Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers. That's the good news. The bad news is that because there's no patent and it's so cheap to make, researchers may not be able to get funding from the private sector for further research since the treatment wouldn't make a profit. [Via Hullabaloo.]
posted by homunculus on Jan 18, 2007 - 122 comments

Newsfilter: The trial of a new drug to treat rheumatoid arthritis and leukaemia goes horribly wrong. 6 normally healthy volunteers have a freak reaction to the drug resulting in multiple organ failure. All 6 men are in intensive care. 4 are seriously ill while 2 remain in a critical condition. An eyewitness, fortunate to have taken only a placebo recalls the nightmare as the men around him begin to fall ill.
posted by piscatorius on Mar 16, 2006 - 98 comments

Pharmaceutical company seeks approval for controversial heart drug BiDil for blacks only, even though the connection of a nitric oxide deficiency to the genetic makeup of the African-American population is an unsubstantiated hunch, in the words of the drug's own developer — and the drug had already once been denied approval. Is the FDA doing good science or ignoring science under the pressure of big business wanting to sell BiDil to a US$1Bln demographic?
posted by Rothko on Jun 16, 2005 - 27 comments

Underwear Goes Inside The Pants (video) is a nice little ditty about the condition of the world in 2004.
posted by debralee on Nov 18, 2004 - 25 comments

A major advance in genetically modified foods. Developed with government funding, and intended eventually to be given away to farmers, there has been a major success in the use of salt water to irrigate crops. They've developed a tomato which grows fine in salt water or on salty soil. Thousands of lives will be saved in parts of the world where fresh water for irrigation is scarce, including up to one third of the arable land in India where salt has been accumulating. Interestingly, these tomatoes are so good at what they do that they remove salt from the soil, improving it. The genetic modification which was done to these tomatoes should be possible with many other crops, including especially rice (on which major effort in Egypt is underway now).
posted by Steven Den Beste on Jul 30, 2001 - 39 comments

Monsanto wins case against Canadian farmer. Percy Schmeiser, who has attained folk-hero status, was held liable for growing genetically modified canola without paying the royalty. The decision in a federal court in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was a significant setback for farmers who fear they will be held liable if pollen from neighboring farms blows onto their fields, transmitting patented genes to their crops without their knowledge or consent.
posted by gimli on Mar 30, 2001 - 6 comments

"GMO free" labelling set to become illegal in the US? "The U.S. regulatory system is a model around the world because it is grounded in science, not superstition or uninformed emotion." So says the president of a biotech lobby group. Ahem.
posted by holgate on Jan 18, 2001 - 20 comments

Concerned About Frankenfood? Ralph Nader has some ideas.
posted by snakey on Jan 8, 2001 - 25 comments