Subject: Food and Drug Administration

• How Brad Pitt Gets His Ideas

  February 21, 2007

• FDA Looking Into Carter Albrecht's "Case"

  September 6, 2007

• A Month Later, Carter Albrecht's Chantix Use Is Now a National Cautionary Tale

  October 8, 2007

• FDA Makes It Official: It's Investigating Chantix and Its Side Effects

  November 21, 2007

• Chantix By Any Other Name ...

  December 3, 2007

• The Clone Wars

  January 16, 2008

• Pfizer No Longer Ruling Out Chantix Side Effects: "Depression and Suicidal Behavior"

  January 18, 2008

• Chantix "Increasing Likely" to Cause "Agitation" and "Suicidal Behavior"

  February 4, 2008

• Suicidal Tendencies: Or, a New York Writer Takes Chantix

  February 11, 2008

• Is Fort Worth-Based BNSF Trying to "Intimidate Its Critics"?

  April 3, 2008

• Aborted cause

  December 8, 1994

• Neander-Guy

  July 6, 1995

• Snakes in the grass

  July 13, 1995

• True crime story

  December 7, 1995

• Events for the week

  February 22, 1996

• Epidemic of hope

  April 18, 1996

• Haggis: Did It Gag Us?

  Patrick MichelsAs per tradition, haggis is best plated on paper, beside a bottle of Belhaven.We see how it is. The Glenlivet reps come by the office to offer tastings of the company's 18 to 25 year-old Scotch and what do we who don't have our own offices get? Perhaps a dram of whisky? Just a taste? A drop, even? No, we get the can of haggis.That's right. Canned haggis. Thanks for reminding us of our place in the City of Ate.But, hell--it's free food. So a few of us got together Saturday night to

  January 29, 2009

• Food For Thought...

  "We don't have a good idea right now in terms of how much of that product is still out there; it may have largely been consumed." (Stephen Sundlof of the FDA after the government extended a recall of peanut products produced by the Peanut Corporation of America's Blakely, GA, plant to include the past two years due to salmonella, as quoted in the Washington Post).

  January 30, 2009

• Paper chase

  January 1, 1998

• AFI Dallas Announces Its First 15 Films

  Paul Dano and Zooey Deschanel in Gigantic, which premiered in Toronto last year and screens this year at AFI DallasThe AFI Dallas International Film Festival just released its first list of films selected for this year's shindig, which runs March 26 through April 2 -- with, as noted last month, most of the screenings taking place at the AMC NorthPark. Among the offerings are three world-premiere docs, a Zooey Deschanel romantic comedy picked up in Toronto, an acclaimed 2008 Sundancer, Kevin Spac

  February 3, 2009

• Getting fat off non-fat

  June 25, 1998

• Blood sucker

  August 20, 1998

• Rice brewhaha

  November 5, 1998

• Unacceptable Risk

  June 3, 1999

• Letters

  December 14, 2000

• Buzz

  March 22, 2001

• Chewing the Fat: Plastic People

  The state of some food these days is enough to make a man go hungry rather than risk consuming the contents of many processed and pre-packaged items. If it's not salmonella-tainted peanuts, it's energy drinks that turn your blood into syrup. Health Canada recently found that 96 percent of sodas on the market contain bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical agent commonly found in plastics that is coming under increasing scrutiny. A growing body of data suggests that it may cause heart disease, diabetes

  March 5, 2009

• Food For Thought 3.25.09

  "Because it sells, food companies are slapping it on anything. And consumers believe natural equals nutritious. Actually, it's a bit like Alice in Wonderland. It means what I want it to mean." (Julie Miller Jones, professor of food safety and nutrition at College of St. Catherine in Minnesota on the 'natural' food label, which has defied federal definition. The USDA uses "minimally processed" as their guidline, although some on the extreme call raisins processed--and thus unnatural--food. The F

  March 25, 2009

• Stay Hungry, Live Longer: the Science Behind the Calorie Restriction Diet

  February 19, 2009

• Fighting Fire With Fire

  Does an unproven treatment that combats drug addiction with drugs promise more than it can deliver?

  August 14, 2008

• Ringing Up Baby

  Cashing in on the adoption biz is easy in Texas, where lax rules let almost anyone play. Take Jennalee Ryan, for instance...

  June 7, 2007

• BBQ Sauce for the Soul

  When he's not catering for the president, barbecue maven Eddie Deen caters to the spirits of the indigent

  February 24, 2005

• I Hate It

  This Spike Lee joint is a cockeyed, self-righteous and graceless diatribe

  August 19, 2004

• R.I.P.ped

  March 25, 2004

• Cocktail Hours

  The latest AIDS medications give life to the dying--but what kind of life?

