Pfired but still kicking

The appearance of another questionable "dietary supplement" story in the news is about as surprising as the sun rising in the east. But this one is different. This is front page news all over the place, including a piece by Anahad O'Connor of The New York Times. O'Connor focuses on the FDA's failure to take action against companies which sold supplements containing an untested chemical stimulant called BMPEA, aka beta-methylphenethylamine, even though the agency knew about it two years ago.

It is rare enough to have one accepted scientific paradigm turned on its head, but last week we had two. Pay attention. This may never
happen again.

A study that was just published in the oft cited “Journal of
Unintentional Environmentalism and Bassoon Maintenance” got things rolling. It provided
proof that proponents of homeopathy have been right all along, despite longstanding, dogmatic and arrogant protestations by second rate pseudoscientific hacks such as myself. More on this later.

Let’s give a big shoutout to Gawker . They really stuck it to the Times by pointing out that their columnist Nick Bilton, who writes about technology, business, culture, and style (and should probably stick to...

Hot off the presses: The FDA just approved the first biosimilar drug in the United States. Sandoz's Zarxio is used to boost the production of certain white blood cells in patients who are undergoing cancer chemotherapy, and are immunocompromised. Sarxio will compete with Amgen's Neupogen, which has been used for this purpose since its approval in 1991. 

I never know what I'm going to find on the editorial pages of the New York Times. Sometimes I agree with them, and sometimes I don't. But, they usually, at the very least, make sense. That streak ended on March 2nd, when the Times printed an editorial titled "Painkillers Abuses and Ignorance." The paper really dropped the ball on this one. After reading it, I was left wondering whose ignorance was being referred to, because in 433 words, they did nothing short of a superlative job of mixing together misleading statements, bad conclusions, and naive suggestions.

So, is justice really blind? Who knows? But, with the right recipe it can become deaf and dumb rather quickly.Here is the recipe. Mix the following in equal quantities: Junk science and medicine, a misguided and politically-driven regulatory agency, a flawed legal system, predatory trial lawyers, a self-anointed know-nothing consumer "advocate," greed, and a company with deep pockets, and voila: the perfect mix. 

Preventing heart disease with Vitamin BSBy David Seres, M.D. and Josh Bloom, Ph.D. It is not surprising when headlines—particularly those related to health issues—inaccurately convey the take home message from a given study. But, often it goes well beyond simple inaccuracy. 

By Josh Bloom and Henry MillerThe development of new drugs is among the riskiest of business ventures. It now takes 10-15 years for a pharmaceutical company to get a new drug approved, and on average the cost exceeds $2.5 billion. To establish its safety and effectiveness, a candidate drug or vaccine undergoes a lengthy process of laboratory, animal and clinical studies, and then regulatory review is conducted by the highly risk-averse FDA.

Fear, Inc. is having a very big day on the New York Stock Exchange. It is up 45 percent on heavy volume. How could it not be? After all, the plastic component BPS (bis-(4-hydroxyphenyl) sulfone) — supposedly a safe replacement for bisphenol A (BPA) — isn’t looking so great after all. 

Sometimes in life you simply don't have any great choices. Ask any New York baseball fan. Or football. Or basketball. Good thing we don't have shuffleboard. Perhaps, an even more painful choice this year (or not, depending on your value system) is what to do about the flu. This is because we have two lousy choices. Although, I would be absolutely astounded if Dr. Oz and some of the other beauties out there didn't have something to "support" your immune system. In which case, you now have three lousy choices.

In case you are fooled by the title, and are expecting to learn about a retro-metal group with a really terrible name, I apologize in advance. That's not what this is about.At some point during the rancorous comment section that followed my last piece about Dr. Oz,  I promised I wouldn't be writing about him anymore. I lied. Unfortunately, these days there is little downside to doing this. At worst, it will make me slightly more likely to hold an elected office in New Jersey.

Just for yucks, let’s go back a few years and see how well people did in forecasting drug prices in the future.Within the past decade, we began to hear the term “patent cliff”—the consequence of most blockbuster drugs losing patent protection during a short period of time. Perennial critics of the pharmaceutical industry were experiencing paroxysms of joy as the holy grail of health care savings—generic drug companies—became able to sell cheap copies of formerly multi-billion dollar products.