“This is going to be fairly serious. It’s going to stress every aspect of our health system.”

Harold Varmus, co-chair of the US President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, comments on his council’s estimates that H1N1 could hospitalize 1.8 million people and kill 90,000 this autumn / winter (Washington Post).

“Between 1999 and 2008, the FDA received 32 reports of serious liver injury in patients taking orlistat. … The FDA’s analysis of these data is ongoing, and no definite association between liver injury and orlistat has been established at this time.”

The US Food and Drug Administration announces it is reviewing data on a possible link between weight loss drug orlistat (Xenical, Alli) and liver damage.

“The prevailing wisdom among people who multitask is that they’re skilled and adept and they handle it really well. We thought maybe these multitaskers are gods, information processing geniuses. Instead they’re lousy at what they’re doing a whole lot of.”

Clifford Nass, of Stanford, comments on his new research showing those who multitask are actually quite bad at multitasking (Bloomberg).

“While many people have been loudly celebrating this year’s double commemoration of 200 years since Charles Darwin’s birth and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, another scientific anniversary has crept up relatively quietly, marking an event which arguably changed human thought and the way we see ourselves even more irrevocably.”

The Guardian joins the celebrations for the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s telescope.