be causing an increase in the rates of heart…
What the Hell Is Going on at the FDA With This Fox News Email Saga?
It’s a sleepy Friday afternoon on the East Coast, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t some weird stuff going on. This time, it’s coming out of a department at the Food and Drug Administration, where a group of employees allegedly received an email informing them that office TVs would now play Fox News due to a “decision…
The FDA Just Cracked Down on 14 Companies Selling Fake Cancer Treatments
Asparagus might be good for you, but there is no firm evidence to suggest it can prevent cancer. And yet, the website for wellness company BioStar Organix listed it among multiple products that do just that. “Asparagus should be taken by everyone for heart, cancer prevention,” the website read. It can also treat…
Why Trump's Latest Attack on the FDA Was Total Nonsense
Tuesday night, in his address to Congress, President Trump invited as his guest a college sophomore with a rare disease to illustrate why the Food and Drug Administration needs to be ripped to pieces. After 20-year-old Megan Crowley was diagnosed with the neuromuscular disorder Pompe disease as a young child, her…
These Dietary Supplements Actually Sort of Do Something
Dietary supplements don’t need to do anything, by definition. Tons of them don’t. That might sound strange, since half of Americans take a vitamin or mineral supplement daily. But there are in fact, reasons to take some of them. Let’s say you eat nothing but ground beef, Cheerios and Dr. Pepper every day. My…
Jeff Sessions, Anti-Weed Crusader, Was a Shill For Big Tobacco
The new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is concerned about marijuana. Yesterday he said that he doesn’t want it to be “sold at every corner grocery store.” You can’t get weed at many corner stores just yet, but there is a product at those stores that kills about 400,000 Americans each year. And Sessions has…
Leaked Audio: Trump Cares About Food Safety But Only If the Food Is Foreign
President Donald Trump intends to intensify enforcement of food safety regulations as a cudgel in international trade negotiations, according to leaked recordings of a what appears to be a phone conversation between Trump and Wilbur Ross, his nominee for Commerce Secretary. During the conversation, which was recorded…
The FDA Is Cracking Down On Rogue Genetic Engineers
David Ishee’s plan was simple, if not exactly free of complication. From the shed that functions as his laboratory in rural Mississippi, he hoped to use genetic engineering to rid dogs of the types of terrible disorders caused by decades of high-end breeding.
The FDA's Newly Proposed GMO Rules Are Nonsense
As the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it approached last week and the entire internet devolved into a morass of Trump headlines, the Food and Drug Administration quietly put forth proposed regulations that could drastically impact whether genetically engineered food winds up on your dinner plate in the future.
Why Did Trump's Top FDA Pick Delete All His Tweets?
Balaji Srinivasan—a man who is reportedly Trump’s top pick to lead the FDA—has deleted all but one of his thousands of tweets. Normally, that might just seem like a smart move but with the Tweet-happy, shame-proof Trump administration it raises alarm bells.
