As always, Friday is welcomed. Barack Obama promised change and the trees are all complying. Fireplaces are once again being lit and comfort food like onion soup and mac and cheese is being contemplated more and more often by your's truly. 
A lot came down the pike this week and here is a little of what caught my eye:
- FDA Expresses Doubt/Challenges Smart Choice Labeling in Foods – In what is yet another indication that the FDA is moving on the food front to reinforce safety and claims, the FDA this week issued some challenge to Smart Choice labeling stating that some foods that were being labeled to indicate that they were health choices for consumers, were in fact perhaps healthy in one respect – no transfats, but not healthy in others – higher in saturated fats or sugars. The FDA indicated that it is going to be examining labeling more closely to see if there were violations of regulations, and would move on any such violations it found.
- FDA Lagging in De-Barment of Wayward Researchers – This week a GAO report was released to Congress on Thursday that contained somewhat shocking evidence of the lack of urgency with which the agency approaches debarment of clinical investigators who have committed wrong doing, including fraud. The GAO report stated that more than half of the debarment proceedings it examined took 4 or more years. Given that confidence in clinical trials is paramount, one would think this a high priority for reform.
- Sidewiki Populates Five Pharma Home Pages – Sidewiki, the new Google application that allows any user to insert a sidebar onto any home page now exists on five pharmaceutical company home pages – Abbott, Amgen, GSK, Lilly and Pfizer. To date, no company has made their own entry on the Sidewiki or moved to correct misinformation. Sidewiki's have also begun to appear on some medical product home pages. If you are in the medical products business and not developed a policy on this, get started. You are running late. Note, if you do not have the Sidewiki application yourself, you cannot view the Sidewiki.
And the Vid of the Week goes to Boehringer Ingelheim for a diabetes video they posted in September, but which only now caught my eye. Well done BI – this is a great video and a very nice example of how pharma can provide valuable content on YouTube that helps patients:
That's it for me this week. Have a good weekend everyone.
