At the bottom, I'll fill-in-the-blanks (asterisks), but see if you don't see how accurately this reports the situation when the Salt Institute and US Chamber challenged HHS with a Data Quality Act petition on the DASH-Sodium study.

* Suit Says Law Requires Federal Agencies To Use Sound Science
Appeal Argues Statements on ** Must be Accurate

On April 14, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments from * on why such federal agencies as Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) must correct the inaccurate information they disseminate about **.

In late 2007, a lower court accepted the government's contention that there is no right to judicial review under the Data Quality Act, effectively reducing the law a friendly request, without ruling on the merits of *'s claims.

Arguing on behalf of *that the laws Congress passes have consequences that federal agencies cannot ignore was noted legal scholar Alan Morrison, who founded Public Citizen's Litigation Group and taught administrative law at Stanford. "Citizens have a right to expect the government to be transparent and to use the best available information for policy decisions," said Morrison. "Unfortunately, so far, the government has been anything but transparent and has failed to produce any evidence for its policy statements on **."

While the law says federal agencies must rely on sound science when disseminating information to the public, the petition filed by * in October 2004 marked the first serious test of the Data Quality Act, which was passed by Congress in 1999. After more than two years of delay by the federal government that culminated in a refusal to act on the petition, * filed a lawsuit in February 2007 asking the courts to direct the agencies to comply with the law.

The respected magazine Science published an editorial on the case that year, claiming that HHS had "violated its own DQA guidelines."

At issue are such statements as "there have been no studies that have scientifically assessed **"We welcome the Obama Administration's recently stated commitment to making policy decisions based on science, not politics," said ____, Chief Counsel with *. "This case is designed to ensure that the federal government's policy on ** is not politically motivated."

On March 9, 2009, President Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of executive departments and agencies stating that, "The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions," and calling for "transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking."

During oral arguments, attorney for the government told the three-judge panel that there were simply too many facts in the world to require the government's statements about them all to be accurate.

We'd only note that we think our Salt Institute v. Leavitt was the "first serious test of the Data Quality Act," but, otherwise this newsletter from *Americans for Safe Access (ASA) about **medical marijuana reads like a sequel to our attempt to compel HHS to comply with the DQA and make available replicable data it was using for policy decisions and (mis)portraying on its website.

We hope ASA fares better than we did. The appeals court in our case upheld, in the language of the ASA newsletter, "the government's contention that there is no right to judicial review under the Data Quality Act, effectively reducing the law (to) a friendly request without ruling on the merits." Good luck.

Every day, we learn more and more about the metabolism of salt and mechanism of its role in maintaining balance or homeostasis within our circulatory system. Some of the most interesting work continues to come from a Europe-wide collaborative group based in Germany. Their latest work entitled, “Macrophages regulate salt-dependent volume and blood pressure by a vascular endothelial growth factor-C–dependent buffering mechanism,” was just published online by Nature Medicine .

This new data provides valuable insights into the role of the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS) cell and lymphatic function in the context of maintaining intracellular Na+ homeostasis. Cells of the mononuclear phagocyte system (MPS) are found in large numbers in every organ of the body, where they contribute to innate and acquired immunity and fluid balance. When rats are fed high salt diets, the extra accumulation of sodium ions that occurs in excess of compensating water results in local hypertonicity or increased pressures that provokes a tissue-specific regulatory cascade, with the macrophages releasing vascular endothelial growth factor-C (VEGF-C) which acts protective protein to maintain a constant intracellular volume. This mechanism then restructures the existing lymph capillary network and to manage this increased pressure.

The researchers conclude that the complex MPS-derived secretion of VEGF-C in states of sodium-induced intracellular hypertonicity functions to moderates blood pressure.

Their findings move the prevailing view of the salt volume–blood pressure relationship from a simpler two-compartment model to a more dynamic three-compartment model in which the interstitial (intracellular) spaces in tissues feature as a separately regulated space that also relies on tissue-specific mechanisms to maintain internal osmo- or pressure regulation.

While we caution that this work was done with rats -- and at experimentally huge salt intake levels to demonstrate the mechanism -- and, therefore, has no human health policy implications at this point, the study usefully reveals how complex a system we have evolved to manage and balance all components of our diet.