  November 13, 2003

• Dino-myte

  Plus: Soy-lent Green; Player’s Ball

  May 8, 2003

• Green Giant

  Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug is credited with saving the lives of 1 billion people. So why is a small cadre of activists bent on tarnishing his legacy?

  December 5, 2002

• Race With a Killer

  A Dallas doctor believes he holds a miracle treatment for a disease that maims and kills children. Proving it will take another miracle.

  October 17, 2002

• The Next Breast Thing

  Build a better fake boob, and women will beat a path to your door, along with the occasional lawsuit

  February 14, 2002

• A Jolt to the System

  This small electrical device may be the last hope for the chronically depressed

  March 15, 2001

• High Spoons

  Bare breasts, a bowl of red, and bad blood among the chili brethren in the Big Bend. Texas doesn't get any better.

  November 23, 2000

• Seeds of Discontent

  Can growing protests stem the tide of genetically engineered crops?

  October 19, 2000

• Ten-gallon beret

  Charolais is a steak house with a French kiss

  May 11, 2000

• At a Snail's Place

  Richard Fullington is trying to make a fortune in a slimy business

  February 8, 1996

• Food For Thought 4.14.09

  "Stevia is supposed to offer a non-dangerous natural alternative to sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners, and that's why it's supposed to do well. It doesn't have the calorie punch of sugar; it doesn't have the bad image of HFCS." (Marcia Mogelonsky, senior research analyst with Chicago-based Mintel International, on the sweetener in All Sport Naturally Zero. The drink is a joint effort by All Sport in Austin and Dr Pepper Snapple Group in Plano. The FDA labeled Stevia as sa

  April 14, 2009

• Eyesight to the Nearly Blind

  Megan FeldmanDr. Jeffrey Whitman performs a rare eye surgery on Adam Williamson, paralyzed in a 2006 dirt-bike accident.Not many people relish having to wear contacts or glasses, but for Adam Williamson, poor eyesight was more than a headache. The 25-year-old from Garland was paralyzed in a dirt bike accident three years ago, and his worsening vision made for yet another roadblock in his daily life. His morning routine -- shifting into his wheelchair and rolling into a door-less, chair-friendly

  June 11, 2009

• Fear The Cookie Dough

  Delfi's World [In Focus], via FlickrA couple of notable news items came across the desk this weekend while you were out grillin' with Dad. Time to play catch up:Last Friday, June 19th, Nestle USA announced a voluntary recall of nearly four dozen Toll House refrigerated dough products. The action was prompted by an FDA investigation into reported E. coli illnesses related to the consumption of raw cookie dough. The recall includes numerous varieties, from chocolate chip cookie dough to browni

  June 22, 2009

• Two Years After Albrecht's Death, FDA Forces "Mental Health Events" Chantix Warning

  To this day, people still post comments to the September 4, 2007, Unfair Park item concerning the smoking-cessation drug Chantix and its troubling effect on users. Andrea Grimes wrote the piece because Sorta's Carter Albrecht and his girlfriend had begun using the Pfizer-made medicine shortly before Albrecht was killed on September 3, 2007, and his best friend, bandmate and roommate, Danny Balis, had posted to his MySpace page an essay in which he partially blamed Carter's erratic behavior -- wh

  July 1, 2009

• Carter Albrecht's Dad Explains Why, Two Years Later, He and His Wife are Suing Pfizer

  Carter Albrecht​Yesterday in Dallas federal court, Carter Albrecht's parents, Ken and Judy, finally sued Pfizer, claiming that its smoking-cessation drug Chantix played a "direct and proximate" role in Carter's shooting death almost two years ago to the day. The Albrechts have long considered suing Pfizer, but Ken waited until the Food and Drug Administration took action of its own, which it did in July when it announced that Chantix packaging will now include a "mental health events" warning.

  September 1, 2009

• Down On The Grass-Fed Farm: The Beef May Be Better, But It's Still Damn Hard Work

  Jayme RutledgeMarguerite Robbins with her cattle.​ Sweat pours down Marguerite's sun-baked face. She feels briars scratching through her dusty jeans. The buzzing and biting of mosquitoes is maddening. So is the old fence lining one of the back pastures. It's broken again. Marguerite stops what she's doing. Why in the heck am I doing this? she asks herself. Running the 142-acre east Texas cattle ranch she owns near Greenville with her husband Doug is back-breaking work. Marguerite, 55,

  September 9, 2009