Terra Sigillata

Toaster Sunshine channels Jack White for science and technology outreach

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:02:15 -0500

At the recent U2 Academic Conference, I had the opportunity to be at the local premiere of It Might Get Loud, a much-more-than documentary of the electric guitar as told through the careers of Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's The Edge, and Jack White of The White Stripes and Raconteurs. For the record, I thought that White was going to be totally out of his league - while I wouldn't call him a "legend" as billed by the producers, I left being incredibly impressed with his background and breadth of abilities.

Related to the movie trailer below, I had an exchange with Toaster Sunshine, a musician and scientist who writes the blog, Mad Scientist, Jr. (Tagline: "Sticking stuff that wasn't made to be stuck to stuff to stuff that wasn't made to have stuff stuck to it.") The trailer opens and closes with Jack White constructing a primitive electric guitar with a weathered wood plank, a bottle, and some wires and such - Toaster knew exactly what it was and told me how to do it myself.

However, as a microcosm of our respective lives (Toaster is still in the lab and I am primarily at my computer), Toaster actually made the instrument yesterday.

For the hackerspace, I send out a lot of emails. Most of them get ignored, but some of them stick. One of the ones that got a reply was a request to tour a museum collection of rare and antique musical instruments that the university's music school owns. In one of the conversations we had with the outreach director of the collection, we decided that co-hosting an educational event that melds technology and music into a workshop for kids and their parents. This is what is referred to as a Make and Take, participants register, pay a fee for parts, come and get taught how to make stuff, and then get to take it home with them afterwards.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center takes legal action against Evolv water

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:02:15 -0500

In September we posted "M.D. Anderson name misused in Evolv nutraceutical water advertising," detailing the not-exactly-truthful claim by a multilevel marketing company that their bottled water product was "tested" by one of North America's premier teaching and research hospitals.

A flurry of search engine hits to this post raised my attention to the fact that the The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has now initiated legal action against the makers of Evolv. Cameron Langford at Courthouse News Service reports:

Two companies are pushing bottled tap water with false claims that it's endorsed by the MD Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Texas says in Federal Court. The UT says HealtH20 Products and Evolvehealth sell the bogus water it as "Evolv," claiming it is infused with an "Archaea Active formula." [. . .]

[. . .] "Specifically, defendants are misleading consumers and cancer patients into believing that UT's MD Anderson conducted extensive testing of the main formula in the Evolv product, known as 'Archaea Active," the UT says.

"Defendants' misuse of the MD Anderson marks creates, at a minimum, a likelihood that cancer patients and consumers will falsely believe that defendants' products is sponsored or endorsed by UT's MD Anderson, when in fact, MD Anderson does not endorse or recommend the use of the defendants' product."

Natural products researchers, including yours truly, are used to supplement companies misrepresenting our published papers in their advertising literature. There's not much we can do as individuals when our work is cited on a webpage.

However, there's a much more serious issue going on in this case: according to the official complaint filed against the companies by the Board of Regents of The University of Texas System (PDF here from Courthouse News) M.D. Anderson and The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center are registered US trademarks.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Sir John Crofton, TB combination therapy pioneer - a long and admirable life

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:40:46 -0500

Denise Gellene in the New York Times is reporting this morning that Scottish physician, Sir John Crofton, passed away on 3 November at age 97.

Crofton is best known for implementing a combination drug regimen to treat tuberculosis, the insidious lung infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis which decimated the US early last century and still kills 2 million a year worldwide. The concept of using drug combinations to increase individual drug potency and slow the emergence of resistance is now a mainstay of therapeutic approaches for cancer, HIV, and other infectious diseases.

Gellene reports that Crofton first investigated streptomycin for TB shortly after the drug's discovery and isolation at Rutgers by Selman Waksman and his then-graduate student, Albert Schatz. Waksman was sole winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with the oversight of Schatz ranked by Scientific American among the top 10 Nobel snubs.

Crofton's original 1950 letter to the British Medical Journal on use of intermittent doses of streptomycin can be seen in this PDF.

