Health

"Dentists leafing through The Journal of the American Dental
Association last May found a study concluding that a new
drug called Bextra offered relief from one of their
patients' worst nightmares - the acute pain that follows
dental surgery. Federal regulators had rejected that conclusion only six
months before, leaving Bextra's marketers, Pharmacia and
Pfizer, hard pressed to sell it as an advance over
Celebrex, their earlier entry in a crowded market for pain
drugs. The new study helped light a fire under Bextra. Its sales
soared 60 percent over the three months that followed ... .

The Susan G. Komen Foundation and its fundraiser, the 5K Race for the Cure, have done much to raise awareness of breast cancer. Grassroots breast cancer advocates, however, are offended by the annual event, according to journalist Mary Ann Swissler in an in-depth article on the Komen Foundation for Southern Exposure Magazine. "The races, [critics] say, merely focus women on finding a medical cure for breast cancer, and away from environmental conditions causing it, the problems of the uninsured, and political influence of corporations over the average patient," Swissler writes.

Congressional Democrats accuse the Bush Administration of stacking the Center for Disease Control's Advisory Committee on Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention with "individuals who are affiliated or openly sympathetic with the views of the lead industry." Their report "Turning Lead Into Gold: How the Bush Administration is Poisoning the Lead Advisory Committee at the CDC" details recent changes to the panel, noting the removal or rejection of several academic experts on lead poisoning.

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