The six companies that won't pretend to cure cancer anymore include:

• Ni-Gen Nutrition of Troy, Mich., which allegedly marketed an electrolyte liquid and apricot seeds as cures.
• Westberry Enterprises of Pineville, La., which the agency said sold teas that contained algae and other ingredients.
• Jim Clark's All Natural Cancer Therapy of Louisville, Ky., which allegedly sold digestive enzymes and coral calcium as treatments.

• Omega Supply of San Diego, which allegedly sold hydrazine sulfate, a substance classified by the government as a potential cancer-causing agent.
• Herbs for Cancer, which allegedly sold 16 types of teas to fight specific cancers, plus a 17th type for "cancers not on our list."

FTC cracks down on bogus online cancer cures [The Los Angeles Times]
FTC Sweep Stops Peddlers of Bogus Cancer Cures [FTC]
Cure-ious? Ask. [FTC]
(Photo: Getty)

Is [it] a biologically driven disease of the brain, a learned habit run amok, an addiction in its own right or a symptom of the other dysfunctions—most notably depression—that so often accompany it?

While the professionals discuss the matter, Healy points out something that may have more practical benefit to you: a recent study showed sad test subjects were willing to spend four times as much on a nonessential item (a water bottle) than non-sad subjects.

A theory that sadness might spur excess spending was neatly demonstrated in an experiment conducted by researchers at Harvard, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh and published in the June issue of Psychological Science.

Thirty-three subjects were offered $10 to participate in a study and divided into two groups: one that listened to a sad story and wrote an introspective essay about it and another that listened to an emotionally neutral story, then detailed their day's activities.

Afterward, subjects in each group were offered the chance to buy a sporty insulated water bottle using some of their $10 payment and asked to state the price they would be willing to pay to buy it. The difference — by all appearances dictated solely by differing emotional states — was startling: Subjects in the sad-story group were prepared to pay almost four times as much to acquire the snappy water bottle as those who had entered the market in a neutral emotional state.

Maybe going shopping when you feel down is like going to the supermarket on an empty stomach—a really bad idea.

"Is compulsive buying a disorder?" [Seattle Times]
(Photo: Getty)

"We need a way to synthesize data about the effectiveness of health care products and services in a standardized, objective fashion that will be considered reliable and trustworthy by all decision makers," said Dr. Barbara McNeil of Harvard School of Medicine, who worked on the report.

"A system coordinated by a single, national entity that can prioritize and coordinate these evaluations would enable us to sort the wheat from the chaff and make sense of it all," McNeil said in a statement.

"Report seeks one-stop source for health info" [Reuters]
(Illustration: Getty)

According to Reuters, "the study found the largest racial disparity in providing stronger medications was found among patients in the most pain and those aged 12 or younger."

"There is no evidence that nonwhites have less severe or different types of pain when they arrive in the emergency department," Pletcher said. "We think our data indicate that opioids are being underprescribed to minority emergency department patients, especially black and Hispanic patients."

A factor may be that white patients are more likely to expect and demand relief from pain and better convey their symptoms in comparison to minority patients, the report said. Whites — who are more likely to have health insurance — may also be overprescribed the drugs, it said.

The investigators acknowledge that it is conceivable that the disparity represents overprescribing to white patients, but they think it a more plausible explanation is true undertreatment of pain in minority patients. This may not be a result of physician bias but could reflect expectations and assertiveness of the patients.