Incidentally, the revered German physician, Robert Koch, was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of M. tuberculosis. His medical microbiology criteria, known as Koch's Postulates, became the rubric for establishing causation of an infectious agent.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

The new NHS sexual health hub: Could you imagine this happening in the US?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:02:13 -0500

No matter how early I wake up, it's always five hours later in the UK and I'm overwhelmed by the thought that I'm already behind (I won't even get into the feeling I have when I think of our Australian readers).

So when I start the day reading my Twitter stream, it's usually populated by midday news from England. I follow the NHS - National Health Service - "one of the largest publicly funded health services in the world," and their superb health information site, NHS Choices.

This morning I saw this tweet about the launch of their new sexual health site:

@NHSChoices Our new sexual health hub includes advice on contraception, good sex guides, sex & young people, STIs and much more http://bit.ly/3wtJwL

Beyond the simple fact that the NHS exists because the UK has held since 1948 that every person deserves a basic level of state-supported health care, could you imagine what it would take for such a site to be sponsored by a US health agency? Supported with tax dollars? Can you imagine the wrangling of politicians, the religious right, and all manner of people ranting about government-sanctioned sex - and information for the young people???

So at the risk of being deemed a socialist, let me applaud the NHS for what is a truly terrific and straight-talking resource. What I've seen of the rest of the site is pretty fantastic as well.

You don't have to be British to get a lot of great take-home information for yourself and for your kids.

Read the comments on this post...

Improving K-12 math & science education with better teacher education

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 08:02:24 -0500

Brandon Haught is Director of Florida Citizens for Science Communications and has been a tireless advocate for science education across this large and educationally diverse state. His blog, an activity of the larger Florida Citizens for Science organization, carries this mission:

This blog is used to keep track of the good, bad and ugly science news in our state and beyond. We tend to focus on educational issues. When a science class makes the news for doing something interesting or positive, I try to make sure a post goes up here about it. When a Florida scientist gets out into the community to promote education, I try to highlight it. Yes, we will certainly post all about the antics of those trying to promote an anti-science viewpoint, but we are just as much about praising the good things that happen in our state.

As I've said before, the only way to get scientists to value getting out of the lab and into the community is for us to value those who do.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Why do expensive hotels charge for Internet while less-expensive ones don't?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:29:31 -0500

Before you tell me to go do this, I did - and I still don't have a good answer.

I was reminded of this issue when I learned that a couple of friends were off this weekend to the snowy Rocky Mountain West attending the 2009 Carnivore Conference: Carnivore Conservation in a Changing World sponsored by Defenders of Wildlife at the Grand Hyatt Denver. Some of these folks are graduate students and freelance writers who are on tight budgets.

The most recent article I found on this issue was by Barbara E. Hernandez at BNET. She asked the same question as I, made some observations, and asked rhetorically why high-end hotels don't seize on such a low-cost, good-will amenity instead of aggravating us all with yet another charge.

I suspect that the answer is, "because they can."

I suspect that marketing studies show that people who can afford to stay at expensive hotels (or, more likely, who are doing so on a business's dime) don't really care about another $9.95-$12.95/day Wi-Fi charge whereas someone staying in a $40/night hotel isn't going to pay another 25% for internet when they can go down the street and get it for free at another budget hotel.

So, why do we tolerate it when we go to a big scientific conference?

Read the comments on this post...

Meh. What's so special about HeLa cells?

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 11:47:34 -0500

On Friday, I wrote a post about the 20th anniversary of my PhD dissertation defense and my reverence for Henrietta Lacks, the woman whose cervical cancer gave rise to the first immortalized human cell line and the primary system for my work. I also alluded to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the upcoming book by Rebecca Skloot that is already garnering extensive pre-release praise.

I was, as readers have come to expect, quite a bit sentimental and reflective, with a call that we all do our part to somehow acknowledge those patients whose tissues make it possible for us scientists to do our work.

If I anticipated any response, it was perhaps a few congratulations on the anniversary. However, I didn't expect my singling out of HeLa cells to draw any contention. Regular reader and colleague, Jonathan wrote:

Really? Seems a bit extreme to me. Even if IRBs allowed for naming of donors, it would have been completely infeasible to describe each of the CABG patients whose leftover saphenous vein, IMA and radial arteries were used for my primary cell cultures.

