New York Times reporter Gardiner Harris has a front page article in today’s paper on the head of the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Oncology Drug Products, Richard Pazdur.  As the article notes, Pazdur has come under severe criticism in recent years for obstructing the approval of numerous innovative cancer drugs.  Some of this criticism is unfair, and Harris is clearly attempting to defend Pazdur and the FDA, while proving the critics wrong. After all, Pazdur has implemented reforms that…

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The FDA is now moving towards banning a smoking alternative that could save many lives. Every year, millions of smokers like my wife try and fail to quit, because they are nicotine addicts. Many later die of smoking-related illnesses, which are caused by the smoke, not the nicotine. The obvious solution is to give smokers access to less hazardous products that provide the nicotine they crave without the deadly smoke, like chewing tobacco, or, better yet, electronic cigarettes or snus. (Electronic…

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Over at Science Progress, a web magazine published by the Center for American Progress, former USDA biotech regulator Val Giddings and U. of Illinois microbiologist Bruce Chassy offer the Obama Administration a well-reasoned and scientifically-sound blueprint for reforming the irrational and burdensome regulation of biotech crops.  They write:

In summary, biotechnology applied to agriculture has enormous potential to enhance our ability to develop seeds for improved crops and for enhanced livestock to enable us to meet the food, feed and fiber challenges of…

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Courtesy of Ivan, I’ve been directed to this press release from the Weston A. Price Foundation decrying a U.S. FDA and California Department of Food and Agriculture crackdown on purveyors of “raw” — that is, unpasteurized — milk. Now, I have very little sympathy for people who think raw milk is perfectly safe and/or somehow better for us than pasteurized milk. After all, pasteurization was seen as a remarkable scientific breakthrough and public health miracle for a reason: raw milk can…

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