If Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has his way, the state’s major restaurant chains will soon be required to post calorie counts for all offerings, either on the menu or at the counter.

And public schools will have to measure the height and weight of all children in grades 1, 4, 7 and 10, determine which students are overweight using a BMI calculation, and report the results to parents or guardians.

Patrick’s anti-obesity proposals must first be approved by the Public Health Council and that is expected to happen shortly.

“Our approach here is comprehensive – like with smoking cessation and HIV-prevention, a single message is not enough,” state public health commissioner John Auerbach told the Boston Globe.

Massachusetts is one of the nation’s most health conscious states but even here the percentage of overweight or obese adults increased from 43% to 59% between 1990 and 2007. Meanwhile, a third of the state’s middle school and high school students are overweight, 3 times more than 20 years ago.

Massachusetts officials estimate that about 2,000 restaurants would be subject to the new rules, which apply only to chains having 15 or more stores in the state.

Massachusetts-based Dunkin’ Donuts said it embraced a “responsibility to provide health-related public information,” but whined that “for multistate operators…the complex, localized regulatory approach to menu labeling is costly and disruptive.”

New York City has required that fast-food chains post calorie counts on menu boards since April and the information surprised even Gotham’s health commissioner. 

“It was sticker shock,” Thomas Frieden told the Globe. “Who knew a bran muffin could have 450 calories?”

Asian stock markets dropped faster than those in the G7 countries during 2008. Taiwan’s exports plummeted 42% during the year and South Korea’s fell by 17%. Even China’s dipped a bit.

Do we take these to be signs the Great Economic Crisis will end the Asian emerging markets boom once and for all?

Probably not, according to the Economist. In fact many Asian economies are likely to recover faster than ours.

Economists who predict long term trouble for emerging Asian economies argue that the boom was  fueled by three things—exports to American consumers, easy access to cheap capital and high commodity prices—and all 3 have collapsed. 

But claims that Asian economies rely on consumption in G7 countries are exaggerated. The Asian export surge since 2000 is almost totally explained by exports to the developing world. Exports to G7 countries has barely budged from 20% of the pan-Asian GDP since 2000.

And Asian companies are net importers of commodities, so they stand to benefit from the collapse in their prices.

Meanwhile Gerard Lyons, the senior economist at Standard Chartered, emphasizes that many emerging Asian economies do not face the structural problems confronting America’s economy.

He mentions in particular our overwhelming domestic debt, which might forestall growth for years and blunt the impact of fiscal stimulus programs like the one the Big O is about to unveil.

This is especially true of China. Many expect that nation’s GDP will drop to 7% in 2009, down from 12% in 2007 and its lowest growth in 20 years.

Thousands of factories have already closed in China, and the government rolled-out a major fiscal stimulus package just last month.

But China has debts amounting to only 18% of GDP, so its government can throw several more stimulus packages together if necessary. And these programs would help build domestic demand, thereby sheltering its economy once and for all from our capricious ways.

One piece of fallout from the Pfizer-Wyeth hook up announced a few hours ago is that the latter will not be acquiring Crucell after all.

According to the an online story from the Wall Street Journal, “Crucell NV said Wyeth pulled out of friendly takeover talks with the Dutch vaccine maker.

Crucell admitted the discussions earlier this month, and people familiar with the matter at the time valued Crucell at$1.3 billion.”

A Pizaazz post, written before the Pfizer-Wyeth tie-up was made official and up for about an hour this morning, had speculated the Wyeth-Crucell deal might go ahead regardless of the larger circumstances, but that does not appear to be the case.  

We’ve pulled the original post and apologize for speculation that proved to be incorrect.

In a letter to the Big O’s transition team and Congressional leaders, 9 FDA scientists pleaded that their agency needs to scrub clean a culture in which officials coerce scientists to fudge data and approve devices with no proven benefit.

The scientists assert the agency is “fundamentally broken… there is an atmosphere…in which the honest employee fears the dishonest employee,” in a letter received a few days before the inauguration and reported in the Wall Street Journal.

The scientists are concerned in particular with the FDA’s approval process for medical devices, which they describe as “corrupted and distorted by current FDA managers, thereby placing the American people at risk.”

For example say the scientists, the FDA approved computer-aided mammography detection devices in the absence of evidence that they worked. Since then, FDA scientists have advised repeatedly that the agency should take another look at the evidence, to no avail.

The letter is a follow-up to one sent in October to the House Energy and Commerce Committee in which the scientists reported they had already voiced concerns to Andrew von Eschenbach, the Commissioner during the Bush presidency, and his deputy Bill McConagha.

In November, Committee leaders wrote a letter to von Eschenbach saying they had “received…evidence of…wrongdoing” in his agency, and suggested that certain managers be removed.

But since then the scientists say, no one has been held accountable and some offending managers have actually been promoted.

In response to the accusations, FDA spokesperson Judy Leon says the agency has worked “very closely” with the Big O’s team, and that it is “actively engaged in a process to explore the staff members’ concerns and take appropriate action.”