HeLa cells have an interesting story, but what about all the other immortalized cell lines that we use in the lab? How about all those primary cell cultures? It seems odd selecting one person to put on a pedestal.

Widely-engaged commenter becca noted that this wasn't just an interesting story, but rather a fable with a moral. Another commenter got a bit passive-aggressive challenging Jonathan on whether my suggestion was "extreme" or just that he couldn't be bothered with acknowledging those who made his work possible.

Jonathan then responded:

Over the course of three years, I think I used between 40 and 50 different primary cultures. Ignoring for a second the *enormous* ethical issue with naming the anonymized patients who donated these bits of tissue (the sort of thing an IRB would shut down a lab for in the UK) it would have doubled the size of my thesis. All sentimentality aside, I was doing pharmacology, not social science.

I also find it a double standard. Why should HeLa cells receive this distinction but not whoever was behind the A549 cell line? Or the BEAS-2B? Or any of the hESCs? You try doing the same with one of the hESC donors and see where that gets you? Given the way the NIH ethics rules have been written, you'd probably be blacklisted from receiving grant funding in the future.

Who were those rules (and the other IRB rules anonymizing patients) written by? Heartless men in white coats or the bioethics community? Have you ever met people who work in bioethics/ELSI? I have, they're not the heartless white coat types.

I've had the pleasure of meeting Jonathan so I feel that perhaps he misunderstood my point and was getting a bit defensive at the commenters. So, here was my response which, as often happens, is long enough to be its own blog post:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

A black woman, a white boy, and a PhD

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:02:56 -0500

Twenty years ago this morning, I had to defend a body of work that contained this paragraph on page 24:

HeLa cells are a human cervical carcinoma cell line having a doubling time of 24 hr and were obtained from Dr. Bert Flanegan, Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Florida. HeLa cells were maintained as subconfluent monolayer cultures in minimal essential media (alpha modification; GIBCO) with 10% fetal bovine serum (GIBCO) at 37° under a humidified atmosphere containing 5% CO₂. Cells were maintained in logarithmic growth by subculturing every other day using 0.05% trypsin/0.02% EDTA and reseeded at a density of 5 X 10⁵ in a 75cm² tissue culture flask.

And with that, nothing more was said about the cellular system that led to the awarding of my PhD.

I am embarrassed by the omission of any reference to the 31-year-old black woman from rural Virginia, Ms. Henrietta Lacks, whose aggressive cervical cancer allowed Dr. George Gey at Johns Hopkins to isolate and propagate the first, immortalized human cancer cell line.

I also find it telling that my advisor and my committee made no requests of me to better document the cells I used - no citation of the original paper by Gey's group or even the American Type Culture Collection source of the cells for Dr. Flanegan's lab downstairs.

Each Spring, we now hold memorial services on medical school campuses around the world to honor cadavers and their families who make first-year medical school anatomy dissection laboratories possible.

While cell culture gifts are much more detached, and usually anonymized, I've often thought that we basic scientists should take similar steps to honor those who have made our work possible.

This is one of the reasons that I am such an enthusiastic supporter of the upcoming book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and why her 2006 New York Times Magazine cover story on human cells and tissues led me to seek her out to learn more about the origins of HeLa.

When I first started telling Rebecca how HeLa cells had spawned my doctoral work, I went through my CV and re-read some of the older papers where I had used the cell line. Much of my dissertation work on DNA topoisomerase IIα appeared in a 1991 paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. But I forgot that I also used HeLa cells as a source of human genomic DNA for the first paper from my first independent laboratory (in Molecular Pharmacology in 1995), co-authored with my first PhD student and first technician.

I note the journal names specifically because JBC was co-founded in 1905 by my 'nymsake, John Jacob Abel, and Mol Pharm is a journal of the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET), the organization established in late 1908 by a group led by Abel.

