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Regulation: Cures for cancer and Ebola having been found, the federal ubernannies have decreed that sprinkles should no longer adorn kids' ice cream because they contain the trans fat that liberal groups once pushed for. Come the New Year, the Food and Drug Administration, ignoring the principle that in most cases it's the dose that defines the poison, will issue new regulations designed to remove even trace amounts of hydrogenate oils, commonly known as trans fats, from our diets. Trans fats have been in our foods since the 1950s to increase shelf life and improve taste. A small amount appears...

The Food and Drug Administration has announced that it's easing restrictions on gay men donating blood, reversing a policy enacted during the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic decades earlier. In a statement released Tuesday, the FDA said easing the ban came after several years of research into the matter. "Following this review, and taking into account the recommendations of advisory committees to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA, the agency will take the necessary steps to recommend a change to the blood donor deferral period for men who have sex with men from indefinite deferral...

The Food and Drug Administration announced on Tuesday that it would scrap a decades-old lifetime prohibition on blood donation by gay and bisexual men, a change that experts said was long overdue and could lift the annual blood supply by as much as 4 percent. The F.D.A. enacted the ban in 1983, early in the AIDS epidemic. At the time, little was known about the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes the disease, and there was no quick test to determine whether somebody had it. But science — and the understanding of H.I.V. in particular — has advanced in the intervening...

<p>The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency approval for a new diagnostic kit to test blood for the deadly Ebola virus, even as doctors are reporting a survival rate in one hard-hit area that has climbed to about 70 percent.</p>

Early next year, the FDA is expected to finalize a new regulation intended to eradicate even trace amounts of partially hydrogenated oils, known as trans fats, from our diets. Although the amount of trans fats Americans consume has declined significantly in recent years, the FDA’s quest to completely eliminate a particular type of trans fat threatens to eliminate the noble “sprinkle,” used to decorate holiday treats and donuts. Even a small amount of joy is suspect in the FDA’s brave, new, food-monitored world. In recent years, research has determined that consuming large amounts of trans fats is harmful to the heart. Trans fats have been in...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) took to Twitter on Tuesday to criticize the FDA’s proposed new policy on blood donations from gay men, saying that while the recommendation is a “step forward” it is still “discriminatory.” The liberal legislator and potential 2016 presidential candidate tweeted that the FDA must “have courage to set policies based on science” in order to “commit to building a bigger, safer blood supply through risk-based screenings.” The policy, introduced Tuesday by FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, would replace a 30-year-old ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men with a new rule permitting donations from men...

Federal officials have moved closer to overturning a decades-old ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, but activists say the proposed alternative would continue to stigmatize men who have sex with men. The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday it will recommend lifting the lifetime ban early next year, replacing it with a policy barring donations from men who have had sex with another man in the previous 12 months. The change would overturn a 31-year-old policy that many medical groups and gay activists say is no longer justified, given advances in HIV testing. But activists questioned whether...

The Food and Drug Administration is going to try its hand at shaming consumers into making healthier choices when they go out to eat. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the FDA announced a controversial and expansive rule that will require certain establishments with 20 or more locations -- including chain restaurants, grocery and convenience stores, and movie theaters -- to post calorie information on their menus and menu boards. A separate rule was also issued requiring operators of 20 or more vending machines to post calorie information. Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act, a provision included in the law...

The federal government formally completed regulations that will force vending machines and restaurants to display calorie information, which can lead to businesses being fined thousands of dollars for not including the number of calories in a mayonnaise packet. The regulations, which originated in Obamacare, total 319 pages and will cost industry $1.7 billion to comply. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published the final rules last week just before the Thanksgiving holiday, arguing the rules are “an important step for public health.” The final rules increased costs by $542 million from the proposed rules, totaling $531.1 million for vending machines,...

Government health advisers have concerns about lifting a nationwide ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, despite growing pressure against the policy from gay rights advocates, medical experts and blood banks. The ban dates from the first years of the AIDS epidemic and was intended to protect the U.S. blood supply from exposure to the little-understood disease. …

Again, this is another move under the Obama administration to put the American public in danger while promoting what is clearly an unhealthy lifestyle. The Food and Drug Administration advisors will be meeting the first week in December to talk about lifting a thirty year old prohibition on sodomites donating blood. ------------- Let me ask you America, would you be willing to run that risk of a sodomite donating blood with the slim chance that he may just give you HIV? Wouldn't that be like me offering you a coke with the possibility that it contained only 1% poison? Would...

