Warts-and-all trials
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors has warned drug firms that to qualify for publication, clinical trials must in future be registered before they begin. The ruling, effective from 1 July, is meant to stop companies suppressing poor or adverse results. 鈥淲e think the public deserves to know about trials that could shape the body of evidence about clinical effectiveness or adverse effects,鈥� says a committee statement in The New England Journal of Medicine (vol 352, p 2436).
Home for retired tigers
Advertisement
India is planning a 45-hectare 鈥渃are home鈥� for ageing Royal Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans mangrove forests on the Bay of Bengal. The Sundarbans, a world heritage site, is the largest habitat for the endangered tigers. Old and sick tigers tend to stray into villages to hunt cattle, and officials hope to trap these animals and send them to the facility.
Anti-climactic success
Men who suffer from premature ejaculation quadrupled their staying power in the largest trial yet of a drug for the condition. Results presented at the American Urological Association鈥檚 annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas, on 23 May by Johnson & Johnson showed that on average, men given dapoxetine hydrochloride took three to four times as long as usual to ejaculate.
Record deforestation
The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at the fastest rate for the past 10 years. Figures released by the Brazilian government on 18 May showed that 26,130 square kilometres of rainforest 鈥� an area larger than Wales 鈥� was lost between August 2003 and August 2004.
Martian portrait
For the first time a spacecraft orbiting a planet other than Earth has taken shots of a companion probe. On 21 April, NASA鈥檚 Mars Global Surveyor, which has been orbiting the Red Planet since 1997, caught the Mars Odyssey spacecraft on camera from 90 kilometres away.