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Can Weight Loss Surgery Save Our Children From Themselves?

December 30, 2008 8:56 AM

By DAN CHILDS, ABC News Medical Unit

ABC News' Lisa Stark reported today in a World News report and in a story on ABCNews.com that new research suggests severely obese teens with Type 2 diabetes may be able to benefit from weight loss surgery. The study unleashed a torrent of reactions from both the public in general and the medical community, and the ABC News Medical Unit received many comments from experts in baratric surgery and diabetes. Below is some of what they had to say.

A number of doctors told the Medical Unit that performing the operation on teens is a desperate measure for desperate times -- particularly as obesity rates in those age 12 to 19 approaches 18 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Study co-author Dr. Anita Courcoulas, chief of bariatric surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, is concerned about the teen obesity problem:

“When we find that younger patients are experiencing what we used to think of as adult-type problems, it brings up the question of whether we can apply adult-type treatments,” Courcoulas said. “These are all children with a BMI over 50. These are really big, sick kids.”

New Jersey-based laparoscopic surgeon Dr. Alexander Abkin agreed:

“I, myself, offer teens both gastric bypass and gastric banding; it works great and it does reverse or cure Type 2 diabetes. ... If kids are denied care now, they will grow to be disillusioned about their future as adults, sick with medical problems, socially inadequate because of discrimination and so on. Surgery is one of the avenues to offer that hope.”

On the other side of the debate, physicians, like New York bariatric surgeon Dr. Mitch Roslin, warned that surgery may not be the magic bullet for which many have hoped:

“Having done this for 15 years, if there is weight regain -- and there is in many [gastric bypass] patients -- the diabetes can return. ... I think it is reasonable to aggressively treat young [diabetes] patients, since their internal or vascular age is greater than gestational age. [But] I am becoming more skeptical than many of my colleagues that [gastric bypass surgery] is [the] best operation.”

Dr. Francine Kaufman, head of the Center for Diabetes and Endocrinology at the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, concurred:

“This should not be viewed as license for any bariatric center to start looking at this procedure in teens; the procedure should be viewed still as experimental. The take-home message is one of caution. We have no long-term data, no idea what will happen with a dramatic permanent procedure such as gastric bypass ... that has to last 70 to 80 years or more.”

And Dr. Charles Clark, a professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine, said that prevention is the only sure-fire answer to the problem:

“I view with great concern the approach to the problem in the cited article. ... The expense and morbidity of the procedure makes it an unreasonable solution. The only solution to the childhood obesity epidemic will be more successful approaches to its prevention and treatment.”

December 30, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (6)

Drink to Your Health? Nutrition Experts Scrutinize Diet Coke Plus Claims

December 24, 2008 3:30 PM

By DAN CHILDS, ABC News Medical Unit

While diet sodas have long been touted as a less unhealthy alternative to their full-calorie counterparts, they have never been passed off as nutritious.

But now, soft drink giant Coca-Cola’s new marketing push for Diet Coke Plus may be an effort to stake a sweet claim in the health food realm.

The labeling of the no-calorie soft drink, which contains niacin, vitamins B6 and B12, zinc and magnesium, has already raised the ire of the Food and Drug Administration, specifically for the use of the word “Plus.”

“Based on our review, we have concluded that this product is in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act,” reads a letter from the FDA to Coca-Cola. “Your Diet Coke Plus product is misbranded ... because the product makes a nutrient content claim but does not meet the criteria to make the claim.”

Neither do nutrition experts appear to be buying into what they say appears to be an effort to slap a healthy label on a beverage of questionable nutritive value. Here’s what Dr. David Katz, director and co-founder of the Yale Prevention Research Center, had to say in an e-mail to the ABC News Medical Unit:

“To the extent of my familiarity with the FDA regulations, I believe that Coca-Cola is 'technically' correct: they have stated their product contains added vitamins and minerals, and indeed, it does. And I'm not sure FDA regulations extend to the use of 'plus' in a product name, without any specific health claim.”

But Katz adds that the move by Coca-Cola may reveal an unfortunate marketing trend:

“What makes this interesting is that FDA is invoking regulations that may or may not directly fit this scenario to address what is clearly a concerning trend: nutrient-fortified everything. I fully agree with the FDA's position on this. ... Adding some nutrients to an otherwise questionable food -- and soda is VERY questionable food -- does not change its basic character.”

