Flush from their big win in the midterms, the Boehners are vowing to repeal and replace the Big O’s health reform law. They pose a legitimate threat, but an even larger one lies in the courts, where suits challenging the constitutionality of the law have been popping up like fireflies on a late August night.

In Virginia for example, Republican-appointed Federal District Court Judge Henry Hudson has indicated that the Individual Mandate—a key provision of the law that has been challenged in a suit filed in his court by the state’s Republican Attorney General—might not pass his sniff test.

Hudson said he’d rule on the matter this month. If he deems the provision to be unconstitutional, he might (it’s unlikely, but he might) enjoin the law altogether until higher courts rule on the matter. Holy Kazakhstan, Batman!

An official at Camp Obama, who spoke with the New York Times under the condition that his name not be WikiLeaked, acknowledged that Hudson’s thumbs appear to be pointing downward, indeed.

“He’s asked a number of questions that express skepticism…we have been trying to think through that set of questions,” the official told the Times.

There’s no doubt, by the way, that the Individual Mandate is a foundational element of the Big O’s law. Without the mandate, millions won’t purchase health insurance until they get sick (you’d do that too, right?). That behavior blows-up the risk-pool; it prevents insurers from spreading the costs of caring for the few who are sick onto the many who are healthy, which is how insurance works in the first place.

A thumbs-down by Hudson would do a lot more than that, of course. It would confuse the bejesus out of the public, throw a wrench into the plans of providers and insurers who are already behind in organizing themselves to implement the law, create bureaucratic chaos in several government agencies involved with its implementation, and light-up the court system like a pinball machine.

So the $64,000 question is, “Can the Feds require citizens to buy health insurance?”  Judge Hudson gets to throw out the ceremonial first pitch when it comes to answering the question, but ultimately this baby is going to the Supremes. Bet on that! And it’ll take a 2-year sojourn through the Appellate process before it ever reaches 1st and East Capitol.

If there is a kernel of good news in this mess, it’s that Judge Hudson probably won’t enjoin the whole deal, even if he rules against the Mandate. No Federal District Judge this side of Deion “Prime Time” Sanders would have the hubris! And assuming Hudson doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, the immediate impact of his snub would be minimal, since the Mandate provision doesn’t kick-in until 2014 anyway.

In that case, all we have to worry about is those other 2 dozen fireflies lighting up the summer sky.

GeneScience, a pharmaceutical company based in Changchun, China, has pleaded guilty to federal charges that it distributed human growth hormone in the US.

The agreement with US prosecutors requires the company to plead guilty to a felony, contribute $3 million into a “Clean Competition Fund” which supports drug-free sports, and pay $7.2 million in criminal fines. The company’s CEO, Lei Jin, was also required to plead guilty. He was sentenced to five years’ probation.

Nearly all organized sports in the US prohibit competitors from using HGH.

“HGH, when distributed and used unlawfully, poses a serious health threat, particularly to young people who ignore the risks of such substances in an effort to enhance athletic performance,” Peter Neronha told the New York Times. Nerohna is the US district attorney who organized the case against GeneScience.

GeneScience was founded in 1996. It claims to be the most profitable biopharmaceutical company in China. US officials had alleged the company distributed Jintropin, its version of HGH, around the world via the Internet. The company remains in business.

Jin is a Chinese citizen who received a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry from UCSF. He had previously served as a research scientist at Genentech, a leading supplier of HGH.

Neronha’s case alleged that Jintropin had not been approved by the FDA, and that the company used offshore bank accounts, fake e-mail addresses and a drug trafficking network to distribute large quantities of HGH in the US.

The Clean Competition Fund will be operated by the Rhode Island Community Foundation. It will support antidoping campaigns, clinical research into the long-term effects of HGH and drug screening programs.

