With the way so many kids raid the refrigerator and gulp down whatever contents may be found there, parents may be tempted to throw up their hands about youngsters’ eating habits. But keep up the good fight, moms, dads, and other grownups: Research increasingly points to childhood─even the time in the womb or shortly thereafter─as….
Continue ReadingArchives for July 2016
What imperils both pro wrestlers and synchronized swimmers? Head trauma
Two sports that could not be more extreme to each other─balletic synchronized swimming and bombastic professional wrestling─share an ugly health peril: dangerous head injuries. Interest groups in both are taking steps to better protect athletes, including through litigation in the civil justice system. Although many fans long may have winked about whether shenanigans in the….
Continue ReadingLawsuits underscore need for caution with sperm banks
A reported rash of new lawsuits offers a poignant, sadly recurrent reminder: Aspiring parents who rely on commercial sperm banks for critical reproductive tissues must heed an ancient consumer prescription: caveat emptor. The New York Times says litigation, from Florida to California, Canada to the UK, all raises serious questions about the light or nonexistent regulation….
Continue ReadingMedia gulled by prostate cancer study hyped by Windy City windbags
A well-known research university and some excitable journalists have sown confusion about prostate cancer and the value of the PSA screening test. The mess can be traced to a study by physicians from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, and published in the journal Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Disease. Their article reports an “increase”….
Continue ReadingMedicare officials back patient safety measure: ID digits on medical devices
They may seem like a cryptic pile of digits on devices that most of us might never see but will have in us, sometimes in life-saving fashion. But “unique identification numbers,” emblazoned on everything from hip implants to pacemakers, may offer a ne safety check on a burgeoning aspect of health care. They also have….
Continue ReadingOxyContin’s maker slow to disclose suspicious pill prescribing
New, disturbing information is emerging about Big Pharma’s role in the nation’s killer crisis with the abuse of prescription opioid drugs. It also shows that, even when companies act in ways beneficial to the public good, they do so with self-justifying spin. Major kudos, to start, to the Los Angeles Times for its sustained reporting….
Continue ReadingCongress splits town, ducks tough calls to combat Zika virus
Taxpayers fork over $174,000 in annual pay for each of the 435 members of the U.S. House and the 100 Senators. The House Speaker gets $223,500, while the Senate President and the House and Senate majority and minority leaders get $193,400. And that doesn’t count the benefits and perks and office staffs. But now they’ve split….
Continue ReadingGood to know, sad to see: Hospitals in convention cities brace for calamities
They’re stocked with sufficient material to respond to days of crisis. Key personnel have been told to stay in town and be at the ready. They’ve developed response plans and drilled on readiness. It’s a sad reflection of the horrible headlines of recent days─from France, Dallas, and Orlando, and tragically too many more locales─that hospitals and….
Continue ReadingSurvey shows how deeply experts differ from ordinary folks on what’s healthy food
Sometimes it feels like there is so much information about diet and nutrition that it’s hard to know what to think about what we eat and how it affects our well-being. The New York Times consulted with experts in nutrition to develop a story and informational graphic that capture how ordinary Americans and nutritionists differ in….
Continue Reading$70 million assessed against J&J for boy who grew breasts from Risperdal
A Tennessee teen-ager suffered such emotional distress after growing enlarged breasts as an undisclosed side-effect of an anti-psychotic medication that the drug’s maker should pay him $70 million in damages, a Philadelphia jury has decided. That verdict, only for compensatory damages, was the latest rebuke to Johnson & Johnson over its drug Risperdal. Jurors found….
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