HCG Diet Products Are Still Available

In March of last year I blogged about a diet fad in which dieters are urged to restrict themselves to 500 calories per day and take shots of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a hormone.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) takes a firm stand against HCG diet products, calling them unapproved, illegal and potentially dangerous. The agency has even sent warning letters to manufacturers and distributors of HCG products, warning them that they are selling illegal homeopathic drugs.

Nevertheless, on an interstate highway near where I live there’s a billboard promoting a local clinic that provides these products for weight loss! Technically, it’s legal. HCG is approved for at least one medical condition (female infertility), so physicians can order it and prescribe it. The drug laws in the U.S. allow a doctor to decide what is best for his/her patient regardless of whether or not a drug is actually approved for a particular use. So the FDA can’t stop the clinics from using HCG products as diet drugs; it can only try to strong-arm manufacturers and distributors.

The bottom line is that HCG is widely available for dieters, even though it is not approved for dieting for the FDA. Google “HCG diet” and you’ll find clinics willing to sell this snake oil, right along with news and medical sites saying it doesn’t work.

Bisphenol-A Banned From Plastic Babies’ Bottles

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has finally banned bisphenol-A (BPA) as an ingredient in plastic babies’ bottles and sippy cups, according to an Associated Press report of July 17, 2012.

Well, good for them. But in fact the FDA took action only after the agency was asked to do so by the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry trade group. It turns out that plastics manufacturers had already voluntarily removed BPA from babies’s bottles and sippy cups. The American Chemistry Council had asked the FDA to ban BPA from these products largely to improve the public image of the industry and these products.

The FDA has argued for some time now that that the currently available scientific evidence does not support the conclusion that the amounts of BPA ingested by adults are unsafe. Nevertheless, the agency continues to review the evidence regarding to the safety of BPA in food packaging, and is likely to take action if and when it is warranted.

New Pop Warner Safety Rules for Football Practice

Recent evidence suggests that repetitive sub-concussive blows to the head may contribute to the development of permanent brain damage later in life. In response to this evidence, Pop Warner announced last month that it is instituting new rules governing football practice sessions. Pop Warner is the oldest and largest youth football, cheer, and dance organization association in the world, with over 400,00 participants between the ages of 5 and 16.

Under the new rules, only a third of practice time can be devoted to contact drills, nor can contact drills exceed 40 minutes per practice session. Full-speed head-on tackling drills are banned. Head-on tackling drills are only allowed if the players line up less than three yards apart. Full-speed contact during drills is still allowed, but it must be at an angle, not straight on. There should be no intentional head-to-head contact, ever.

The organization is clearly taking the lead on safety. No other football organization at any level has such strict rules governing practice. The organization knows that the aggressive culture of football may make acceptance of the new rules a hard sell among some coaches, but believes that the new rules are important for the safety of the players and even the very survival of the game. The new rules will be in effect during the 2012 season.

It’ll be interesting to see how high school, college, and even pro football organizations respond to the current concerns about head injuries in football. Can we make the sport safe enough, if not completely safe?

Global Warming Self-Perpetuating Events

One of the concerns about global warming is that there may be a “tipping point” temperature at which global warming could become more rapid and potentially unstoppable by human intervention. To date, a tipping point for global warming as a whole has not been identified. But at least two events linked to global warming do seem to have the potential to be self-perpetuating, triggering even further global warming.

One such self-perpetuating event is the thawing of glaciers, most notably in Greenland. Melting glaciers leave behind are newly exposed areas of land, sea, or dark melt-water pools, all three of which absorb more light energy than snow or ice. This causes more local warming, which in turn causes more melting, which then causes more warming, more melting, and so on. It’s like a positive feedback event, with no obvious end in sight.

Another potential self-sustaining warming event is thawing of the permafrost (land that is generally frozen all the time) at northernmost latitudes. The concern is that thawed permafrost will release large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane currently trapped in the frozen earth. Since both carbon dioxide and methane are greenhouse gases, this will further exacerbate global warming, leading to more thawing of permafrost, then more carbon dioxide and methane released…..

