 |
|
     |
|
 |
Washington Update
*The STOP AIDS Project, a San Francisco HIV prevention group, has received
a letter from the CDC warning them to shut down workshops that “appear
to encourage or promote sexual activity,” according to reports
from the Associated Press and the Washington Post. The CDC sent a similar
letter to the San Francisco Department of Public Health. STOP AIDS officials
think the CDC’s letter comes in response to political pressure
from Congressman Mark Souder, R.-Ind. (see HABIT, April 29, 2003, at
our site).
To read more, go to here or here. *On June 3, Surgeon General Richard Carmona told a House of Representatives subcommittee that he was in favor of a ban on tobacco products in the United States. But the White House says that Carmona’s comment “is not the policy of the administration” and that Carmona was commenting as a physician and not as a spokesman for official policy. Carmona told Rep. Ed Whitfield, R.-Ky., that he saw “no need for any tobacco products in society.” *Should the Food and Drug Administration regulate tobacco products? The idea has surprising support from tobacco company Philip Morris, which fought legislation in 1996 that would have given the FDA authority to regulate tobacco as a “medical device.” Philip Morris now says the FDA could provide guidelines for manufacturing so-called “reduced risk” products like cigarettes that heat rather than burn tobacco. Anti-smoking advocates warn that weak FDA oversight might allow the companies to market a harmful product with the government’s implicit stamp of approval. Several versions of a bill extending the FDA’s oversight were introduced in Congress last year. Anti-smoking advocates favored the version co-sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D.-Mass., and Sen. Mike DeWine, D.-Ohio, while Philip Morris backed a version sponsored by Rep. Tom Davis, R.-Va. The bill numbers were S. 2626 (Kennedy), H.R. 2180 (Davis) and S. 190, a third bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Frist, R.-Tenn. To read them, go to here and search by bill number under the 107th Congress. *Presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., called for a national medical translation system in a speech to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund on June 11. The system proposed by Edwards would include on-call translators in at least five languages at hospitals in the nation’s 100 most populous counties, a 24-hour translation hotline for small and rural hospitals and funding to encourage providers to become medical translators. *The federal government needs to invest more in “learning effective ways to improve the performance of the U.S. health system” if it hopes to control health care costs, according to Senate testimony given by Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis on June 11. Davis spoke in support of a greater budget for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and singled out investment in information technology and quality standards as ways to create a cost-effective and efficient health care system. Read Davis’ full testimony at here. *Mark Goldman, Ph.D., is the new associate director at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. He comes to NIAAA from the University of South Florida, where his research focused on alcohol risk and development of drinking among children and young adults. Goldman will work on initiatives targeting underage drinkers ages 9 to 15 and efforts to integrate behavioral and biomedical research at the institute, according to NIAAA Director Ting-Kai Li, M.D.
|
|
|||||
 |
|||||||
