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Such concerns are “complete nonsense”, says CERN spokesman James Gillies. Any such risk was ruled out in a 2003 safety review. It pointed out that any black hole the LHC might cook up would evaporate almost instantly, and that its gravity would be too puny to gobble up anything, let alone a planet. Coincidentally, CERN plans to release an updated safety assessment in the next few weeks.

It is not the first time Wagner has suggested a particle collider could end the world. His last target was the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, New York, which was switched on in 2000.

CAN Australia lead the world in carbon capture technology? The influential climate scientist James Hansen hopes so. In an open letter published last week, he asked Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd not to build any new coal-fired power plants until the technology to capture and store carbon dioxide is ready.

“I’m looking for anyone who will take the lead. These governments are saying all the right words, but so far they

SPIRALLING healthcare costs will be a big issue in the US presidential election. So here’s a number for the candidates to debate: $1.5 billion. That’s the additional sum spent on cholesterol-lowering drugs in the US in 2006, thanks to the marketing of a drug that has not been shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Cynthia Jackevicius of the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California, and colleagues analysed US and Canadian prescriptions of ezetimibe, a drug that inhibits the uptake of cholesterol.

Ezetimibe was launched in the US as Zetia in 2002, and in Canada under the name Ezetrol in 2003. Prescriptions of the drug

accelerated in the US after July 2004 when a combination pill, Vytorin, containing ezetimibe and a statin , began to be marketed – backed by heavy advertising.

But in January this year,

manufacturers Merck and Schering-Plough announced that a trial had shown Vytorin to be no more effective at reducing the furring of artery walls than treatment with a statin alone.

More than $19.5 billion was spent on cholesterol-lowering drugs in the US in 2006, according to Jackevicius (The New England Journal of Medicine,DOI: 10.1056/NEJMsa0801461). She estimates that $1.5 billion less would have been spent if US prescriptions had followed the pattern in Canada, where Vytorin was not on sale and the consumer advertising of prescription drugs is banned.

COULD an artificial black hole gobble up the Earth? Two people claim the threat is real, and are trying to delay the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the powerful particle smasher due to be switched on in July.

On 21 March, Walter Wagner from Hawaii and Luis Sancho from Spain filed a lawsuit in Hawaii against the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, which hosts the LHC, and its collaborators in the US. Wagner and Sancho claim the collider could create planet-devouring “killer strangelet” particles or mini black holes.

It is not just soldiers who suffer during wartime, and nor are the injuries confined to the battlefield.

Elie Karam of the Institute for Development, Research, Advocacy and Applied Care in Beirut, Lebanon, and colleagues measured the effects of war on the mental health of 2857 Lebanese civilians. They found that 70 per cent of respondents to their survey had been exposed to traumatic events related to the country’s ongoing conflict, including living in a war zone or being a refugee.

Those exposed to conflict were six times as likely to have an anxiety disorder, three times as likely to have a mood disorder, and 13 times as likely to have an impulse-control disorder as people who had not experienced such events. Less than half of the survey

NON-COMBATANTS FEEL THE PAIN respondents who reported a disorder had sought any treatment – and they took an average of six years to do so. (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0050061).

Cultural stigma over mental disorders and a dearth of mental health workers may be contributing to the prevalence of disorders and a delay in treatment, says study co-author Somnath Chatterji of the World Health Organization. “The overall number of physicians in Lebanon is high, but the availability of mental health services is quite limited,” he says.

Despite the effects of war, only 1 in 4 respondents had experienced a mental disorder, similar to the proportion in the developed world. Chatterji thinks this is because many people have simply learned to cope after decades of turmoil.

THOM

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–Don’t let the CO2 get away–

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“The combination pill was no better at reducing furring of arteries than a statin alone”

–Hard to stay positive–

Cost-ineffective World eater

Carbon crackdown

6 | NewScientist | 5 April 2008 www.newscientist.com