Someone emailed today asking about mercury. I have to say I don't have much experience treating mercury intoxication though I did have one patient a few years ago who insisted he developed mercury toxicity from eating too much sushi. He had the documentation to verify that his strange neuro-psychological symptoms were actually the effect of mercury poisoning. By the way the mercury gets inside the fish through the burning of coal I am told. At the time I did some online research about mercury poisoning so here's what I know off the cuff.

Good news (?) for 17 year old girls who find themselves in need of the "morning after" pill--you can now get it without a prescription. The NYT headline was "FDA eases access to morning after pill " but the FDA itself reported a court ruling as the reason why they were "easing" access to the pill. This pill has been pretty contentious in religious circles so I doubt we've heard the last of it. Emergency contraception has been in the news since the 1980 discovery of RU-486.

Pharmaceutical corporations have sought safe effective weight loss pills for many years and Pfizer had been basking in the glow of a recent European approval of its diet pill Accomplia.  Hundreds of millions of obese people are at risk for heart attacks diabetes and strokes so the market for Accomplia is huge. Since the leptin gene was discovered in the year 1995 researchers have been trying to capitalize on the discovery to create a wonder drug that can treat obesity. Leptin (leptos means thin) is a hormone that regulates body fat.