Government Gone Wild
If you're like us, you've been spending a lot of your waking hours wondering how the recent reorganization at the Food and Drug Administration's Office of Epidemiology—known inside the Beltway as “Animal House”—was going to turn out. Wonder no more. After an extended weekend “conference” of drinking in the elixir of cooperation, dealing the cards of consensus, and sharing the naked truth of bureaucracy, the bleary-eyed and staggering survivors announced the results. The Division of Medication Error Prevention is now the Division of Medication Error Prevention and Analysis (new motto: “DMEPA Rocks!”), and the Division of Adverse Event Analysis I and II becomes the Division of Pharmacovigilance I and II. No wonder somebody called the cops.
The Speed of Drinking
Loud music leads to faster drinking. French researchers visited bars on three Saturday nights and observed 40 men, aged 18-25 years, who ordered a draft beer. By previous arrangement with the bar owners, the investigators manipulated the volume of the music and discovered that louder music led to increased drinking in a shorter amount of time. In their report, scheduled to appear in the October issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, they offer two hypotheses: Loud music causes higher arousal, which leads to faster drinking—or loud music makes it hard to communicate, so people drink more and talk less. And, as any self-respecting epidemiologist will tell you, drinking more and talking less is what pharmacovigilance is all about.
The Ultimate Party Animal?
Malaysian pen-tailed tree shrews are, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the heaviest drinkers in the world. They live on the fermented nectar of the flower buds of the bertam palm, which can have an alcohol content of up to 3.8%. Investigators used radio collars to follow the shrews' movements and measured blood alcohol concentrations much higher than in humans with similar alcohol intake. “The amount of alcohol we're talking about is huge—it's several times the legal limit in most countries,” researcher Marc-André Lachance told LiveScience. Amazingly, the shrews showed no signs of intoxication, suggesting that any one of them could drink a pharmacovigilant epidemiologist under the table.
Where No Spa Has Gone Before
Phit (pelvic health integrated techniques) is the brainchild of Manhattan gynecologist Lauri J. Romanzi, who recently opened what is probably the world's first gyno spa. According to her Web site,