Painkillers taken off the shelf as FDA acts on staff warnings
The embattled US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is taking tough decisions over products in two highly profitable areas of medicine.
Congress has attacked the FDA over the past year, after some of the agency's staff criticized its ability to monitor drug safety (see Nature 434, 554−556; 2005). Regulation of one class of drug singled out for criticism — the blockbuster painkillers known as COX-2 inhibitors — has now been tightened. On 7 April, the FDA asked drug manufacturer Pfizer to withdraw its Bextra painkiller from the market.
The FDA is also considering an expert-panel report on silicone breast implants. The panel said on 13 April that implants made by Mentor of Santa Barbara, California, could be used in breast-augmentation operations but advised against the use of a similar product made by local rival Inamed. Concerns about ruptures and other complications led the FDA to effectively ban silicone implants for cosmetic use in 1992.
Robot craft arrows to target but suddenly darts away
A US spacecraft designed to dock with satellites without human intervention missed its planned rendezvous last week.
The Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology (DART) craft, part of a US$110-million mission launched last Friday, was supposed to dock with a military communications satellite almost 800 kilometres above Earth. DART successfully tracked its target and came within 100 metres, but an unknown mishap caused it to divert its orbit away from the satellite. The craft was designed to manoeuvre itself to within 5 metres of the satellite.
NASA has announced that it will launch an investigation into the reasons for the mission's partial failure.
Asteroid warnings set to take milder tone
Astronomers are to use less threatening language to describe asteroid risks in a bid to avoid scaring the public.
On the Torino Scale, zero equates to no danger, and ten to a certain collision and global catastrophe. But newly discovered asteroids often look threatening and generate excited media coverage, before being downgraded once their orbits are better understood. Last December, for example, an object briefly merited the first-recorded four but was reassigned to zero within days.
Worried that the scale was scaring people, its creators have worked up a revised version, unveiled on 12 April. Instead of "meriting concern", objects rating two to four now only require "attention by astronomers", say Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues.
A second scale, the Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale, was developed in 2002 solely for use by astronomers. This scale allows researchers to decide which new sightings need to be tracked by telescope (see Nature 418, 468; 2002).
Europe tightens controls on transgenic corn imports
A $400-million annual trade in US animal feed is under threat following the discovery of an unauthorized transgenic strain of corn, or maize, on American farms.
The European Union said on 15 April that it will require imports of corn-based feed to be certified as free of the unapproved variety Bt10. Last month, Nature revealed that US farmers had grown 15,000 hectares of Bt10 corn by mistake between 2001 and 2004 (see Nature 434, 548; 2005). The US Department of Agriculture has fined Syngenta, the company responsible, $375,000 for the error.
Bt10 contains a gene from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that produces a pesticide. The Bt gene has been approved for use in other varieties, but Bt10 also contains a gene for antibiotic resistance. Syngenta immediately pledged to implement testing of animal-feed exports at major US ports, to enable certification, "within days".
Roman researchers face year on the road
Eighty Italian cognitive scientists face a nomadic existence, with two laboratory moves in the space of three months, after being told to leave their current facility before a new home is built.
Researchers at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome have been told that their building is too expensive to maintain and does not meet safety standards. The CNR, Italy's main basic-research organization and the institute's funder, said on 14 April that they have until the end of the month to leave. A permanent home for the institute on the outskirts of Rome is due to be complete by the end of the year, but is likely to be delayed by conflicts about who should foot the bill.
In the meantime, the researchers will lodge at another CNR facility in Rome for three to four months before moving to as yet undefined locations. "Our research will be endangered by having to constantly move our lab around the city," says institute scientist Rino Falcone. The CNR is not making any statements on the decision.
Fishing-line weights net conservation prize
Three technologies designed to reduce the environmental impact of fishing are due to scoop US$35,000 in prize money from the conservation organization WWF.
A system of fishing-line weights, which forces an entire long-line system below a depth of 100 metres, so sea turtles (pictured) won't be snagged on hooks and die, was due to be awarded first prize when the results of the Smart Gear competition are announced on 21 April in Washington. The system will scoop a $25,000 prize for Steve Beverly, a fisheries development officer with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Noumea, New Caledonia.
One $5,000 runner-up award was expected to go to a team that chemically treats gill nets with barium sulphate to make them more acoustically detectable, to help drive away whales, dolphins and porpoises. The second runner-up place was set to go to a team that devised a system to catch large shrimp in the bottom of nets while allowing juveniles to escape from the top.