Richard Knox

The fact that 80 daily milligrams of simvastatin (brand name Zocor) can cause serious muscle damage has been known for years. So why did it take the Food and Drug Administration so long to tell doctors and patients they should avoid that dose?

The answer reveals a lot about the FDA's reluctance to restrict use of a popular drug — much less move to take it off the market — even when there are safer alternatives.

The Food and Drug Administration is warning that a popular cholesterol drug can cause muscle damage at high doses. The FDA is telling patients to see their doctor if they're taking the highest dose of Zocor, known generically as simvastatin.

On any given day, more than 130,000 Americans endure the miseries of what we often call food poisoning. It might be from salmonella in the salad, campylobacter in the chicken or vibrio in the shellfish.

The nation's record in preventing foodborne illnesses is decidedly mixed, according to the latest annual report card from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Christopher Braden, the chief of food- and waterborne diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, doesn't expect the Escherichia coli bug causing serious illness in northern Europe to leapfrog the Atlantic anytime soon.

Still, Braden tells Shots, "I am concerned about something similar that could happen in the United States."

It's a quest that never seems to end — the search for a safer birth control pill.

Some thought it might be at hand almost a decade ago when a new generation of oral contraceptives came on the market. They contained a hormone called drospirenone, which some thought would be less likely to cause dangerous blood clots.