Alice Lichtenstein, senior scientist and director of the Cardiovascular Nutrition Laboratory at Tufts University, adds in her own e-mail that consumers may do best to get their nutrients the old-fashioned way -- through the foods that naturally contain them.

“With the exception of unusual circumstances, we are best served if we get nutrients from foods, not supplements, even if the supplements are dissolved in a beverage. Foods have fiber, phytonutrients and other compounds that are associated with decreased risk of chronic diseases. The supplements, regardless of form (pill or beverage), do not contain these compounds.”

December 24, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (19)

Do Winter Babies Really Have Less Fun?

December 24, 2008 11:00 AM

By JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN, ABC News Medical Unit

As every good astrologer knows, people love to find hidden meaning in their birth dates. In my immediate family, there are five of us born under the sign of Aquarius, between late January and early February.  This makes us all winter babies, which is bad news according to a report today in USA Today.

The story reads in part: “A large body of research suggests that, on average, winter babies grow up to be less educated, less intelligent, less healthy and lower paid than people born in the spring, summer or fall.”  But it’s all mom’s fault, new research says.  A study from two University of Notre Dame researchers says that winter babies’ lack of success can be blamed on the increased odds that their mother will be poor and uneducated.

There is no question that children of parents with limited education and lower economic status have a host of disadvantages.  They typically do not receive the best health care, nutrition or schooling.  The new research can’t answer the next question, which is why poor and uneducated women would be more likely to give birth in the winter months.  We’ll have to wait to see if that result is confirmed through other studies.

But does the medical literature show such dire results for winter babies?  The answer is no, not really.  There are indeed studies linking a winter birth date with poorer health or lower intelligence, but other studies find just the opposite.

For example, a study tracking more than 12,000 children in Scotland found that late winter babies born in February scored among the highest on intelligence tests.  Fall babies had the lowest scores in this this report.

A Danish researcher named Gabriele Doblhammer has repeatedly demonstrated that late fall and early winter babies live longer than spring or summer babies, though debate continues as to why this might be.

Another study finds women born in the summer months tend to have fewer children. And research from Harvard on more than 22,000 children found those born in the winter months were generally taller, heavier and had superior mental abilities to those born in the summer months.

So which group of studies is right?  The unfortunate truth about scientific research is that all the studies may be correct, meaning there is no ultimate truth to be found.  Results likely depend on the people in the study, the questions asked and the way that researchers interpret the results.

But one truth is certain from all the research: The birth month does not determine the outcome for any one baby.  There will be summer babies who succeed and those who do not; winter babies who live to a ripe old age and those who die too soon.

Trying to determine a child’s future from his or her birth date is like reading the horoscope to find out the day’s events ahead of time.  The information can’t possibly be true for everyone with the same birth month, or it’s so vague it could apply to the entire human population.  Today my horoscope says I may have overstepped my bounds and need to apologize.  Perhaps I should make amends to my husband for leaving Christmas wrapping all over our living room… except his birthday is just four days before mine, so it’s his horoscope too.

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Cold & Flu season is here! Visit the ABCNews.com OnCall+ Cold & Flu Center to get all your questions answered about these nasty viruses.

December 24, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (10)

Flight of the Aggravator: Expert Tips On Stress Relief During Airport Delays

December 23, 2008 7:53 AM

By KIRK FERNANDES, ABC News Medical Unit

Like many other Americans, I'm planning to travel for the holidays. I'm also planning to get stuck at the airport.

With the way the weather is working, things aren't looking good for a smooth flight to the middle of snow country -- Michigan, in my case.

But there are things you can do -- no matter where you're going -- to help relieve the stress you know is coming. For example, several stress reduction experts say simple things, such as making sure you get enough sleep the night before your flight, could improve your stress response the next day in the midst of a delay.

"At holiday travel time, expectations should be realistic, which often means lower," says Kim Lebowitz, director of cardiac behavioral medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Ill. "Expect to arrive late and try to save the rest of the arrival day for something low-key, something that won't be too upsetting if it gets eliminated from the vacation because of travel delays."

