The Wall Street Journal reports that the Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the way for a securities-fraud lawsuit alleging Amgen Inc played down safety concerns about two drugs used to treat anemia. The court’s 6-3 decision, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, affirmed a lower-court ruling that had certified the lawsuit to proceed as a class action. The suit, brought by Connecticut pension funds on behalf of purchasers of Amgen stock, alleged the Thousand Oaks, Calif., company repeatedly reassured investors about the safety of anemia drugs Aranesp and Epogen even as clinical trial data raised concerns that the drugs could harm cancer patients. Amgen’s statements led to inflated share prices, the suit alleged.
Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us
In his new book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (New York, Random House 2013), Michael Moss describes how food companies entice customers with salt, sugar and fat to maximize sales and profits. Amy Goodman interviews Moss on Democracy Now.
Brand-specific consumption of alcohol among underage youth in the United States
A new article in Alcoholism, Clinical and Experimental Research reports that underage youth alcohol consumption, although spread out over several alcoholic beverage types, is concentrated among a relatively small number of alcohol brands. The alcohol brands with highest prevalence of past 30-day consumption by youth were Bud Light (27.9%), Smirnoff malt beverages (17.0%), and Budweiser (14.6%). The authors conclude that this finding has important implications for alcohol research, practice, and policy.
From activist to EPA: Tejada ready to “speak truth” about environmental justice
Environmental Health News reports that the US EPA is turning to a Houston activist Matthew Tejada, for the past five years the director of Air Alliance Houston, to lead its Office of Environmental Justice. Tejada will bring to the job what he’s learned battling severe pollution problems in Houston’s low-income communities where air pollutants spewed by oil refineries, chemical plants and the shipping industry are linked to cancer and asthma. “Not only do I feel like I have the guts to speak truth, as many environmental justice leaders demand,” Tejada told the EHN, “but I feel like I can do it in a way where people will listen.”
Profits and pandemics: prevention of harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink industries
The 2011 UN high-level meeting on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) called for multisectoral action including with the private sector and industry. However, through the sale and promotion of tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food and drink (unhealthy commodities), transnational corporations are major drivers of global epidemics of NCDs. In a new article in Lancet, investigators from the The Lancet NCD Action Group examine what role these industries have in NCD prevention and control. They emphasize the rise in sales of these unhealthy commodities in low-income and middle-income countries, and consider the common strategies that the transnational corporations use to undermine NCD prevention and control.
Tea party has ties to tobacco industry
Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that arose spontaneously in 2009, the Tea Party developed in part as a result of tobacco industry efforts to oppose smoking restrictions and tobacco taxes beginning in the 1980s, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco recently published online by Tobacco Control. “Nonprofit organizations associated with the Tea Party movement have longstanding ties to tobacco companies, and continue to advocate on behalf of the tobacco industry’s anti-tax, anti-regulation agenda,” said Stanton A. Glantz, director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education (CTCRE) and a UCSF professor of medicine and American Legacy Foundation Distinguished Professor in Tobacco Control.
Four times more antibiotics sold for US meat and poultry production than to treat human illness
Based on a new FDA report, the Pew Charitable Trust Health Initiative finds that in 2011, four times the amount of antibiotics were sold for meat and poultry production as for treating human illnesses. Agribusinesses feed their animals antibiotics to make them grow faster and to compensate for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions. These practices contribute to the emergence of drug-resistant superbugs that make human infections more difficult and costly to treat. In 2011, more antibiotics were sold for use in meat and poultry production than ever before.
Is the ‘there is no such thing as bad foods, only bad diets’ argument helpful?
Food Navigator reports that a new position statement from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) which can be paraphrased as ‘there is no such thing as good and bad foods, only good and bad diets‘ is eminently sensible, but will play into the hands of ‘junk’ food companies opposed to any government intervention in their industry, claims NYU’s Marion Nestle.
Litigation: Food false advertising class actions on the rise
Throughout 2012, a wave of new false advertising class-action lawsuits in the food industry continued to roll forward, reportsInside Counsel, a newsletter for corporate lawyers. A powerful and well-financed consortium of plaintiffs’ attorneys, some of whom have in the past challenged big tobacco, asbestos manufacturers, the automobile industry and pharmaceutical companies, have set their sights on the food industry. “Food companies will argue that these are harmless crimes – the tobacco companies said the same thing,” said Don Barrett of the Barrett Law Group.
Oglala Sioux Tribe ponders option after suit against beer sellers and breweries dismissed
The Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, whose federal lawsuit against four Nebraska beer sellers and some of the nation’s biggest breweries was dismissed this week, may refile the lawsuit in state court, the tribe’s attorney told the Associated Press. Tom White, an Omaha-based attorney for the tribe, said he’ll urge the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation’s council to continue with its lawsuit against the alcohol manufacturers and distributors, and four retailers in Whiteclay, Neb. The town of about a dozen residents on the dry reservation’s border sold the equivalent of 4.3 million 12-ounce cans of beer last year.
Corporations and Health Watch 