This June, the US Department of Defense proclaimed that those woefully parched mountains in Afghanistan contained a $900 billion trove of mineral deposits including copper, gold, iron and lithium. Of the four minerals, lithium was the one that sent Pentagon officials into a swoon. Some even claimed that as a result of the discovery, the impoverished nation could become “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”

The mood-stabilizing properties of lithium have been known for a century. Physicians have used lithium for nearly that long to treat and prevent episodes of mania in people with bipolar disorder, for example. The popular soft drink 7-Up included lithium citrate as a “mood-booster” for 20 years after it was first commercialized in 1929.

Of course the mood stabilizing properties of lithium isn’t what has those Pentagon types excited. They’re pumped because lithium has become the can’t-do-without ingredient in the batteries that power smartphones, computers and other electronic devices. Lithium is also expected to become the prime source of battery power for hybrid-electric vehicles.

No one knows how much lithium exists in the Earth’s crust, and with demand for lithium batteries exploding, people worry the demand for lithium might outstrip supply. There is no shortage of the mineral today, but this worry has caused lithium prices to double since 2003.

Not all lithium deposits are equally easy to mine, by the way. Chile and Argentina currently supply half the world’s lithium, because deposits there can be mined inexpensively by drilling below the surface of dried-up lake beds and exposing lithium-laced saltwater beneath. From there, it’s a simple matter to evaporate the water and what’s left is lithium.

There are vast lithium deposits in Nevada as well, but they are mixed into clay. Extracting lithium from clay involves complex chemical reactions and heating the mix to 1,000 degrees. Lithium miners in Australia have to drill through granite, a still more expensive process.

No one knows yet how to extract the lithium from those forlorn mountains in Afghanistan. But so long as demand for the stuff remains high, the most important withdrawal plan for Afghanistan may have more to do with getting lithium out of the ground than getting troops out of the country.

We know that people tend to lose muscle mass as they age. We know that sedentary lifestyles, hormonal changes, oxidative damage and infiltration of fat into muscles are common causes of the phenomenon.

But few of us know that age-related loss of muscle can be a profound cause of disability. The condition affects nearly 10% of people over the age of 60, and it has been estimated to account for at least $18.5 billion per year in direct medical costs.

A growing understanding of the economic costs of age-related muscle wasting has sparked renewed interest in the matter by scientists, pharmaceutical and food companies, and of course, by all those aging baby boomers.

Drug companies are searching for compounds other than the notoriously dangerous anabolic steroids that can build muscle or delay age-related muscle loss. Food conglomerates like Danone and Nestlé are looking for nutritional products that have the same effect.

For commercial enterprises like these to succeed, of course, the condition needs to be clearly defined. Call it creating a disease if you wish, but “if you are trying to sell drugs, you want to have a very clear criterion for diagnosing the problem and for endpoints to treat it,” UCSF’s Thomas Lang explained to the New York Times.

Lang and other scientists have settled on the term “sarcopenia” to describe the condition. Some prefer to think of the matter simply: sarcopenia is to muscle what osteoporosis is to bone. However, some studies have shown that strength, as manifested by gripping force, or muscular function, as measured by, say, walking speed, are better predictors of future problems for the elderly.

Meanwhile, experts agree that for now, exercise, especially resistance (weight) training is the best way to restore or maintain muscle mass. Adequate nutrition, particularly Vitamin D and perhaps protein intake, may also help. See you at the gym!

Boston University scientists claim to have identified a small set of genetic variants that predicts extreme longevity.

The scientists, Paola Sebastiani and Thomas Perls, examined the DNA of 1,055 centenarians living in New England. They isolated 150 gene variants that were common in this population. They subsequently examined a separate sample of centenarians and found that 77% of them had many of the same genetic variants.

The centenarians in the original cohort had as many disease-associated gene variants as shorter-lived people, so the scientists reasoned that the genes they identified must protect against disease.

This conclusion is at odds with current thinking about extreme longevity which is predicated on the assumption that long life is caused by the absence of disease-causing gene variants, rather than the presence of protective genes.

