Trucking regulators warn against Chantix
WASHINGTON, May 23 (UPI) -- U.S. federal trucking regulators have advised medical examiners not to qualify anyone using Chantix, an anti-smoking drug linked to possible health issues.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is the latest regulator to warn against certifying people using the smoking cessation aid. The Federal Administration banned the drug for pilots and air traffic controllers after a study linked Chantix to seizures, dizziness, heart irregularities and diabetes.
In its warning issued Thursday the FMCSA advised medical examiners "to not qualify anyone currently using this medication for commercial motor vehicle licenses," The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The FMCSA oversees the interstate trucking and bus industry.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman said the agency was focusing on likely links between Chantix and neuropsychiatric side effects. This year, the FDA and Pfizer, which manufactures the drug, updated warnings on Chantix's label to include depression and thoughts of suicide.
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices, a non-profit watchdog group in Horsham, Pa., conducted the Chantix study that reported the drug was linked to more than 900 serious episodes in the last quarter of 2007.
Pfizer said the report's findings weren't inconsistent with possible side effects listed on drug's label.
HHS starts new drug, device safety program
WASHINGTON, May 23 (UPI) -- U.S. health officials said a new program to analyze medical records should mean quicker identification of safety issues with drugs and medical devices.
The Food and Drug Administration's Sentinel Initiative will allow the FDA and other agencies to analyze databases containing millions of health records to try to recognize problems more quickly than the current system allows, The Washington Post reported Friday. The current system relies mainly on voluntary reporting by individual physicians.
The FDA has been harshly criticized in recent years for safety issues with prescription drugs such as the painkiller Vioxx, withdrawn from the market in 2004 after researchers found it caused heart attacks.
"It will be a quantum leap forward in the FDA's capacity to monitor the use of medical products that are currently on the market," Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said.
HHS will kick off the program by analyzing data about the 5 million-plus people enrolled in the Medicare prescription drug program, Leavitt said. State agencies and academic researchers also can access the data under a federal regulation that is effective in 30 days, officials said.
Patient privacy would be maintained by keeping all identifying information confidential, officials said.
Grease is the word for alternative fuel
CHICAGO, May 23 (UPI) -- Restaurants are filling up more than stomachs as U.S drivers turn to used grease as an alternative fuel to skyrocketing gasoline costs, market analysts say.
Increasingly, restaurants are being paid for their used cooking oil, instead of having to pay someone to take the discolored, food particle-filled goop away, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.
Not so coincidentally, sales for kits that allow diesel-powered cars to run on the spent cooking oil also are on the rise.
Rising energy prices greased the wheels for grease's popularity.
"It all goes back to the high price of crude oil," said Bill Dieterichs, an analyst at The Jacobsen, a Chicago publication that follows grease and tallow markets. "That's what started the ball rolling."
Biodiesel, primarily derived from soybean oil, can be made from a number of fats, including used cooking oil. With a conversion kit, grease car drivers can fill their tanks at their local eateries.
Jonathan Erber of Harvard, Ill., says he prefers the oil from Chinese restaurants to power his 1993 Chevrolet diesel pickup.
"I get higher performance from their peanut oil. I barely touch the pedal and it gets up to 60 (mph)," he said.
Archaeologists not jonesing over Jones
NEWCASTLE, Australia, May 23 (UPI) -- Indiana Jones may dazzle movie-goers with his archaeological antics but he gives real-life archaeologists fits because they say he's doing everything wrong.
If he pulled some stunts in real life as he does on the silver screen, the fictional Jones would be found guilty of unethical and possibly illegal conduct, the World Archaeological Congress chief told The Daily Telegraph.
"In pursuit of 'fortune and glory' Jones ignores international treaties, treats human remains as weapons and destroys archaeological sites in a bid to escape from potential entombment and other worrisome possibilities," Professor Claire Smith of Australia's University of Newcastle told the British newspaper.
Archaeologists want to preserve, not profit from, the past, "and sometimes Jones seems more finely tuned to the commercial value of an artifact than the information it can give us about past peoples," Smith said.
Another fallacy is Jones' assumption that relics need to Westerners' protection.
"The native people who hinder Jones in 'Crystal Skull' are, in fact, descendants of the people who made the artifacts that Jones seeks and the contemporary cultural custodians of the site," she said.
Smith gives Jones high marks for one thing. He's made "a pedantic and exacting science appear exciting."
