February 6 - 12, 2005, has been designated National Consumer Protection Week (NCPW) to highlight consumer protection and education efforts around the country. The subject of this year’s NCPW is Identity Theft: When Fact Becomes Fiction.

Your everyday transactions usually reveal bits of your personal information: your bank and credit card account numbers; your income; your Social Security number (SSN); or your name, address, and phone numbers. An identity thief obtains some piece of your sensitive information and uses it without your knowledge to commit fraud or theft. Identity theft is a serious crime. People whose identities have been stolen can spend months or years — and their hard-earned money — cleaning up the mess the thieves have made of their good name and credit record. Some victims have lost job opportunities, been refused loans for education, housing or cars, or even been arrested for crimes they didn’t commit.

http://www.consumer.gov/ncpw/

HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman today announced the release of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005, the federal government’s science-based advice to promote health and reduce risk of chronic diseases through nutrition and physical activity.

The sixth edition of Dietary Guidelines for Americans places stronger emphasis on reducing calorie consumption and increasing physical activity. This joint project of the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture is the latest of the five-year reviews required by federal law. It is the basis of federal food programs and nutrition education programs and supports the nutrition and physical fitness pillars of President Bush’s HealthierUS Initiative.

Read the FULL RELEASE from the USDA.

Officers of a company that directed an international telemarketing network that defrauded hundreds of thousands of consumers through the deceptive telemarketing of bogus advance-fee credit cards are banned from telemarketing for life as part of federal court orders settling Federal Trade Commission charges. Another alleged leader of this massive scam, who has a prior history involving telemarketing fraud, also agreed to a lifetime telemarketing ban.

Read the FULL RELEASE from the FTC.

The Federal Trade Commission has charged a network of corporations and individuals with using spam to sell access to online pornography. The FTC alleges that the defendants, acting as a single business enterprise, barraged consumers with e-mails containing sexually-explicit content without the required warning label. Four of the individual defendants controlled a network of corporations that own and operate the Web sites, payment systems, and servers used to distribute and to sell sexually-explicit content. The network also marketed its sexually-explicit content through an affiliate program that pays commissions to third parties who drive traffic to the network’s Web sites. Through this operation, the FTC alleges that the defendants violated the Adult Labeling Rule, the CAN-SPAM Act, and the FTC Act. A federal district court has issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the defendants. The TRO prohibits defendants from engaging in the deceptive practices and freezes the defendants’ assets, pending a preliminary hearing.

The FTC’s complaint names: Global Net Solutions, based in Las Vegas, Nevada; Global Net Ventures, Ltd., based in London, England; Wedlake, Ltd, allegedly based in Riga, Latvia; Open Space Enterprises, Inc., based in Las Vegas; Southlake Group, Inc., based in Las Vegas; WTFRC, Inc., doing business as Reflected Networks, Inc., based in Las Vegas; Dustin Hamilton; Tobin Banks; Gregory Hamilton; Philip Doroff; and Paul Rose.

“The law gives consumers a tool to control what comes into their inboxes,” said Lydia Parnes, Acting Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Spammers beware! We are on the side of parents and kids to protect their ability to filter out sexually-explicit e-mails.”

Read the FULL RELEASE from the FTC.

Aleve is also a concern…..”Also, as FDA announced earlier this week, preliminary results from a long-term clinical trial (up to three years) suggest that long-term use of a non-selective NSAID, naproxen (sold as Aleve, Naprosyn and other trade name and generic products), may be associated with an increased cardiovascular (CV) risk compared to placebo.”

Read the full Talk Paper from the FDA -
FDA Issues Public Health Advisory Recommending Limited Use of Cox-2 Inhibitors

FDA Issues Public Health Advisory Recommending Limited Use of Cox-2 Inhibitors

Agency Requires Evaluation of Prevention Studies Involving Cox-2 Selective Agents

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today issued a Public Health Advisory summarizing the agency’s recent recommendations concerning the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug products (NSAIDs), including those known as COX-2 selective agents. The public health advisory is an interim measure, pending further review of data that continue to be collected.

In addition, FDA today announced that it is requiring evaluation of all prevention studies that involve the Cox-2 selective agents Celebrex (celecoxib) and Bextra (valdecoxib) to ensure that adequate precautions are implemented in the studies and that local Institutional Review Boards reevaluate them in light of the new evidence that these drugs may increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. A prevention trial is one in which healthy people are given medicine to prevent a disease or condition (such as colon polyps or Alzheimer’s disease).

FDA is issuing an advisory because of recently released data from controlled clinical trials showing that the COX-2 selective agents (Vioxx, Celebrex, and Bextra) may be associated with an increased risk of serious cardiovascular events (heart attack and stroke) especially when they are used for long periods of time or in very high risk settings (immediately after heart surgery).

Read the full Talk Paper from the FDA -
FDA Issues Public Health Advisory Recommending Limited Use of Cox-2 Inhibitors

Thank you Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra for bringing some attention to the pharmaceutical drug industry. Naturally, other drugs like Prozac, with a long past of reported problems, would be put under the microscope.

Eli Lilly just received a “21-year-old-mike-tyson’esque” knockout due to the allegation that they purposely suppressed drug safety data on Prozac.

Read the latest from HealthTalk -
Prozac Documents Add To Patients Lack Of Trust In Industry