Will global warming as a whole become self-perpetuating? Right now, no one knows. Perhaps the best policy would be to try to control global carbon dioxide emissions soon so that if there is a tipping point temperature, we don’t exceed it.

Gender Determination at the 2012 Olympic Games

With the 2012 summer Olympic games less than four weeks away, it’s worth asking: How will the International Olympics Committee (IOC) determine the gender of an athlete, if his/her gender is called into question?   You may recall the embarrassing incident suffered by Caster Semenya back in 2009 when she won the 800-meter event at an international track and field event (this blog Sept. 7, 2009).  It took another 10 months for a committee to decide she could compete as a woman (this blog July 7, 2010).  The delay and uncertainty were embarrassments for Ms. Semenya and for the international track and field governing body.

Here’s the IOC has tried in the past and what they’ll be doing this year in London:

1) The “nude parade”.  In the 1960 and 1964 games, female athletes were required to walk nude in front of a physician.   Aside from the obvious invasion of privacy issue, some people are born with both male and female genitalia, making the policy essentially ineffective.

2) Chromosome analysis.  By 1968 the IOC was using chromosome analysis to establish sex – XX for female and XY for male.  But some males have an extra X chromosome, and some females are missing the X. Should they be allowed to compete?

3) Hormone tests.  This year the IOC proposes to use testosterone levels to determine gender.  Males generally have much higher testosterone levels, of course, but in there can be a fairly wide range of testosterone levels in both genders.   Can the IOC be absolutely certain that there is no natural overlap, ever, in testosterone levels between males and females?

It’ll be interesting to see if any gender controversies arise in London this year.

Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea On the Rise

Last year I reported on this blog that there were signs that gonorrhea was becoming resistant to all known classes of antibiotics (this blog, July 14, 2011). This month the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that cases of the antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea have shown up in six countries – Norway, Sweden, Britain, France, Japan, and Australia.

The WHO is calling for more research into new treatment options. It also plans to monitor the use of antibiotics in an effort to encourage their correct use.

Gonorrhea used to be treatable with all known classes of antibiotics. It’s on its way to becoming virtually untreatable, or at least very difficult to treat. And that would be a problem for the more than 100 million people who become infected with the gonorrhea each year.

Mother Challenges Law Prohibiting Organ Sales

Thirteen years ago Doreen Flynn gave birth to a daughter with Fanconi anemia, a rare inherited blood disorder in which the bone marrow does not make enough red blood cells. Six years later Ms. Flynn underwent an in vitro fertilization (IVF) procedure and had two more daughters in the hope that one of them would be a suitable donor for her older daughter. But in an ironic twist of fate, embryonic screening failed to detect that they, too, would suffer from the disease. Now she has three daughters with the disease, instead of just one.

All three children will need bone marrow stem cells from an unrelated donor in order to survive. They could wait for a match to potential donors currently registered with the National Bone Marrow Donor Program, but there’s a problem; almost half of all potential donors fail to complete the donation procedure when they are matched to a recipient, leaving the recipient without the treatment he/she so desperately needs.

The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 made it illegal to buy or sell "organs or organ parts".  Under the old rules that included bone marrow. Ms. Flynn wanted to see that change, so she became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that challenged the prohibition against selling bone marrow stem cells. The main argument in the lawsuit was that bone marrow, unlike a kidney or a lung, regenerates in a matter of weeks. Further strengthening the argument is the fact that the technology for collecting stem cells from bone marrow has changed since the National Organ Transplant Act was written. Instead of collecting the donor’s bone marrow by a needle inserted into the hip bone, donors now receive a drug to stimulate the production of the precursor cells. A machine then separates the precursor cells from whole blood by a technique called peripheral apheresis. In effect, Ms. Flynn's lawsuit argued that bone marrow stem cells should now considered more like body fluids such as blood plasma or sperm (which you can sell) than an organ such as a kidney or heart (which you cannot).

In December of 2011 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit  ruled in favor of Ms. Flynn.  Bone marrow stem cells can now be sold, but only if they are collected from the bloodstream by apheresis, not from bone.  The court also stipulated that any payment would need to be in the form of scholarship vouchers or donations to charity.

It appears the new ruling will stand, because the U.S. Attorney General has decided not to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.