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The Film Array can screen for Ebola with 90percent accuracy It is being using by US military doctors in West Africa Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital had one of the $39,000 devices but could not use it to diagnose diseases The military has given the Utah-based developer of the machine a $240million grant to perfect deadly virus detection The Dallas hospital that sent home Thomas Eric Duncan the first time he showed up at the emergency room has a machine that could have detected Ebola in less than an hour - but doctors were barred from using it because of federal...

The Food and Drug Administration can make two types of errors. It can approve a drug that has dangerous unanticipated side effects, or it can reject or delay approval of a drug that is safe and effective. Let's look at these errors, because to err on the side of under- or over-caution is costly. It's in an FDA official's self-interest to err on the side of over-caution. People who are injured by incorrectly approved drugs -- and their families -- will know that they are victims of FDA mistakes, or under-caution. Their suffering makes headlines. FDA officials face unfavorable publicity,...

What are the odds? In 2009, Congress passed landmark legislation directing the Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products, aiming to cut the toll from the leading preventable cause of disease and death. Three times since, however, cigarette and e-cigarette companies have filed successful legal challenges to thwart rules intended to make their products less appealing to consumers–and less accessible to kids. The three cases, which, among other things, have blocked graphic cigarette warning labels and delayed regulation of e-cigarettes for at least a few years, were decided in favor of industry plaintiffs by the same federal judge, Richard...

Pharmaceutical companies say the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) new social media rules would have a "chilling" effect on the industry and leave consumers in the dark.The FDA in June released draft guidelines for how drug firms should use social networks like Facebook and Twitter. But pharmaceutical companies are concerned the FDA would hold them responsible for misinformation about their products posted online by third parties that the companies have little to no control over. They say the rules would discourage them from interacting on social networks, leaving consumers without useful information about their products."Given the extraordinary growth of the...

Without any objection, the Senate has passed a bill forcing the FDA to speed up the approval process for sunscreen technology, HAPPI reports.Sunscreen technology has stagnated in the United States since the 1990s, not because companies have failed to innovate, but because the Food and Drug Administration has been sitting on proposals submitted 12 years ago without even reviewing them.The proposals include new sunscreen ingredients, and since the FDA has dropped the ball, the Senate has picked it up with the passage of the Sunscreen Innovation Act on Wednesday night.Rates of melanoma have skyrocketed in the last 40 years, giving...

According to The Week, the FDA is out to regulate away our freedom to partake in French cheese: New FDA restrictions on the levels of harmless bacteria found in imported cheese have effectively banned a number of artisan French cheeses, including Roquefort, Morbier, and Tomme de Savoie. The restricted bacteria already exist in the human stomach, and the banned cheeses have not changed their recipes for years. While the restriction is already affecting imports, domestic cheese producers are under the FDA gun, too. Raw milk cheesemakers may be put out of business over a change they say is capricious at...

Stricter rules for the country's most commonly prescribed painkiller were rolled out on Thursday by the FDA, the last step in a policy change that has been coming down the pipeline for years, The New York Times reported on Sunday. Hydrocodone will now be in a more serious and restrictive category. Doctors will be barred from calling in prescriptions by telephone, and patients will not be able to get refills on the same prescription, but will have to return to a physician for a new one. It will also have be to kept in special vaults in pharmacies. The Drug...

The recent death of Robin Williams has put a spotlight on the matters of depression, how it’s treated, and the role of prescribed and illicit drugs. According to the American Psychiatric Association, “Depression is a serious medical illness that negatively affects how you feel, the way you think and how you act. Depression has a variety of symptoms, but the most common are a deep feeling of sadness or a marked loss of interest or pleasure in activities.” Three primary types are identified: bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder (clinical depression), and persistent depressive disorder. The Association details typical symptoms… Changes...

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) grades our drinking water a D in their annual report card. Local systems leak an estimated 7 billion gallons of water daily. And more than 850 billion gallons of sewage escape into surface water annually.And I wouldn’t rely too heavily on our electric grid.ASCE gives that a D+ due to outages and disturbances that cost up to $180 billion in annual economic activity. The electric grid is at risk of cascading failures until energy production becomes decentralized.These risks are growing by the day. The government that is supposed to be protecting and serving...

A pair of congressional Democrats pressed the White House Friday to move forcefully on regulations requiring calorie counts on restaurant menus. The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) proposed rule mandates labels on restaurants, “similar retail food establishments” and vending machines to combat obesity by helping consumers make healthier choices. The regulations, a requirement of the Affordable Care Act, were first proposed in 2011 and drew hundreds of public comments. The proposal remains under review at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Meanwhile, dozens of lawmakers have argued that the FDA’s proposed rule goes beyond congressional intent, warning...