We asked some of the experts from the ABCNews.com OnCall+ Stress sections for their stress relief tips for airport delays. Here are some of their suggestions you might consider:

TIP #1 -- Plan on getting delayed: Anticipating the challenges that may develop when you're facing a major negative event will help organize your response, explains Jeffrey Janata, a psychologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

Some experts suggest bringing enough books to read, making sure the laptop is charged, distracting the kids with a portable video game, or staying in touch with family and friends via cell phone.

"When somebody is in a stressful situation, if they can feel they're in control of some of the parameters of the situation, it greatly reduces their stress," says Phillip Levendusky, associate professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School.

TIP #2 -- Expand your toolbox of coping skills: Some people appear less stressed because they have better coping skills, says Katherine Muller, director of the cognitive behavior therapy program at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y. Muller offers several coping tips in the OnCall+ Stress section.

In addition, several experts we talked to recommend using headphones (even noise-canceling headphones) to reduce noise stress.

TIP #3 -- Seek out comfortable seating: Stuffy heat and too many strangers nearby could activate stress responses in your body, says Dr. Charles Raison of the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga. "If you are going to have to wait for a long time try to find an area that is not hot and overly crowded."

TIP #4 -- Get moving: Exercise is "one of the best things people can do to reduce the physiological response to stress," says Janata. While that's typically true "over the long haul," according to Janata, you may benefit from periodically walking up and down the concourse or just moving around.

TIP #5 -- Make an escape: Raison recommends leaving the airport during long delays: "If you have the financial means and are going to be stuck for more than a day, try to get out of the airport and hang out in town. This is the ultimate way to beat airport stress and can sometimes turn a trip-wrecker into a novel vacation."

TIP #6 -- Get a massage: Those airport massage stations are there for a reason ... and a growing amount of scientific evidence confirms what you probably already know -- massage reduces the body's stress response, says Raison.

TIP #7 -- Beware the bar: Lower levels of alcohol can be a relaxant, but if you stay too long at the bar, you're likely to create more problems. "Refrain from overdoing alcohol because it actually is likely to make things worse, not better," said Janata.

So, what are your tips for stress relief during airport delays?

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Cold & Flu season is here! Visit the ABCNews.com OnCall+ Cold & Flu Center to get all your questions answered about these nasty viruses.

December 23, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9)

Nuts Over Nuts: Column on Allergy Sparks Debate

December 22, 2008 5:22 AM

By LARA SALAHI, ABC News Medical Unit

Parents of children with food allergies are not happy with a recent write-up in the British Medical Journal that decries so-called "Draconian measures" to prevent nut allergy reactions in schools.

The surge in schools that are going nut-free may be fueling anxiety and “overreaction" in parents, Dr. Nicholas Christakis, an internist and professor at Harvard Medical School, writes in the column.

Christakis makes the argument that while 3.3 million Americans are allergic to nuts, "only 150 people [children and adults] die each year from all food allergies combined." The response to nut allergies is more extreme than reactions to other more statistically dangerous things such as traumatic injuries caused by sports, writes Christakis.

Christakis equates the nut crackdown to symptoms of a mass psychogenic illness, or epidemic hysteria -- in which an otherwise healthy individual experiences a wave of extreme anxiety. (Christakis is known most recently for publishing research on social networks, including findings on how obesity, smoking and happiness may spread among friends and family.)

“It does indeed provoke anxiety to imagine a hidden deadly danger in so innocent a thing as having a snack in kindergarten,” writes Christakis. “And being around others who are anxious heightens one’s own anxiety."

However, some parents of children with nut allergies, including Maria Hardy of Loudoun, Va. -- whose daughter has extreme sensitivities to peanuts -- say Christakis may be underestimating the severity of the nut allergy problem.

“This doctor is not an authority in this subject,” says Hardy. “He is an internal medicine practitioner, not a pediatric allergist who would know all the facts.”

While Hardy is one of many parents who believe in nut bans to protect their nut-allergic children, some participants in local allergy groups do not think a mandatory ban of nuts is always the best approach.

Gina Clowes, who created the allergy blog AllergyMoms.com, is not a proponent of schoolwide nut bans, but she says she feels parents should be working closely with school officials to best minimize the risk to their kids.

“In my experience, most parents do a very good job of advocating for their food-allergic children while gradually teaching their children to take over this important task [of taking care of their food allergies],” says Clowes.

Some parents who have written a response directly to Christakis say he's writing back to them. "So he's heard our concerns and is open to speaking with us," says Clowes.

