Subject: Food and Drug Administration

• Prince Valeant and Mary Jane

  Valeant Pharmaceuticals, based out of Costa Mesa, wants to give cancer patients the munchies. The FDA has just approved Valeant's Cesamet, already on sale in Canada as Nabilone, to moderate nausea and vomiting in those undergoing chemotherapy. A Belgian company has made a similar project, Marinol, for years and years, but considering the U.S. government's conflicting views on the values of medicinal marijuana (FDA versus National Institute of Health), it's significant that the FDA are acknowl

  May 17, 2006

• Asleep at the Wheel...

  … or, Drive, He Snored. Ever feel you spend all your waking hours in your car?  Well, thanks to modern science, now you can also spend your non-waking hours trapped in traffic.  The Associated Press reports: All sleeping pills, including the blockbusters Ambien and Lunesta, may sometimes cause a bizarre but dangerous side effect — sleep-driving, the Food and Drug Administration warned Wednesday. It's like sleepwalking but behind-the-wheel: driving while not fully awake

  March 14, 2007

• How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Off-Road Trucks

  (photo courtesy of Gibson performance) Note to self: buy a cell phone. Here in the desert, on a "road" full of dips and covered in rocks as big as your fist, the decidedly "on-road" vehicle I'm driving—a Mercury Tracer—could easily bounce and break, and nobody would ever find me. The nearest town, Lucerne Valley, is small enough and out-of-the-way enough that it doesn't even merit a McDonalds. Hell, most of the houses there look to be having moving-out sales. But we're past even

  May 15, 2007

• Reeejected, from China

  Once, the only worry Americans felt when consuming products made in China, was that they were complete crap. But times have changed, and with recent hysteria over tainted dog food and toothpaste mixed with industrial compounds, we have demanded that the Chinese do something to make us feel secure again. Well, according to an Associated Press report, on May 29, the Chinese government answered our challenge. Thank goodness. No more worrying about dangerous products because the head of China's v

  June 4, 2007

• Sunday's Headlines & Surprises

  'Biggest racist ever' back on Anaheim school board: Last week, the Anaheim Union School District appointed Harald Martin to an open board seat created by the death of Denise Mansfield-Reinking. I managed to obtain the board's top-secret qualifications checklist for Martin: Racist, check. Uneducated cop mentality, check. Nincompoop, check. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! Of course, I'm kidding. Nothing was top secret. We all know about Martin's history during his previous board service.

  July 22, 2007

• The Ecstasy Factor

  April 1, 2004

• Is Orange County Injecting Itself Into a "Judicial Hellhole"?

  Our stuck-up neighbor to the north, Los Angeles County, is among America's leading "Judicial Hellholes," which is what the American Tort Reform Association calls finalists on its annual list of the nation's most unfair civil court jurisdictions. But don't gloat too hard, Orange Countians, because we made the list of jurisdictions to watch. R. Scott Moxley's Weekly investigation of October 2006 revealed that David Gunther--the ex-drug dealer, dead-beat dad and burglar pictured here--had made a sm

  December 16, 2008

• FDA Wags Finger at Diet Coke's Vitamin Claims

  The FDA has issues with Coca Cola's new Diet Coke Plus.  It sent the company a letter earlier this month about the drink, which Coke purports to have a "refreshing taste...AND several essential nutrients" with "each 8 fl. oz. serving of Diet Coke Plus provid(ing) 15% of your RDI for niacin and vitamins B6 and B12, and 10% for zinc and magnesium". So what do the feds have a problem with?  It's the word "plus", believe it or not.  The FDA says that the drink fails

  December 24, 2008

• Oyster Species Guide, Plus a Couple of Tips

  February 12, 2009

• Adderall Treats ADHD But Can Lead to Addiction. One Clinic Tries to Help OC Kick 'College Crack'

  August 28, 2008

• Wash, Rinse, and Repeat, Repeat, Repeat!

  September 15, 2005

• Commie Girl

  August 31, 2006

• Diary of a Mad County

  June 8, 2006

• Un-Made in Mexico

  February 2, 2006

• Totally Tubular

  January 26, 2006

• Don't Gloat Yet

  December 29, 2005

• Our Vagetarian in Washington

  October 6, 2005

• Healthy Inc.