So while I have already acknowledged with "Abel" the history of my discipline, I find it only appropriate today to reflect on the life and legacy of the woman whose suffering gave rise to an unknowing gift, one that has touched the lives of thousands of scientists like me.

Read the comments on this post...

Today, The Chronicle. Tomorrow, The World! A Scientist's Guide to Academic Etiquette by Female Science Professor

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:02:10 -0500

I was just going through my unread Twitter stream from yesterday and found a link to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, "A Scientist's Guide to Academic Etiquette," with a tagline about scientists lacking in social skills.

Recognizing the truth in that statement, I fired up the post to the very pleasant surprise of learning that the author is none other than the Grande Dame of the science blogging community, Female Science Professor.

Female Science Professor is the pseudonym of a professor in the physical sciences at a large research university who blogs under that moniker and writes monthly for our Catalyst column. Her blog is http://science-professor.blogspot.com.

An aside: I really like the term moniker instead of the pejorative pseudonym or the pompous nom de plume or, worse, nom de blog.

Oh, wait - what's that in my profile? Nom de plume?

So, one might think that FSP's first point would be not to be a pompous ass. Well, not exactly, although several points cover that ground.

Here's a little background:

In the years that I have been blogging, I have written about some of the situations in which we academics are impolite to each other, and offered suggestions for how we might get along better. I started numbering the examples, at first with randomly assigned, absurdly high numbers, as if they were items in a long nonexistent document called "FSP's Guide to Academic Etiquette." Eventually I collected all of those scenarios together and gave them real numbers. I hereby share my existing list, with the addition of some new items.

A cursory glance shows that this is by no means a comprehensive list of all the things one might want or need to know to navigate the academic world. Furthermore, some of these tips are more useful than others, some are more serious than others, and more than a few focus on the extremes of academic behavior. All of them are based on actual experiences.

A couple of my favorites:

24. For advisers: Don't assume that a student or postdoc lacks ambition just because they don't want to be a professor at a big research university.

10. For students and postdocs: If you are paid a salary, you should do the work.

21. For people introducing a speaker: Before the talk, ask speakers if they have a preference about what is said during their introduction. Some people won't, but some may have preferences about what to mention (dates, places, awards, crimes).

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

France World Cup player Lilian Thuram now fights racism

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:51:30 -0500

A bit off-topic of the blog but a science building on campus is hosting a discussion with Guadeloupe-born footballer, Lilian Thuram. He was considered to be one of the best players in Europe; his best-known accomplishment of his 15-year career playing defender with Monaco, Parma FC, Juventus, FC Barcelona and the French national team, is contributing to France winning the 1998 World Cup.

However, Thuram was forced into retirement in 2008 following a diagnosis of cardiac hypertrophy (ventricular, I assume, and pathological, not typical "athlete's heart"). The same condition claimed Thuram's brother while playing.

Thuram is here not to talk about soccer but rather racism. The auditorium is more packed than I have ever seen for a scientific talk.

Following his retirement, he established the Lilian Thuram Foundation to use education of young people as a strategy for combating racism in Europe. In politics, Thuram made headlines during the 2007 French elections by calling out the institutionalized racism of Nicolas Sarkozy.

"Sarkozy's rhetoric isn't quasi-racist, it is racist," Thuram said in an interview with Spain's El Mundo newspaper.

"He wants to create a ministry of immigration and national identity and that's dangerous ... When you start to divide people and see one group here, Muslims there, the blacks over there, you teach people to see others as different."

Sarkozy has defended his plans for a ministry to protect France's traditional values, saying France had a "gigantic problem" with integration.

"What is being integrated? My mother is French, my father is French. Why do I have to be 'integrated'? Because I am black. You'd never ask if a white man was integrated," Thuram was quoted as saying.

"France doesn't have a problem with immigration, it has a problem with citizenship. Some French people don't think other Frenchmen are French. If I stop playing football tomorrow and I go back to France, people won't see me as a Frenchman, they'll see me as an immigrant," he said.

Thuram is using a translator but it's great to see some of the students asking him questions in French.