“MY SPIRIT IS BROKEN” Will the New Statin Guidelines Do More Harm Than Good? Part 1: A $29-billion-dollar-a-year industryWhen he was nearing the end of his career, Henry Gadsden, then-CEO of pharmaceutical giant Merck, gave an interview to Fortune magazine in which he said that he regretted that he couldn’t sell drugs to healthy people. He said his dream was to be able to peddle his company’s wares to everybody, like chewing gum giant Wrigley’s. Mr. Gadsden’s dream soon began to come true. A few years earlier, Japanese biochemist Doctor Akira Endo surmised that a compound that could inhibit the...

Reforming health care is a signature issue with the current administration, but even the most ardent proponents of Obamacare would be reluctant to call it a success. Notwithstanding the well-publicized problems, of the countless billions spent on this program, precious little has gone into actual patient care. But really, what should we expect from a system designed by soulless bureaucrats such as “bioethicist” Ezekiel Emanuel and Donald Berwick, former Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services? Emanuel infamously suggested that doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, while Berwick intoned that the federal government must step in between...

A Methodist church in West Virginia was stymied in its efforts to help the needy last week when the county health department told them their plan violated state health codes. The parishioners at First United Methodist Church had decided to install a large refrigerator outside their building that those in need could access at any time. Anticipating concerns about food safety, they planned to stock it with only prepackaged food, and built a cage around it to prevent small children from climbing inside. “We just wanted a way for more people to have access to food, along with some privacy...

Given the link between alcohol consumption during pregnancy and birth defects, should expectant mothers who drink be arrested for assault? If not, it is hard to see why Mallory Loyola is in jail. Loyola, who was arrested last week after giving birth to a baby girl who tested positive for amphetamine, is the first woman to be charged under a new Tennessee law that criminalizes drug consumption by pregnant women. The law, ostensibly aimed at protecting children, is really about punishing what its chief sponsor described as "the worst of the worst": women who not only use arbitrarily proscribed intoxicants...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is protecting consumer rights in a bold new way–by policing companies’ Facebook pages.Zarbee’s Naturals, a producer of “safe and effective natural [cough] remedies” for children, was sent a warning letter by the FDA for liking comments on its Facebook page implying that its products “are intended for use as drugs.”Zarbee’s products were designed specifically for children too young for FDA-approved medications and have not been reviewed by the FDA. Happy customers posted their approval on the company’s Facebook page, saying things like “Love Zarbee’s this is the only medicine we use for our 2...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has found that Alaska seafood is safe from Fukushima radiation, but a citizen’s group plans to conduct a separate study of the water in lower Cook Inlet using a crowdsource funding site. “The (FDA) results confirm information from federal, state and international agencies that seafood in the North Pacific and Alaska waters poses no radiation related health concerns to those who consume it,” said a statement released by state health and environmental officials. The FDA review was based on a sampling plan developed by the departments of Environmental Conservation and Health and Social Services,...

It’s called the “little pink pill,” a tiny tablet that could have a huge impact on treating female sexual dysfunction. If it’s approved, it would become the first drug of its kind on the market. But that’s a big IF. The drug Flibanserin is locked in a heated battle for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, raising controversial questions about why there are so many sexual enhancement drugs available for men and zero for women. Cindy Whitehead, the founder and COO of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based company focused on producing only Flibanserin, has been fighting for...

The public will have more time to weigh in on a federal proposal to regulate electronic cigarettes and other tobacco products. The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that the public comment period slated to end July 9 is being extended an additional 30 days to Aug. 8 after getting lots of input on how to regulate e-cigarettes. Those are battery-powered devices that heat a liquid nicotine solution, creating vapor that users inhale. The FDA also proposed extending its authority to regulate cigars, hookahs, nicotine gels and pipe tobacco.

I’m no cheese expert. But I know what I like. And I prefer “interesting” cheese to the mostly mass-produced product I see on supermarket shelves. Why? A failure of capitalism? No. Blame the FDA for today’s mediocrity in cheese. The milk product industry has been heavily regulated, subsidized, and managed since FDR’s time, at least. And it’s mostly gotten worse. Government, like cheese, ages to “perfection.” By which I mean, when it comes to government, perfectly foolish. The most famous “government cheese” problem (the government buying and storing huge quantities of the stuff to raise consumer prices and “therefore” stabilize...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry probably shouldn't have attempted to make the case that gay people can "decide not to" be gay despite genetic predisposition, he conceded Thursday, offering no semblance of an apology but trying instead to rally attention back to his message about jobs and the economy. "I got asked about an issue," Perry, a Republican, explained during a lunch hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. "And instead of saying, 'You know what? We need to be a really respectful and tolerant country - to everybody - and get back to talking about: Whether you're gay or straight, you...