Results tagged “fda”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced the warning and manufacturer recall for Hydroxycut, a dietary supplement used to drop a few pounds and boost the egos of muscle heads bodybuilders. The FDA says that the supplement has been linked to one death and poses a risk for significant liver injury. And we thought alcohol was bad--made of "natural ingredients," Hydroxycut made up 90 percent of the weight loss market.

It seems like we're always bemoaning the lack of critical, patient-advocating mental health coverage locally, so we wanted to point out that Psychology Today has interviewed Seattle's Furious Seasons, and the result is a really illuminating summary of almost everything that investigative reporter Philip Dawdy has been up to the past few years, from critiques of the rates of bipolar and ADHD diagnosis in children, to uncovering pharmaceutical misdeeds ("the worst corporate behavior I have ever seen in my 15 years as a reporter") and the failure of FDA oversight and regulation.

ZIPCAR OPEN HOUSE: Drop in at the grand opening of an actual downtown office for Zipcar--in the old Dept. of Licensing location at 3rd and Union. The open house runs until 5 p.m., and if you stop in and join Zipcar today, there's no annual fee for your first year. We're told there's also a prize wheel where you can win driving credits and other goodies, plus free snacks. We use the Zipcar ourselves, and we're happy to hear that the City of Seattle is joining them in a car-sharing arrangement for city employees.

The P-I's big, splashy story today is on the crucial problem of "honey laundering," a horrific pun which made us snicker and then cry a little bit. The issue is that certain nefarious companies are shipping sub-par and potentially contaminated honey out of China on its way to the U.S. markets, stopping at intermediary shipping points (Vietnam, for instance) to alter the documents to make it look like said honey didn't actually come from China. The sweet goods are then slipped across our borders, where the P-I's investigation showed that officials can be less than hyper-vigilant about inspections. People might get sick. The other point of interest is that apparently the FDA has no legal definition for honey. (Seriously? Form a committee at once.)

Ever since we almost died from choking on a salmon bone, Seattlest has known the truth: fish are terrorists, they are anti-American, and they should be illegal. It's nice to know the feds are on their enforcement game: early this morning, Immigrations and the FDA raided Ocean Beauty Seafoods, a seafood processing plant here in Seattle, taking with them all kinds of "historical stuff" (verbatim from Ocean Beauty's Director of Marketing). No official word on the reasoning behind the raid, and the company's still in business shipping out slimy briny dead creatures for profit.

Over at the Slog, the ECB has interrupted the usual stream-of-pop-cultural-consciousness with some actual health news: "According to a new analysis, plastic products marketed for infants or labeled "microwave safe" (including those stamped with "safe" plastic numbers 1, 2, and 5) leached out potentially toxic levels of a chemical called bisphenol-A (BPA) when heated in a microwave." The worst offender was Enfamil baby formula, which is like a kick in the gut, as BPA is an endocrine disruptor and especially unsafe for kids. So you can go ahead and throw that shit out. And by "that shit," we mean of course the FDA.

This fall we are combining our love of the football and our dream of learning to cook by preparing a meal from the city of the Seahawks opponent.

Yesterday we picked up on Seattle mental health blogger Philip Dawdy's post about the FDA boldly going where no medical body has gone before: approving two atypical antipsychotics for use in treating "pediatric bipolar disorder." The only problem is this disorder's existence is still controversial, let alone its treatment with drugs recommended for schizophrenia. It's not the FDA's job to innovate in medical treatments, but to regulate them. Today Dawdy drops the other shoe: the FDA's phone-shy psychiatry products chief, Thomas Laughren, "was deeply involved in helping 'America's Pharmaceutical Research Companies' design clinical trials for the disorder." How Bush administration of him.

Seattle blogger Philip Dawdy, who covers mental health issues over at Furious Seasons, used to be a print journalist, and has won awards from the National Mental Health Association for his work.