Food And Drug Administration U S

The Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it would allow 17-year-olds to buy the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B without a prescription, signaling a major shift in the agency's approach to what has been a polarizing debate on reproductive rights.

Peanut Corp. of America, the company that produced the contaminated peanut butter now being widely recalled, lied to Food and Drug Administration investigators about shipping batches of the food known to be tainted with salmonella bacteria, the agency said Friday. The company had previously told the FDA that some lots of peanut butter had initially tested positive for the bacterium, then were retested and found to be negative before they were shipped.

Two of the three largest U.S. tobacco companies sued Monday to block marketing restrictions in a law that gives the Food and Drug Administration authority over tobacco, alleging the provisions violate their right to free speech. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., maker of Camel cigarettes, and Lorillard Inc., which sells the Newport menthol brand, filed the suit in District Court in Bowling Green, Ky., with several other tobacco companies. It is the first major challenge of the legislation, which was enacted in June.

Farming and ranching representatives appeared before a congressional panel Thursday to express concern that a major bill pending in the House could unnecessarily complicate the marketplace without improving food safety. Amid recent health scares involving cookie dough and pistachios, the Obama administration has pledged to modernize the food safety system. Lawmakers are considering the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, aimed at broadening the Food and Drug Administration's powers.

In a historic shift in public health policy, Congress is poised to give the federal government sweeping new authority to regulate the manufacturing of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The legislation, long resisted by the tobacco industry, could allow consumers to see for the first time what chemicals and other additives tobacco companies put in their products.

Testing has turned up possible irregularities in some samples of a blood thinner linked to several deaths and hundreds of life-threatening reactions, a spokeswoman for Baxter Healthcare Corp. said Thursday. The disclosure comes amid mounting questions about the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's oversight of drugs manufactured overseas.

The government proposed guidelines Friday for how pharmaceutical companies can use medical journal articles to market drugs for unapproved uses. The Food and Drug Administration guidelines, criticized by some lawmakers as too lenient, have been eagerly anticipated by drug and device companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Medtronic Inc. that often use medical literature for marketing.

U.S. health officials evaluated the wrong factory when assessing the safety of a Chinese-made drug ingredient that may be a source of problems with a blood thinner, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday. Baxter International Inc.'s heparin has been linked to four deaths and hundreds of reports of allergic reactions. An investigation will take FDA inspectors to China this week.

One person died and at least 72 others were sickened by allergic reactions to denture cleaners, sometimes because of misuse of the products, U.S. regulators said Monday. The Food and Drug Administration blamed a bleach called persulfate, an allergen used in most denture cleansers, according to notices posted on the agency's website. The agency urged doctors and patients to be aware of the symptoms of an allergic reaction and to use the cleansers as directed.

Years of high-profile court battles over drugs such as Vioxx and Celebrex, along with billion-dollar settlements and jury verdicts, could soon be a thing of the past. The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-1 decision, ruled last month that patients injured by most medical devices can't sue their manufacturers. And this fall, a similar case could extend the same legal protection to the much larger pharmaceutical industry -- a frequent target of lawsuits.