News @ a glance

Moratorium lifted: The United States Food and Drug Administration announced last month that it endorses the marketing of milk and meats from cloned animals and their offspring, without requirements for special labelling. Although the US Congress was weighing legislation that would block FDA approval of cloned food, agency scientists published a report saying that studies “indicate that the composition of meat and milk from clones is within the compositional ranges of meat and milk consumed in the US.”

Queue-jumping: In the wake of nationally publicized comments from Canadian Medical Association President Dr. Brian Day that it's common for the well-heeled and well-connected to pull strings to get quicker medical treatment, the Ottawa Hospital removed the “VIP” box on its admission forms because of concerns it created the impression that terribly important people got some form of preferential treatment.

Convicts are among several groups that will be banned from donating organs under new Health Canada regulations. Image by: Brasil2 / iStockphoto.com

Donor prohibitions: Health Canada has issued a regulatory prohibition against organ donation by any man who has had sex with another man in the previous 5 years, injection drug users, recent recipients of tattoos or body piercings and all inmates of correctional facilities. Health Canada spokesperson Carole Saindon said the prohibition wasn't based on lifestyle choices but rather because there was a “higher risk of disease transmission” from such groups.

Pharmaceutical facts: The United States pharmaceutical industry spends nearly twice as much annually on drug promotion than it does on research and development, according to a new study by York University researchers Marc-André Gagnon and Joel Lexchin (PLoS Med 5[1]:e1). The industry spent US$57.5 billion in 2004, or roughly $61 000 per physician, or 24% of their sales dollars, on promotion. By comparison, just 13.4% or $31.5 billion of the industry's US domestic sales of $235.4 billion were invested in research.