6 February 2010 | NewScientist | 7

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CLINICAL trials must include more older recruits if thousands of lives are to be saved, say researchers who have drawn up a charter calling for such a change.

The team told the British Medical Association on Monday that the elderly are under-represented in clinical trials, and that in a quarter of cases the reasons for excluding them are unjustified. Paul Dieppe at the University of Bristol, UK, says that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, which are not trialled in patients over the age of 70 but are prescribed to people of this age, may have caused thousands of avoidable deaths because these drugs are more toxic in over-70s.

Andrew Beswick of the UK’s Medical Research Council says that the elderly may experience more underlying health issues and interference from other drugs, but that this isn’t a reason to exclude them as it “represents the real-life situation”.

The charter calls on trial sponsors, regulators and ethics committees to offer support to those with communication or mobility problems that might hamper their participation.

Wanted: the elderly

NOTHING more than a sugar rush was reported by hundreds of volunteers who took part in a mass-overdose stunt around the world. The aim was to show that homeopathic remedies are nothing more than sugar pills.

“There were no casualties at all, as far as I know,” says Martin Robbins of the 10:23 campaign, created to highlight the alleged ineffectiveness of homeopathic remedies. “No one was cured of

anything either.” Like an estimated 300 volunteers in several cities in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, Robbins swallowed a bottleful of around 80 “pillules” at exactly 10.23 am on 30 January. Each pillule is a tiny sugar pill dabbed with a drop of a homeopathic remedy, produced by “infinite” dilution. This involves diluting a solution so much that not one molecule of the “active” component is likely to remain, according to the Avogadro constant – the origin of “10:23”.

Robbins says that the aim was to draw attention to homeopathic medicine’s lack of scientific

foundation and to embarrass the British high-street pharmacist Boots into withdrawing its treatments. Boots said: “Many people believe in the benefits of complementary medicines and we aim to offer the products we know our customers want.”

Robbins said that the campaign would be a success if it led others to question homeopathy more.

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Oil nay, nuclear yea… Big oil took a hit and nuclear got

a boost from US president Barack

Obama’s budget proposal. It calls

for a $36 billion increase in loan

guarantees for nuclear power plants

and cuts $36.5 billion in subsidies to

oil and natural gas companies over

10 years. If approved by Congress,

the money could be used to finance

six new nuclear power plants.

…but not in YuccaThe US is finally abandoning plans

to store high-level nuclear waste in

an underground repository in Yucca

mountain in Nevada, having put the

programme on hold last year after

a decade of local opposition. The

waste will now be stored above

ground for the foreseeable future.

A whole lotta vaccineAn “unprecedented” donation of

$10 billion towards vaccine research

and delivery could dramatically

reduce child mortality, says the

World Health Organization. The

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

pledged to donate the sum over the

next decade, to protect children in

poor countries against big killers

such as diarrhoea and pneumonia.

Finch bucks evolutionThings are looking up for the

rarest of Darwin’s 13 finches.

A three-year programme to kill

black rats on Isabela Island in the

Galapagos has resulted in fewer

nests being raided (Philosophical

Transactions of the Royal Society B,

vol 365, p 1). Researchers have seen

yearling mangrove finches for the

first time in 10 years.

Autism paper dumpedThe discredited 1998 paper linking

the measles, mumps and rubella

(MMR) vaccine to autism has been

retracted byThe Lancet. The journal

cited falsehoods that were exposed

last week by the UK General Medical

Council following a lengthy

investigation of lead author Andrew

Wakefield and two co-authors.

–They want to end it all–

Mass overdose pact

Climate and Gates

“Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are not trialled in the over-70s but are prescribed to them”

“Each pillule is a tiny sugar pill dabbed with a drop of homeopathic remedy at ‘infinite’ dilution”

THE world’s richest man has been funding geoengineering research, it emerged last week. According to a report posted online by Science , Bill Gates has committed $4.5 million of his own money to funding a number of climate scientists interested in geoengineering.

It is not clear whether all of that has gone to geoengineering studies. Atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, says he received $1.1 million over three years for “blue skies” research. He estimates about one-third of that was spent on investigating geoengineering.

Caldeira says he sees no moral dilemmas in Gates funding geoengineering. “There is no attempt to profit from this,” he says. He contrasts Gates’s involvement with commercial geoengineering ventures.

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–Surf’s up – and up–

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