Health Glance
Here's what the scientists at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute found (and here's why this matters in a huge way to people interested in healthy living):
- It takes 11.7 years for one mutation in a pancreas cell to grow into a "mature" pancreatic tumor (which might show up on a medical scan)
- It takes another 6.8 years for the pancreatic tumor to spread and cause tumors to appear in other organs of the body.
- In all, it takes about 20 years for a person to grow a cancer tumor and see it spread to the point where their doctor will diagnose them with pancreatic cancer.
- In other words, by the time doctors diagnose you with cancer, you've already been growing it for two decades.
There's more bad news for those hoping for new drugs to help fight the obesity epidemic: The Food and Drug Administration has refused to approve yet another new diet pill. The agency sent a letter to the drugmaker raising a variety of concerns about Qnexa, according to Vivus Inc., of Mountain View, Calif., which had sought the drug's approval. The letter does not bode well for the drug winning approval.
According to Californians for Green Dentistry, “The mercury implanted into the teeth of unsuspecting patients ultimately ends up back in our environment: (1) in our water via dental clinic releases and household toilets; (2) in our air via cremation, sludge incineration, dental clinic emissions, and human respiration; and (3) in our land via landfills, burials, and fertilizer.”
The Food and Drug Administration has been eying the safety of caffeinated alcoholic drinks like Four Loko, which reportedly sent nine students at Central Washington University to the hospital. The FDA warned manufacturers last November about the safety and legality of the drinks.
Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts say British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC will pay $750 million to settle allegations that its subsidiary manufactured and sold adulterated drugs, including the popular antidepressant Paxil.
Heavy smoking in midlife more than doubles your odds of developing Alzheimer's disease, a Kaiser Permanente study said Monday.
People with a genetic predisposition to basal cell carcinoma— the most common form of skin cancer— may trade one health risk for another, a new study suggests.
