Death from large burn wounds has pushed the development of life-saving techniques to cover and heal these wounds as rapidly as possible, resulting in a variety of tissue engineered skin substitutes available on the market. There remains a paucity of good quality RCTs evaluating the efficacy of skin substitutes, and even fewer studies comparing products to each other. While some products have been used successfully for dermatologic applications and published in the literature, a vast majority of data that we do have on skin substitutes relates to chronic wound management and care of burn patients. Though not specific to our specialty, the use of skin substitutes for these indications can be extrapolated to dermatology. Understanding the composition, advantages/disadvantages, and risk/benefit of each product, as well as the indications for each product's use, facilitates the selection of the appropriate substitute. This review will hopefully provide the information that makes the use of these products feasible for the appropriate defect.

Propylene glycol is a well-documented causative agent of allergic contact dermatitis (ACD). It is also reported to cause systemic dermatitis after ingestion of foods or medicines containing it and after intravenous injection of a medicine with propylene glycol in its base. We describe two adolescents with sensitivity to propylene glycol confirmed by patch testing whose dermatitis improved dramatically after cessation of oral antihistamines containing propylene glycol. We report these cases to alert providers to the potential for worsening of ACD due to systemic exposure to propylene glycol in patients with a cutaneous sensitivity to the allergen.

In The Tea Party: Three Principles, constitutional law professor Elizabeth Price Foley takes on the mainstream media's characterization of the American Tea Party movement, asserting that it has been distorted in a way that prevents meaningful political dialogue and may even be dangerous for America's future. Foley sees the Tea Party as a movement of principles over politics. She identifies three 'core principles' of American constitutional law that bind the decentralized, wide-ranging movement: limited government, unapologetic US sovereignty and constitutional originalism. These three principles, Foley explains, both define the Tea Party movement and predict its effect on the American political landscape. Foley explains the three principles' significance to the American founding and constitutional structure. She then connects the principles to current issues such as health care reform, illegal immigration, the war on terror, and internationalism.

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