Everybody likes a free lunch. And everybody who pays for health care in America likes a free health screening, so when the Giant Eagle grocery chain started offering free in-store allergy tests, lots of people accepted the offer. As discussed on HealthNewsReview.org by Kevin Lomangino, editor-in-chief of Clinical Nutrition Insight, allergies are like prostate cancer….
Continue ReadingArchives for November 2011
How a Dangerous Doctor Can Keep Harming Patients
Last year we covered the outrageous spectacle in west Texas when two nurses who were appalled at a doctor’s quackish and dangerous treatments of patients got into criminal trouble when they tried to report him to the state licensing board. Eventually the nurses were vindicated, but not before they lost their jobs. Now the doctor….
Continue ReadingNew Hope for Communicating with Patients Who Seem to Be in a Vegetative State
A new research study gives hope that some patients who seem to be in a coma, or persistent vegetative state, may actually be aware of their surroundings and can communicate on a rudimentary level. The even better news is that misdiagnosis of these patients, which studies suggest may be common, can be corrected by use….
Continue ReadingDining with Drug Reps Proves Unappetizing
As the saying goes, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Not that we know for sure that behavioral economist Dan Ariely considers pharmaceutical manufacturers “enemies,” but we know he’s onto their practices that are not exactly in the best interest of patients. He and a colleague recently had dinner with a few pharmaceutical….
Continue ReadingDrug Company Settlement Highlights Industry’s Dangerous Practices
Last week, GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay $3 billion to settle several lawsuits over how it creates and markets drugs. It’s not as if anybody needed any more evidence that Big Pharma is an industry desperately in need of watch-dogging, but, from the Reuters report, here’s the money quote: “… payments would be funded through existing….
Continue ReadingDoctor’s Conviction Goes Far Beyond Mere Malpractice
Propofol is a surgical anesthetic safely used only in a hospital operating room or a comparably equipped medical facility with continuous monitoring of the patient’s heart rate and breathing. The idea of using propofol as a sleep aid in a private home, with a doctor occasionally looking in? Unthinkable, before Michael Jackson’s death. Now Dr…..
Continue ReadingU.S. Begins to Address Drug Shortages
Last week’s executive order was the first one in more than 25 years directly affecting FDA operations. That in itself speaks to the gravity of the issue it addresses: shortages of drugs, many of them life-saving. President Obama’s order had two clear messages: 1. Drug shortages are too critical to ignore. 2. Congress has been….
Continue ReadingHow to Complain Effectively about Unsafe Medical Care
If you believe your care provider has caused serious harm by negligence or malpractice, consult an attorney about legal relief. But that’s using a machete, and sometimes the job requires a butter knife. If you have a medical procedure – surgery, a screening test – whose outcome is not what you were led to expect,….
Continue ReadingFederal Health Agency Takes Side of Multi-Sued Surgeon
A Kansas neurosurgeon who has been sued at least 16 times for malpractice has been able to enlist one important ally in protecting his privacy: the federal agency that runs the data bank that is supposed to keep track of dangerous doctors so they don’t drift from hospital to hospital without their track record becoming….
Continue ReadingThe Cost to Consumers when Drug Companies Sue Each Other
Last week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report with the boring title “Agreements Filed with the Federal Trade Commission under the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003.” But the story it tells is hardly dull, and it has implications for anyone who takes prescription medicine. If you want to read….
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