JimScott wrote:“God is not a divine being or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life,”In the Italian Pope Francis said "demiurgo" which looks to me like "demiurge". So this should read "God is not a demiurge or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life".Yeh message to this sad misguided wannabe NYT reporter (i.e John Ransom) the Gnostic heretics of old believed in two gods the "good" god of the New Testament and the evil lesser god of the Old (i.e demiurge).-- --Can the Pope Shut Up Too?Dear Comrade Scott,I'll take a lot of criticism,...

Relax America, all’s right with the world. The Big White “Christmas” tree arrived yesterday to great fanfare. And by fanfare I mean even the dogs came:Too late to grant it amnesty, Lady M prepares to bless the White House Christmas tree. I note that we’re no longer even trying to hide the fact that we’re living through a rerun of the Carter Administration (with apologies to Jimmy Carter); take this 1970’s inspired coat-frock for example:Mod Squad MOTrust me, it could always be worse. We could have worn it with our knee boots.And boob belt – with pearls:So continue to count...

Thanks to the FDA’s calorie labeling regulations announced Tuesday, major changes will soon be coming to the food and restaurant industries. The regulation itself is nothing new; it became law in 2010 as a provision attached to the Affordable Care Act, but final rules were delayed for the past few years, thanks in large part to heavy opposition from grocery stores, pizza chains, vending machines, convenience stores, and movie theaters. Although some concessions were made, none of these industries were fully spared. By November 2015, these establishments will be forced to post calorie information on menus and menu boards, which...

Counting your calories will become easier under new government rules requiring chain restaurants, supermarkets, convenience stores—and even movie theaters, amusement parks and vending machines—to post the calorie content of food “clearly and conspicuously” on their menus. The Food and Drug Administration plans to announce the long-delayed rules on Tuesday. The regulations will apply to businesses with 20 or more locations and they will be given until November 2015 to comply. The idea is that people may pass on that bacon double cheeseburger at a chain restaurant, hot dog at a gas station or large popcorn at the movie theater if...

The federal committee charged with creating nutrition guidelines for Americans is calling for fat interventions at workplaces.During a presentation at the sixth meeting of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) on Friday, the committee said government needs to take “bold action” to fight obesity.The solutions included “comprehensive” obesity interventions in “health care, the community, public health facilities, and work sites.”“The public should monitor body weight and engage with providers in evidence-based approaches aimed at achieving and maintaining healthy body weight,” the panel said in a presentation on “Food and Nutrient Intakes, and Health.”The committee, which is responsible for creating...

Some Ebola Patients Should Get Placebo in Drug Tests: FDA "Edward Cox, director of the FDA’s Office of Antimicrobial Products, said Wednesday that some patients with Ebola need to forgo potentially life-saving treatments so researchers can see how they fare compared to those who receive the experimental drugs .... Cox noted that randomised studies would be "challenging," but they are necessary ..."

Does the FDA have its own independent laboratories or does it farm out the lab testing of drugs to the pharmaceutical companies themselves? I have been unable to find out this information. In other words, does the FDA approval process rely upon completely independent governmentally operated labs? Or does the FDA depend upon test results provided by the pharmaceutical companies themselves? SANDY KRAMER, Ph.D.

We have technology to potentially control Ebola and other viral outbreaks today. But the federal bureaucracy refuses to catch up with 21st-century science. For example, diagnostic startup Nanobiosym has an iPhone-sized device that can accurately detect Ebola and other infectious diseases in less than an hour. Two other companies, Synthetic Genomics and Novartis, have the capacity to create synthetic vaccine viruses for influenza and other infectious diseases in only four days. Both firms can also share data about outbreaks instantaneously and make real-time, geographically specific diagnosis and vaccine production possible. These companies could start producing Ebola vaccine/treatments tomorrow — except...

The Dallas hospital that treated Thomas Eric Duncan had a version of the Ebola-screening device used by the U.S. military in West Africa sitting on a shelf, but FDA guidelines prohibited staff from using it on the patient. A $39,000 machine called FilmArray was available to the Dallas Presbyterian Hospital when Duncan came in with a fever. The device has a high success rate for detecting Ebola in less than one hour, but sat idly because current federal guidelines prevented the hospital from obtaining a specific “kit” needed for screening, the military website Defense One reported Thursday.