A U.S. Senate bill that offers up the prospect of enhanced powers for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in its dealings with the pharmaceutical industry is drawing both praise and criticism from health experts. Some believe the bill, approved overwhelmingly in a 93-1 vote Wednesday, would help restore consumer confidence to a regulatory system that has been shaken in recent years by drug recalls and reports of serious health risks to consumers. But others say the proposed changes don’t go far enough. Under terms of the Senate bill, the FDA would be able to mandate changes in drug labels, remove from the market drugs considered dangerous to consumer health, and order more studies of drugs already on the market. The agency would also be required to establish a database of all clinical trials of drugs to make safety issues more transparent. The Senate bill would also enable the FDA to fine companies up to $2 million if they do not comply with the new system. One of the biggest changes outlined in the bill would give the FDA the authority to monitor drugs after they have reached the market. In the past, the agency had […]
Aviation growth is soaring to an all-time high, raising the prospect of a huge increase in the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming. For the first time, more than 2.5 million commercial flights will be made around the world in a single month, with 2.51 million scheduled for May, says the flight information company OAG. This beats the previous record of 2.49 million flights last August. The figure marks year-on-year global growth in flight numbers of 5 per cent, which translates as an extra 114,000 flights and 17.7 million extra passenger seats compared with May last year. The growth rate, green campaigners said yesterday, would considerably outstrip any improvements the airlines could make in engine fuel efficiency or traffic management to bring down emissions. Aviation is the fastest-growing source of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, and also the origin of other greenhouse gases including nitrous oxide and water vapour. The new figures highlight not only the remorseless upward trend in global aviation, now greatly boosted by the cheap flights sector, but also astonishing increases in some individual countries. China’s domestic flights as a whole are up by 18 per cent year on year, and […]
BERKELEY, California — California’s tallest mountain range, the Sierra Nevada, may lose nearly all its snowpack by the end of the century, threatening a water crisis in the nation’s most populous state, a leading scientist and Nobel laureate said. California could lose 30 percent to 70 percent of the snowpack to the ills of greenhouse gases and global warming, Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the 1997 winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, told Reuters. A ‘bad scenario’ of atmospheric carbon could mean the loss of 70 percent to 93 percent, Chu said in an interview, citing published climate models. California depends on the snowpack to generate hydroelectricity, help irrigate the biggest agricultural economy in the United States, fill reservoirs, and support wildlife and recreation on the state’s rivers. ‘I think that’s a much more serious problem than the gradually rising sea level, unless Greenland just completely melts,’ Chu said. ‘This is a huge water supply concern for California and the Southwest.’ Water levels in the snowpack now are at 29 percent of normal, the lowest in 20 years, and water districts are pleading for conservation and more storage to […]
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Benedict XVI said Wednesday he supported excommunication for politicians who backed Mexico City’s decision to legalize abortion, giving a strong message about core church teachings at the start of his first trip to Latin America as pontiff. Church teaching calls for automatic excommunication for anyone who has an abortion. In Mexico City, where abortion was legalized during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, church officials have said that doctors and nurses who performed the procedure, as well as lawmakers who supported its legalization, would also be excommunicated. ‘It’s nothing new, it’s normal, it wasn’t arbitrary. It is what is foreseen by the church’s doctrine,’ Benedict told reporters aboard a plane to Brazil. Benedict, in his first full-fledged news conference as pope, also said the exodus Catholics for evangelical Protestant churches in Latin America was ‘our biggest worry.’ But he said the spread of Protestantism showed that there was a ‘thirst for God’ in the region and that he intended to lay down a strategy to answer that call when he meets with bishops from throughout Latin America in a once-a-decade meeting in the shrine city of Aparecida near Sao Paulo. […]
After E. coli bacteria were found in spinach last October, consumers turned to American-grown produce and asked the burning question: ‘How’d that get there?’ After pet-sickening melamine was found in wheat gluten from China in March, attention shifted to pet food and people asked: ‘What’s in this stuff?’ Now, with news that Chinese feed suppliers may have intentionally disguised the contents of exports to escape food inspection, the questions have reached the broadest level yet: ‘With the increased globalization of America’s food supply, who should be monitoring all the food coming in from foreign countries?’ The answer depends on whom you ask. Many call for more funding for inspection agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture. Others say there must be new, voluntary standards by American importing companies themselves, with the burden and cost of inspection borne by importers. A final set of solutions involves urging the governments of other countries to implement their own standards, with the realization that their international reputations are at stake. Critics of the current inspection system say the problems have been building for years. ‘Our food inspection system in America is […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