Someone asks the obvious question: He doesn't have to do this; he could just enjoy retirement. But what exactly does he think young people could do:

Study how injustices happen, pay attention to history and use it to teach/learn personal responsibility to make changes no matter your station in life. You don't have to be a famous footballer to stand up against racism in your classroom and community.

Previously, Thuram had been under the impression that advances against racism in the US was due to increasing the teaching of African American history in our schools as part of a mandatory curriculum. Since visiting the last few days, he now realizes this is not the case.

Interesting point was made that when first generation of blacks came to France, they made little demands of government; it is only now that the next generation grows up in France that he feels there is at least some resistance even as those in power may institutionalize racism. If I understood the translator correctly, he notes that this may be what is happening in the US with Lations.

One student who is French and black feels that racism gets worse every time she goes back. Thuram says that his perception is that the pushback and demands of blacks (and Muslims) are drawing out racist behavior into the public.

Read the comments on this post...

NIDA Launches Medical Curricular Resources on Substance Abuse and Dependence

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:02:05 -0500

I missed this note on Friday at the Wall Street Journal Health Blog but the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has made available some great new curricular resources through their Centers of Excellence for Physician Information Program (NIDA CoEs) (press release)

"Physicians can be the first line of defense against substance abuse and addiction, but they need the resources and the training," said NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow. "Our long term goal is for doctors to incorporate screening for drug use into routine practice like they currently screen for other diseases; to help patients that are abusing to stop; and to refer more serious cases to specialized treatment."

Three themes have emerged in this first wave of CoE offerings: the importance of communication in the doctor-patient relationship, particularly around sensitive issues; the recognition that substance abuse may play an integral role in many disorders physicians treat, even when not the presenting condition; and the crucial part physicians can play in both identifying substance abuse in their patients and reducing their risk of developing a substance use disorder.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Publishers Weekly Cover Girl: Rebecca Skloot and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (HeLa)

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:29:08 -0500

Hella HeLa!

Skloot is PWned, as it were.

I learned late last night that author Rebecca Skloot was to be featured on the cover of this week's issue of Publishers Weekly. So, I clicked on the site this morning before the coffee was even done brewing and there is our wordsmithing hero.

I know that "The Making of a Bestseller 2010" is sure to make any author nervous but my reading of the manuscript tells me that the prediction is entirely consistent with the work.

Regular readers will know that we featured Ms Skloot here last week to brainstorm about her upcoming, self-supported book tour following the 2 February 2010 release of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Well, this issue of PW revealed Skloot's account behind-the-scenes machine behind said book tour, beginning as follows:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

The Detox Delusion: Kudos to Duke Integrative Medicine Nutritionist

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 08:33:50 -0500

Yesterday, the real-life mailbox brought the Pharmboy household the Fall 2009 issue of DukeMedicine connect, a biannual publication on current news from the Duke University Health System. Produced by DUHS Marketing and Creative Services, it "strives to offer current news about health topics of interest" to its readers. This issue is not yet online but you can see the Spring 2009 issue here.

What caught my eye was a cover teaser titled "Detox Delusion" and an article on detoxification diets focusing on an interview with Beth Reardon a nutritionist with Duke Integrative Medicine.

(Note added 17 Nov 2009 - the article is now available online here. The author is June Spence, a freelance writer, author, and blogger at Unshelved)

The article focuses on the fallacy of detoxification diets, extreme and sometimes dangerous regimens of purges, enemas, supplements, herbs, with the misguided goal of clearing one's body of "toxins." These amorphous toxins are never named, much less denoted with an IUPAC chemical name, but prey upon the fears of our "chemical" environment.

The article refers to the current "Master Cleanse" craze, known also as the Lemon Cleanse or Maple Syrup Diet. Not mentioned in the article is that the diet was developed in 1941 by an unlicensed practitioner named Stanley Burroughs and popularized most recently in the 2005 Peter Glickman book, Lose Weight, Have More Energy and Be Happier in 10 Days and his MasterCleanse/Raw Food website.