The ABC Medical Unit asked Christakis if he had anything further to say about the parents' responses and he referred us to his original column.

The ABCNews.com OnCall+ Allergy center features a roundtable of mothers who discuss the everyday challenges of dealing with severe allergies in children. Some of their stories offer a personal look into the anxiety and issues they face.

Said one mother taking part in the roundtable: "I know what's safe for my son. I know what I need to do and I'm going to do it. If people think I'm crazy; they think I've over the top, I don't care. My focus is on keeping my son safe."

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Cold & Flu season is here! Visit the ABCNews.com OnCall+ Cold & Flu Center to get all your questions answered about these nasty viruses.

December 22, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (137)

Online Rating System for Nursing Homes -- 'Zagat-izing' Long-Term Care?

December 19, 2008 4:54 PM

By MICHELLE SCHLIEF, ABC News Medical Unit

Having to place a parent in a nursing home is one of those utterly overwhelming experiences. There’s the guilt about the fact that you likely can’t afford the most expensive community, the anxiety that the staff won’t take proper care of Mom or Dad, and on and on.

It’s rare for anyone to want to face these demons and seek out information about nursing homes until they find themselves neck-deep in a health crisis. But it may be slightly comforting to know that the government has launched a new online rating system, Nursing Home Compare. It synthesizes data from health inspections, quality-of-service ratings and staffing ratios using an intuitive five-star system. Running a quick search to see how I would fare if it was suddenly my time for such an eventuality, I was relieved to find a five-star facility in my own zip code.

When I spoke with Kerry Weems, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who put the site together, he told me that closer monitoring of nursing homes happened after the revelation in the 1980s that many residents were being abused, neglected and given inadequate care. Attention to the problem resulted in vast improvements across the board. He told me he hopes that the Web site his agency has put together will go even further to help improve the quality of nursing homes across the country.

One of the CMS’s next projects will be the launch of a similar site for hospitals. This is an already crowded arena, albeit one that has remained relatively undiscovered by those looking for a new doctor or hospital, according to researchers at the Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington, D.C.

Hospital comparison sites that may interest you include:

The Commonwealth Fund’s WhyNotTheBest.org – although this is supposed to be geared to an audience of health care professionals, you can easily use the database to compare your personalized selection of hospitals side-by-side as well as against national averages or national top performers. You can compare overall ratings or specific measures. A quick check confirmed what I already suspected after my most recent stay in a Boston-area hospital: It was below the national average for keeping patient areas quiet at night. I knew I shouldn’t have had to plug headphones into a white noise generator and put two pillows over my head.

Leapfrog Group’s safety ratings also allow you to sort hospitals by area but they look specifically at several steps that they believe hospitals should be taking to prevent common medical mistakes. Their Web site points out that up to 98,000 Americans die every year from preventable medical errors -- more deaths than from vehicle crashes. It looks like my hospital is doing well in its staffing levels but I’m shocked to see they seem to be doing very little to prevent the “13 most common” medical mistakes. Whatever those are. I can’t find them easily on its site. Leapfrog also only has data for about half the nation’s hospitals.

Finally, Healthgrades’ report cards surveys patients on their level of satisfaction with their hospital. As far as I can tell, however, you can only look at one kind of procedure at a time. I checked out a few and found the rankings for the Boston hospitals all over the map, depending on what procedure I was looking at. This is very interesting to me and demonstrates the potential flaw in looking at overall ratings for a given center. It also highlights the fact that not all big-name medical centers do well when it comes to measures of patient happiness. Healthgrades also only has data for about half the nation’s hospitals.

December 19, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (2)

Can You Text Me? Now You Know Your Score on the Coma Scale

December 18, 2008 11:21 AM

By KIRK FERNANDES
ABC News Medical Unit

Text messaging has certainly picked up a bad reputation on the health beat in recent months. One might even call it technologica non grata.

The rap sheet ranges from painful thumb disabilities and allergic reactions caused by the nickel in some phones to the psychological trauma one experiences when an intimate text (with an even more intimate photo attached) is posted and tagged on Facebook by a less-than-discretionary recipient.

But now there might be something to add in the texting "pro" column, at least from the perspective of the medical community. It turns out one's ability to text is a sign one has adequately recovered from a fainting episode -- so says a group of U.K. medical workers who treat injured concertgoers in triage tents.