To find the protective genes, the scientists implemented a genome-wide association study, a technique that has so far failed to meet expectations that it would unlock genetic secrets behind common conditions like diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

Some scientists questioned the findings of the BU group. Kari Stefansson, a geneticist who works for Decode Gentics told the New York Times for example, that he was “amazed at how many loci of genome-wide significance have been found in a modest sample size.”

Stefansson’s company has also studied extreme longevity. Apparently, none of the BU group’s 150 genetic variants showed up in the population studied by Decode Genetics.

There are roughly 80,000 centenarians in the US right now. Roughly 15 % of the general population has some or many of the 150 genetic variants found in the BU study. Most of them fail to reach a ripe old age because of accidents or an unhealthy lifestyle.

Their report appears in Thursday’s issue of Science.

Americans have long sensed a decline in the kindness and helpfulness of their peers. The results of a recent study suggest college students are among the worst offenders in this regard.

The study was authored by Sara Konrath and presented at last month’s meeting of the Association for Psychological Science. Konrath’s work is titled, “Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis.” It showed that today’s college students are 40% less empathetic than their predecessors from 30 years ago. Most of the decline appeared after 2000.

Konrath’s survey divided empathy into 4 dimensions: Empathic concern, or sympathy for the misfortunes of others; perspective concern, or the capacity to imagine other people’s points of view; the tendency to identify with fictitious characters in movies or books; and anguish felt when observing others’ misfortunes.

Modern college students scored 48% lower in empathic concern and 34% lower in perspective taking than their predecessors. In particular, they were found to be less likely to agree with statements like “I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me,” and “I sometimes try to understand my friends better by imagining how things look from their perspective.”

These results are notable since people are known to state agreement with shared social ideals like these more frequently than they actually do.

Previous studies have linked low empathy to violence, criminal behavior, aggression when drunk, sexual offenses and other antisocial behaviors.

What caused the change? “We don’t actually know…at this point,” Konrath told the New York Times. But she speculated that a combination of social media, reality TV, video games and intense competition have caused young people to become more shallow, self-involved, individualistic and overly ambitious.

Boston University scientists claim to have identified a small set of genetic variants that accurately predicts extreme longevity in humans.

The scientists, Paola Sebastiani and Thomas Perls, examined the DNA of 1,055 centenarians living in New England. They isolated 150 gene variants that were common in this population. They subsequently examined a separate sample of centenarians and found that 77% of them had many of the same genetic variants.

The centenarians in the original cohort had as many disease-associated gene variants as shorter-lived people, so the scientists reasoned that the genes they had identified must protect against disease.

This conclusion is at odds with current thinking about extreme longevity which is predicated on the assumption that long life is caused by the absence of disease-causing gene variants, rather than the presence of protective genes.

To find the protective genes, the scientists implemented a genome-wide association study, a technique that had previously failed to meet expectations that it could unlock genetic secrets behind common conditions like diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

Some scientists questioned the findings of the BU group. Kari Stefansson, a geneticist who works for Decode Gentics, told the New York Times for example that he was “amazed at how many loci of genome-wide significance have been found in a modest sample size.”

Stefansson’s company has also studied extreme longevity. Apparently, none of the BU group’s 150 genetic variants showed up in the population studied by Decode Genetics.

There are roughly 80,000 centenarians in the US right now. Roughly 15 % of the general population has some or many of the 150 genetic variants found in the BU study. Most of them fail to reach extreme old age because of accidents or an unhealthy lifestyle.

The report appears in Science.

Has salt finally reached its moment of truth as a staple of Western diets? US government experts estimate we consume at least twice as much as the recommended daily allowance, and that across-the-board reductions in salt consumption could save 150,000 lives per year.

Numerous health officials, Michelle Obama and New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg have all recently urged food makers to cut out some salt in their food. The prestigious Institute of Medicine actually wants the feds to force food makers to do so.

But this isn’t going to be easy, and it may not be possible. Salt is a cheap way to create tastes and textures that consumers demand in their food, so doing without salt can lead to reduced profit and therefore, unhappy investors.