So, I was very pleased to see this:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

Response to Dan Ariely's Duke Sex Toy Study Is Predictably Irrational

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:02:01 -0500

Father Joe Vetter, director of Duke University's Catholic Center, is protesting trial participant accrual for a study being conducted on campus directed by Dr Dan Ariely, the James B Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics in the Fuqua School of Business (story and video). Ariely is also the author of the best-selling book, Predictably Irrational, an engaging, science-based examination of the rational and not-so-rational influences that contribute to decision-making. The new and expanded version of the book ranks #442 on Amazon.com book sales in the United States.

Look for that number to improve after the attention to Professor Ariely this weekend.

So, to what is Father Vetter objecting?

Ariely and his postdoctoral fellow, Dr Janet Schwartz, received IRB approval to recruit female study participants from the Duke campus community to examine the influence of Tupperware-like sex toy parties on sexual attitudes. A recruitment advert had been posted on the university website, as is commonly done for any clinical or social science study, ~~but was pulled yesterday following the objection of Rev Vetter.~~ Correction: Duke VP of Public Affairs Michael Schoenfeld notes in the comments below that the ads were removed after accrual was complete. Indeed, going to http://tinyurl.com/toyparty reveals that enrollment is closed.

However, here is one of the four ads:

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...

"Stiff Nights" Falls on Hard Times

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:02:59 -0500

I should probably create a new blogpost category just for erectile dysfunction dietary supplements adulterated with authentic or synthetic analogs of prescription phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) inhibitors (e.g., Viagra, Cialis).

However, FDA has already created a page for this earlier this year after dozens of companies have been identified as putting real drugs into their erectile dysfunction products.

Do the brains behind these companies not realize that FDA is now monitoring every erectile dysfunction supplement for all manner of PDE5 inhibitors?

Apparently not:

For Immediate Release: Nov. 5, 2009

Media Inquiries: Christopher Kelly, 301-796-4676, christopher.kelly@fda.hhs.gov
Consumer Inquiries: 888-INFO-FDA

FDA Warns Consumers on Sexual Enhancement Products
Another dietary supplement is found to be contaminated with potentially dangerous ingredient

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers that Stiff Nights, a product marketed as a dietary supplement for sexual enhancement, contains an ingredient that can dangerously lower blood pressure and is illegal.

Over the past several years, the FDA has found many products marketed as "dietary supplements" for sexual enhancement that contain undeclared active ingredients of FDA-approved drugs, analogs of approved drugs and other compounds that do not qualify as "dietary ingredients." The FDA has issued multiple alerts about these contaminated dietary supplements.

Consumers and health care professionals should be aware of this problem and the health hazard it presents. Sexual enhancement products that claim to work as well as prescription products are likely to contain a contaminant. Use of such products exposes consumers to unpredictable risk and the potential for injury or even death.

In the case of Stiff Nights, following a consumer complaint, the FDA determined that the product contains sulfoaildenafil. This is a chemical similar to sildenafil, the active ingredient in Viagra. Sulfoaildenafil may interact with prescription drugs known as nitrates, including nitroglycerin, and cause dangerously low blood pressure.

The product is distributed on Internet sites and at retail stores by Impulsaria LLC of Grand Rapids, Mich. It is sold in bottles containing 6, 12, or 30 red capsules or in blister packs containing one or two capsules.

"Because this product is labeled as an 'all natural dietary supplement,' consumers may assume it is harmless and poses no health risk," said Deborah M. Autor, director of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Office of Compliance. "In fact, this product is illegally marketed and can cause serious complications."

The FDA advises consumers who have experienced any adverse events from sexual enhancement products to consult a health care professional. Consumers and health care professionals should report adverse events to the FDA's MedWatch program at 800-FDA-1088 or online at www.fda.gov/medwatch/report.htm

The FDA remains committed to stopping the illegal marketing of unapproved drugs and will continue to protect the public with vigorous law enforcement and criminal prosecution of violators.

I'll be very serious about this for a moment because, in this particular case, it appears that FDA was acting on a consumer complaint that I suspect arose from an adverse health reaction to the product. Taking a PDE5 inhibitor on top of prescription vasodilators can cause a very frightening drop in blood pressure that, at the very least, could cause one to briefly lose consciousness and fall.

Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...