Big Pharma should hang its head in shame over recent revelations of its nasty role in inundating rural West Virginia with tens of millions of prescription painkillers. So many pills were shipped in that every man, woman, and child in the small, poor state could have swallowed two dozen doses of hydrocodone and more than….
Continue ReadingArchives for May 2016
Good reads on breakfast, food labels, and salt intake
New reports on the hype of breakfast, revised food labeling, sliced fruit portions, and salt intake are worth checking out as we strive to sort hype from reliable information on diet, nutrition, eating, and wellness. Let’s start with the common belief that breakfast is one of the most important meals of the day. That’s not….
Continue ReadingHygiene at public swimming pools may be an issue
Kids and parents may want to think twice before jumping into that cool looking public pool or local watering hole. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has just issued its new study on public swimming pools, hot tubs, and other bathing facilities in the states with the most of these, including Florida, Texas, New York,….
Continue ReadingFDA debuts first new food labels in two decades, as foes finally cave in
After two decades, Uncle Sam finally has decided to change the way Americans get important health information from labels on their food. The changes required by the federal Food and Drug Administration will take full effect by July 2018. But the battling over this public health measure has gone on since 2014─and some big agricultural lobbies….
Continue ReadingPrescriptions for opioid painkillers fall for the first time in 20 years
Too many Americans have died for the message to sink in—28,000 in 2014 alone. But doctors finally seem to be getting a clue that they need to slash their prescribing of powerful, addictive opioid pain-killing medications. The number of prescriptions for these drugs has fallen in each of the last three years (2013, 2014, and….
Continue ReadingDo surgeons’ (mis)perceptions of risk play too big a role for patients’ good?
A globally renowned seismologist, weary of recent scaremongering reports that a major fault in California was “locked, loaded, and ready to roll,” offered a pointed scientific evaluation of risk: “You’re about as likely to be shot by a toddler than die in an earthquake,” she observed. She explained that, in geologic terms with earthquakes, imminent can mean….
Continue ReadingSafety Troubles in Hospital Compounding Pharmacies
We wrote yesterday about contamination at the pharmacy of the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda. Other big hospitals, judging by media reports, also may need to look at their pharmacy operations, especially when they compound ingredients together into custom drugs for patients. A major hospital in a San Diego, Calif., suburb may have exposed more than….
Continue ReadingNIH takes stronger steps to improve patient safety at Bethesda Clinical Center
Federal officials have decided to sweep out the executive ranks at the flagship hospital of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, this after a blue-chip investigating committee rebuked the institution and declared that research concerns there had wrongly taken precedence over patient safety. Initial reports about the NIH Clinical Center, as I wrote recently,….
Continue ReadingAs hype mars health care, Comedian John Oliver shows why skepticism’s needed
Who can you believe these days for health news? A biotech company that promised the stars when it comes to one of the most common medical diagnostics—it promised cheaper, faster, more convenient blood testing—has, instead, retracted tens of thousands of its results that doctors and patients had depended on for two years. The Wall Street Journal….
Continue ReadingReal people’s stories about health care’s headaches, heartaches (and even joys)
In medical science as well as advocacy, the anecdotal has its limits as evidence. But nothing illustrates the complexity, headaches, and heartaches of modern health care like real people’s stories, such as these recommended reads: Why did a dad get a $629 hospital bill when emergency room doctors took just minutes to look at his….
Continue Reading