Musty Must-Read: “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup”

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began sending warning letters to sellers of so called “bio-identical hormone replacement therapy” today according to an AP report. Apparently the claims for alleviating menopausal symptoms are

not supported by medical evidence and are considered false and misleading.

Needless to say, these “compounded” products are being sold without FDA approval. It’s all a conspiracy man! Dang FDA is a tool of BigPharma trying to keep cheap and effective remedies from the public. Noted tool of TheMan_{(BigPharmaDivision)} Abel Pharmboy has a recent post in which he touches on “cosmeceutical” marketing of drugs and the FDA’s authority to regulate cosmetics under

their regulatory authority is in part ordered by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938 (and subsequent legislation).

This reminds me of the glory days of the quack remedy / patent medicine era and today, from the mouldering archives, we take up a Case Report published by A. B. Hirsch, M.D. [“Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. American Medical Journal, 1884, 12(11):504-506] which is available from Google Books here. A footnote indicates that this Abstract was read before the Philadelphia County Medical Society on Sept 17, 1884. Ahh, Mrs. Winslow’s . Used for over 60 years by mothers for their teething children.

J. Neuroscience goes “Open Choice”

From the Maunsell editorial:

In response to the trend to freer access, The Journal of Neuroscience will now offer an Open Choice option for articles submitted on or after January 1, 2008. By paying a fee, authors can have their articles freely available on the Journal’s website as soon as they are published. The fee is currently $1,250 for a Brief Communications article and $2,500 for a regular article. These sums are the minimum required to cover the costs of reviewing, composing, and publishing articles.

Political Science

Please excuse a little diversion from the regularly scheduled programming. I thought this would get more play on the Borg. Perhaps I missed it but they seem to be obsessed over who should be the National Science Advisor at the moment.

Last week’s Science had a good bit on the scientific perspectives of Clinton, Edwards, Giuliani, McCain, Obama, Richardson, Romney and Thompson. Also an editorial from Donald Kennedy entitled Science and God in the Election.