Take Kellogg’s Cheez-Its, for example. A cup of the iconic snack contains one third of the daily recommended amount of salt. Part of the salt load is sprinkled atop the orange squares to titillate the tongue at the moment of contact, that’s obvious.

But did you know Kellogg adds salt to the cheese itself in order to give Cheez-Its their memorable crunch? Or that the food maker adds salt to the dough to block a tangy taste that develops during fermentation?

In fact, in a recent demonstration for reporters, Kellogg created a batch of Cheez-Its leaving out most of the salt. The snack’s pleasing orange color faded to brown. They were sticky after being chewed, with the gruel caking onto teeth. And the taste became downright medicinal.

Similarly produced Corn Flakes tasted like brass, and the buttery flavor of Keebler Light Buttery Crackers (which in fact contain no butter), simply vanished.

“Salt changes the way that your tongue will taste the product,” Kellogg vice president and food scientist, John Kepplinger explained. “You make one little change and something that was a complementary flavor now starts to stand out and become objectionable.”

Generic drugs saved the US health system $734 billion between 1999 and 2008. These low-cost alternatives to brand-name drugs account for 75% of all prescriptions filled in the US, a massive increase from the 47% share they held 10 years ago.

Teva, an Israeli company many have never heard of, is the 800 pound gorilla of generic drug makers. Last year, Teva products were used to fill 630 million prescriptions, or one out of every 6 prescriptions in the US. That’s more than Pfizer, Novartis and Merck combined.

Between 1999 and 2009, Teva’s revenues grew from $1.3 billion to $14 billion and its profits rose from $2 million to $135.5 million. Its market cap is now about $53 billion.

Generic companies like Teva can be profitable at lower price-points than pharmaceutical companies, because they don’t have to develop a medication from scratch. Instead, they use the active ingredients major pharmaceutical concerns have already created after their patent protections expire.

Teva entered the US market in 1985, shortly after Congress passed the Hatch-Waxman Act, which expedited federal approval for generic drugs.

Teva’s biggest challenge is maintaining quality control as it grows. Recently for example, the FDA called-out Teva for “serious manufacturing violations” at a facility in Irvine, California.

The issue was bacterial contamination in a generic form of propofol, the intravenous anesthetic made famous by Michael Jackson. Teva recalled thousands of vials of propofol, but officials indicated they weren’t sure the problem wouldn’t recur.

“Can they keep their finger on the pulse of every single smaller company they acquire, every generic maker and ingredient supplier?” Joe Graedon, the co-founder of a drug information Web site asked the New York Times. “We have seen missteps over the last few months.”

The Australian government has unveiled a new set of antismoking measures that includes removal of brand images and colors on cigarette packages.

According to the new rules—which have yet to be approved by Parliament—cigarette products would have to be marketed in packaging that is devoid of logos and includes promotional text that is presented in uniform color, font, positioning and point size.

The packaging—in the words of the Australian government—was “one of the last remaining frontiers for cigarette advertising.”

Cigarette boxes in Australia already feature explicit health warnings and photos that depict some of the consequences of smoking, like mouth cancer and gangrenous extremities.

Also included in the proposed rules is a 25% increase in the excise tax on cigarettes. The tax will bump the price of a box of 30 cigarettes by roughly 2.16 Australian dollars, to nearly 16.70 Australian dollars ($15.40).

The increased excise tax will itself cut cigarette smoking by 6%, according to government projections. Approximately 17% of Australians over age of 14 smoke cigarettes. 

The World Health Organization hailed the measures as “a new gold standard for the regulation of tobacco products.”

Tobacco companies questioned the effectiveness of the new measures and said they would encourage counterfeiting.

“There is no evidence to support the government’s notion that this will reduce consumption,” Imperial Tobacco said in a statement. “Plain packaging would seriously harm our brands and infringe the intellectual property rights in which both Imperial Tobacco and its shareholders have invested.”