The emergency contraception Plan B (what a name!) was recommended by the FDA to go over-the-counter, but the secretary of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius, put the kibbosh on that idea in a rare Administration override to an FDA decision.

Sebelius is a career politician, has served as governor of Kansas, has been Barak Obama's Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the FDA. 

Dr. Richard Leff weighed in about resident work hour rules yesterday over at KevinMD.com.  I couldn't resist responding here.  Now InteractMD.com ain't KevinMD.com, but I thought I would like to add my two cents to the fray, for what it's worth.  Let's just say the intervening six years that have passed since residency have not diminished my interest in the question of how to create a more hospitable work environment for residents.  I think every doc that was once a resident needs to think about how the medical field can make things better for residents.  We all reap the benefits of our residency training, so it behooves us to try to incrementally improve the system.

"Back formations" means taking a word, subtracting a suffix, and making a new word.

The one I thought of spontaneously was "sheveled" out of "disheveled," though there are many others.

I preserve below a large web list of these back formations.  Some are pretty funny.  Enjoy.

1: Discontinuation of Cholinesterase Inhibitor Treatment and Determinants thereof in the Netherlands: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

2: Low-dose doxepin: in the treatment of insomnia.

3: Borderline personality traits and disorder: Predicting prospective patient functioning.

Bad-boy writer Christopher Hitchens announced last week that he has been advised to take chemo "on my esophagus," though does not disclose the diagnosis.

US Federal Court ruled at the end of March to end Myriad's patent of breast cancer susceptibility genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2.  Myriad, of course, is planning to fight in Appeals Court, and vows to take the case to the Supreme Court, if needed.  Myriad shares are trading lower following the ruling.

Mary Claire-King, discoverer of the BRCA gene, applauded the decision. 

USFDA recommended suspension of Avandia sales in February, but no action was taken.  Looks like Saudi Arabia is taking the lead on this one. 

Don't bother trying to find this on Google Health, by the way...InteractMD.com readers hear it first!

There are not too many drugs that improve overall survival in prostate cancer.  Right now, the list is pretty short: Taxotere.

So the announcement that researchers have survival improvement with a new drug, cabazitaxel, is pretty exciting for us oncologists.

It's easy to become discouraged, but once in a while we get something to be happy about.  Today is one of those moments.

Not that I'm ranting, but the two week delay CMS has instituted for Medicare claims doesn't really help us docs much.  the issue is that Congress couldn't reach an agreement to reverse the cuts scheduled for March 1, so CMS holds the claims until there is some sort of agreement.  It's easier for them to retoactively pay claims than it is for them to figure out how to make a cut whole again after p

It's funny how the news cycle can turn regular people just doing their jobs into overnight celebrities.

The Chile quake, obviously, is a huge catastrophe, and it will be days before we fully understand the magnitude of the damage.  As a resident of a quake-prone part of the world, I commiserate with residents near Santiago.