Month: January 2014

(Reuters) – Johnson & Johnson has selected the Yale School of Medicine to review requests from investigators and physicians looking for access to clinical trial data involving the diversified healthcare company’s pharmaceuticals. Under the agreement, the “Yale Open Data Access Project,” will independently review and make final decisions regarding all requests for information on the company’s drug clinical trials, including anonymous patient data. The action comes amid growing pressure from outside scientists for access to raw data from clinical trials, reflecting general concerns that too many studies cannot be independently confirmed and may well be wrong. Britain’s GlaxoSmithkline Plc has set up an online system to provide researchers with access to anonymous patient-level data about its medicines.

(Reuters) – Missouri late on Wednesday executed a man convicted of killing a jewelry store owner during a 1991 robbery after the U.S. Supreme Court denied last-minute appeals that in part challenged the drug used in the execution, the state's top lawyer said. "After the United States Supreme Court vacated three separate stays of execution on January 29, 2014, Herbert Smulls was executed for the 1991 murder of Stephen Honickman," Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said in a statement. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Eric Walsh)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted a temporary stay of execution for a Missouri man convicted of killing a jewelry store owner during a 1991 robbery, denying last-minute appeals that in part challenged the drug to be used. The Supreme Court late Wednesday also vacated a stay from the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of appeals that had prevented the execution of Herbert Smulls, 56. Lawyers for Smulls filed another request with the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay late on Wednesday, and it was not immediately clear whether Missouri would be allowed to carry out his execution before the state's death warrant expires at midnight. Smulls was convicted of shooting jewelry-store owner Stephen Honickman to death while robbing his store in July 1991.

HEALTHY MESSAGE: Marie Bean, an Australian weight–loss “myth buster”, will visit … assumptions surrounding the food, dieting, fitness and weight loss world. … "Diets are only ever successful when we're on them," Ms Bean said.

Those efforts to fight obesity in schools? Think younger. A new study finds that much of a child's "weight fate" is set by age 5, and that nearly half of kids who became obese by the eighth grade were already overweight when they started kindergarten.