The three -- two anaesthetists and a clinical neuropsychologist -- report in the British Medical Journal that they've used the ability to text message as a marker for consciousness in patients, usually teenagers.

"We decided to use this texting sign as an indication that patients had recovered from their faint or panic attack and were orientated and coordinated enough to be discharged back to the festival," the report states.

The triage workers went on to equate the ability to text with the highest score on the Glasgow coma scale -- a measure  used to figure out a patient's state of consciousness by examining abilities in three areas: eye opening, verbal performance and motor responsiveness.

Someone who shows no response in all three areas gets a  score of 3 -- and is deemed unconscious, in a coma or both, if not dead.

People who open their eyes spontaneously, speak  without confusion and obey  commands for movement get a score of 15, and are apparently ready to return to the mosh pit.

"The ability to text, whether or not it actually makes sense, requires ... an adequately functioning 'executive system' in the frontal lobes, and a high degree of manual dexterity and psychomotor coordination," the report states.

Dr. Sheldon Jacobson, chairman of the department of emergency medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York is not convinced.

"The fact that a study such as this has been published in a reputable journal is troubling," said Jacobson. "Just because a teenager is pushing keys on his or her phone does not clear the patient to go back to regular activities."

Both Jacobson and Dr. Frederick Blum, an associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, said that while fainting in young, healthy patients is usually not a major cause for concern, a small number of youths may have fainted because of an underlying heart condition.

Still, Blum said: "I do believe that this sort of marker has potential in this population, which is often otherwise difficult to evaluate. In my experience, teens that swoon, sometimes do so for nonmedical reasons. And that is often just as difficult for doctors as it is for parents."

The triage workers do acknowledge in the report that the "texting sign" needs further investigation to determine whether it is a "valid criterion" for recovery.

December 18, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (11)

Should You Lie to Your Kids about Santa?

December 16, 2008 4:54 PM

By JOANNA SCHAFFHAUSEN, ABC News Medical Unit

It’s that time of year when stressed-out parents are pulling out all the stops to keep their overexcited children in line. Be good, they say, or Santa won’t come to our house.

Good behavior would include being truthful, wouldn’t it? Parents surely don’t want their kids to lie.

And yet these same parents are telling a giant whopper of their own: A jolly fat man, with the help of some flying reindeer, flies around the whole world in a single night, dispensing toys. Does this make parents hypocrites? What kind of example are they setting?

Many parents don’t stop with a simple story. Mine left a handwritten note from Santa on Christmas morning, and one member of the ABC News Medical Unit says his brother would create fake reindeer noises on the roof while another relative impersonated old Santa himself.

We don’t seem to have suffered any psychological scars, but still, some people argue that the Santa myth does kids more harm than good. Lying to children creates mistrust, the anti-Santa contingent maintains. Read the discussion here for the Case Against Santa.

The occasional anecdote suggests that the lies do hurt some kids, at least temporarily. Over on the Rational Moms blog, one mother shared her daughter’s unfortunate reaction to learning the truth about Santa:

“We did the Santa thing with our daughter, mostly because we have fond memories of it from our respective childhoods, and all her friends were into it, so we thought it couldn’t hurt. When she figured out the truth, inadvertently revealed by one of my older sister's kids, the poor kid felt absolutely betrayed. 'Why would you lie?' she wailed, over and over again. Honestly, I never expected that response. But that’s what we got, for the better part of a week: 'Why would you lie? Why would a grown-up lie to a kid? It’s just mean, Mom! Mean!' She was 7 years old at the time. I was devastated.”

But most kids handle the truth just fine, experts say. “Various studies conducted on this issue show no long-term negative psychological impact on children when they discover that the Santa Claus story is a myth,” said Robin Kerner, an assistant clinical professor at Columbia University. “In one study not only were children not angry about the lie, knowing the truth made them feel 'older and more mature' since they now possessed information that the younger children did not.”

Kids today may need the Santa fantasy more than ever, according to some experts. “In today's world, filled with economic meltdowns and terrorist showdowns, kids need something magical -- like Santa -- to believe in,” said Dr. Carole Lieberman, a Beverly Hills psychiatrist on staff in UCLA's department of psychiatry. “However, it is best if it is the parents themselves who ultimately tell their children the truth. The timing of this will depend upon when it is most likely that other children -- siblings or schoolmates -- will burst their bubble and tell them that Santa doesn't exist. This will likely be when they are about 4 to 7 years old.”