  August 18, 2005

• Montezumas Revenge

  I go to Mexico, and America falls apart

  August 11, 2005

• We Must Have Syph

  May 26, 2005

• Natural Selection

  April 14, 2005

• FDA FUs Plan B

  June 3, 2004

• Of Mice and Menstruation

  February 5, 2004

• Theres Got to Be a Morning After

  January 15, 2004

• Santas Mailbag

  December 25, 2003

• Time for a Plan B

  September 11, 2003

• Confessions of a Border-Jumping Drug Smuggler

  September 5, 2002

• Shoot Me Now

  May 9, 2002

• The Druidic Candidate

  March 28, 2002

• Diary of a mad county

  January 3, 2002

• Terror Town, USA

  December 27, 2001

• No Gay Blood, Please

  September 27, 2001

• Baked Alaska Airlines

  May 18, 2000

• The Talking Drug

  June 24, 1999

• Prescription for Disaster

  February 4, 1999

• "Waiter, There's Too Much Salt In My Food!" "Dangerous" Denny's Sued Over High Sodium Levels

  ​A class-action suit filed in New Jersey by longtime Denny's patron Nick DeBenedetto and backed by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) alleges that "Most meals at Denny's restaurants meals are dangerously high in salt, putting the chain's customers at greater risk of high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke."The CSPI claims that Denny's nutritional information should be available in its restaurants, not just online, and wants a judge to force Denny's to disclose

  July 30, 2009

• Barbara Coe Adds Another Jewel to Her Crown of Conspiracies

  ​It would take me a while to list all the vile things and views California Coalition for Immigration Reform head Barbara Coe believes, but a short list includes: Reconquista, Sikhs and Muslims deserve deportation, Obama wasn't born in the United States, Sonny Bono was murdered because he knew too much, and on and on the beat don't stop until the break of dawn. Here's the latest: Babs is urging her followers not to take any vaccines because the government is using them to kill you!In a August 1

  August 5, 2009

• The Other Side of the Health-Care Debate Strikes Back

  The other side of the health-care debate (think opposite of Fox News' town hall criers) has come out swinging of late.California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee just issued a statement with the provocative title, "California's Real Death Panels: Insurers Deny 21% of Claims." The CNA/NNOC has compiled data that shows one in five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient's physician, are rejected by California's largest private in

  September 2, 2009

• Doctor-Minister Arrested for Fake Cancer Cure Has OC Ties

  ​Another health practitioner with Orange County ties has been arrested on suspicion of prescribing phony cancer cures.WSJ.com​Licensed physician and ordained Pentecostal minister Christine Daniel of Mission Hills was arrested Thursday night in Los Angeles for allegedly taking $1.1 million from 55 families over three years for an herbal cancer "treatment" that resulted in at least six patient deaths in a six-month period.(The only image Clockwork could find of the 55-year-old was this line dr

  October 9, 2009

• "Natural Doctor" featured in OC Register Charged With Being a Fake

  Daryn Peterson Daryn Peterson must have been flying pretty high on June 10, when he opened the Orange County Register and read Courtney Perkes' feature story on him, "A Rejection of Western Medicine." Today, the 37-year-old Las Vegas resident was arrested and charged with unauthorized practice of medicine, operating a health care service plan without a license, treating cancer without a license, offering an unapproved drug for cancer treatment, and misrepresenting

  September 24, 2009

• Have Your Robo-Responder Contact My Robo-Responder and Set Up a Virtual Lunch, Madame Senator

  This is either Sen. Dianne Feinstein or her screen saver.​Have you ever been leaving a political website when a pop-up asks you to weigh in on an issue? And have you ever decided it would be just as quick to click a couple boxes indicating your support/opposition as it would be to close the pop-up and be on your merry way? And, seconds after your robo-reply was delivered, have you ever received a robo-response from the politician your electronic form letter was delivered to?As you'll see after

  November 3, 2009