As for how to break the news? Experts suggest that parents explain that Santa isn’t physically real, but that his story represents the true spirit of the Christmas season. “As children grow older (after 5 or 6), parents might consider gradually introducing the notion that Santa Claus may arrive as (or be helped by) many others, including moms or dads, relatives, friends and even complete strangers who are participating in the Christmas spirit of love and generosity,” Dr. Harold Koenig, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center, said in an e-mail interview.

“Parents might even suggest that the children save up their allowances and consider helping out or being Santa Claus themselves by sending small gifts to older people in nursing homes, homeless shelters and others around them who are less fortunate than they are. That would be a beautiful way to transition between the mystical and wonderful Santa Claus of childhood to the real kind of Santa Claus that we all need to be like.”

What do you think? Is Santa a harmless fable or a show of parental hypocrisy? How did you feel when you found out the truth?

December 16, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (12)

Cleveland Clinic Joins Face Race With Near-Total Face Transplant Success

December 16, 2008 2:14 PM

By DAN CHILDS and KIRK FERNANDES, ABC News Medical Unit

In a surgical first for the United States, a team of eight surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic have performed a near-total facial transplant on a patient.

Reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow led the team that, according to a press release from the hospital, replaced 80 percent of a trauma patient's face. The Associated Press reports that the surgery, which took place two weeks ago, repaired the face of a female patient using facial tissue from a dead female donor.

At this moment it does not appear likely that the public will see the mysterious patient's new face anytime soon. According to the release, the patient and her family wish to remain anonymous and will not be present at Wednesday's news conference. They also will not be available for interviews with the media.

Until three years ago, face transplants existed solely in the realm of science fiction. That changed in November 2005 when Frenchwoman Isabelle Dinoire became the first recipient of a partial face transplant.

Since then, two similar operations have taken place. In April 2006, Chinese surgeons replaced part of the face of a farmer who had been attacked by a bear, and in January 2007, another team of French doctors repaired the face of a man who had suffered a disfiguring facial condition.

But while the Cleveland Clinic team may have come in fourth in the international "face race," an interview Siemionow gave to ABC News' Martin Bashir in February 2006 reveals that the operation was years in the making.

At the time, Siemionow said her team was still narrowing down a field of 15 potential patients to find an ideal case.

"We are considering trauma patients and burn patients and severely burned patients," Siemionow told Bashir of the candidates. She added that only patients with severe facial injuries, such as those who could not open or close their eyes or mouths, would be considered.

Siemionow also revealed to Bashir her thoughts on the importance of such an operation during the interview, noting that a face transplant could be "as important as giving a new life to someone.”

"I would say for someone to work, happy, alive, that this is as important as it would be to have a new heart," she said. "This procedure calls for a very selected group of patients who are so badly disfigured that they are really having no life. And for them, it's not only quality of life, but it's a new life."

December 16, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (27)

'Light' Cigarette Ruling's Potentially Heavy Toll on Tobacco Companies

December 15, 2008 5:29 PM

By DAN CHILDS, ABC News Medical Unit

Today's 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against big tobacco for promoting "light" and "low tar" brands could send the corporations scrambling for ways to stay clear of a potential wave of lawsuits, claiming that marketing of these products violated state laws against deceptive practices.

A statement on behalf of Philip Morris USA by Murray Garnick, Altria client services senior vice president and associate general counsel, appeared on Altria's Web site today:

“While we had hoped for a dismissal based upon federal pre-emption, it is important to note that the Supreme Court made no finding of liability. We continue to view these cases as manageable, and the company will assert many of the strong defenses used successfully in the past to defend against this very type of case.”

But while Altria maintains in the statement that plaintiffs must still prove that the use of "light" and "lowered tar" labels constituted a deceptive practice, tobacco expert Stanton Glantz, professor in the division of cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco, says the ruling could mean the industry built on smoke will now come under some heavy fire:

"This is an important development that will allow public health forces to keep pressure on the tobacco industry to end its deceptive marketing of so-called 'light and mild' cigarettes," Glantz told the ABC News Medical Unit. "The tobacco industry has known for decades that these cigarettes are no safer than 'regular' cigarettes, but markets them to appeal to 'health concerned' smokers."

December 15, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (0)