Purdue Pharma, which built a multi-billion-dollar family empire, in part, by overcoming doctors’ resistance to prescribing powerful painkillers like its own powerhouse OxyContin, has decided to curb its quarter-century of aggressive and controversial drug marketing — efforts that critics and lawsuits say helped fuel the nation’s opioid drug abuse epidemic. The company has said that….
Continue ReadingArchives for February 2018
Winter Games and Super Bowl offer health takeaways, too
The Winter Olympic Games and the Super Bowl can offer fans not just exciting sports spectacles but also important health insights and information— everything from the risks of viruses and the value of hand washing to the dangers of head blows and why Americans may be slowly changing their minds about how they feel about….
Continue ReadingCommon sense needs to rule the roost in accommodating support animals
All critters great and small may be adorable and adored, but some extreme and unsupported claims for the mental health benefits that pets bring may be launching a needed correction in how so-called emotional support animals get accommodated in public spaces. It would be tough to make up this story, much less explain why a….
Continue ReadingA new caution on how breast cancer care also can harm women’s hearts
As cardiologists and oncologists swap cross-fire about the conditions they treat and how they do so, here’s hoping that, above all, their female patients end up helped and not harmed, getting vital information about risks and benefits of therapies for two of the leading killers of women: heart disease and breast cancer. What’s behind the….
Continue ReadingHow bad’s the opioid crisis? It may curb purchases of familiar diarrhea remedy
The opioid epidemic has become so pernicious that it can be exhausting to even try to see its expansive harms. But it’s crucial to keep confronting the many ways this lethal scourge affects Americans and their lives, if only to hope that politicians, policy-makers, doctors, hospitals, and many others get off their duffs and do….
Continue ReadingWhat was she thinking? CDC chief quits when caught trading tobacco stock
Brenda Fitzgerald, a rich doctor who not only wouldn’t pull her hand out of her personal cookie jar of investments and instead plunged it even deeper during her conflicted time in public office, finally has quit the top job at the respected federal agency charged with protecting the nation’s health from disease and other dangers…..
Continue ReadingGymnastics scandal offers a tragic reminder of challenges in protecting kids
His basic credentials would come under fire, but they were sufficient for the “doctor” to insinuate himself into major institutions, and, worse, into the lives of hundreds of girls and young women on whom he inflicted a tragic toll. His combination of enthusiasm — he was a rah-rah kind of guy— extreme controlling conduct, and horrific “treatments”….
Continue ReadingYes, an ounce of prevention is still worth a pound of cure
Preventive measures, even small ones, can be life changing and lifesaving. They can safeguard drivers and passengers in car wrecks, protect young folks during a bad flu season, and ensure that fewer Americans still take up one of the proven, major health harms — smoking. Let’s start with a simple, often overlooked vehicular precaution: Buckle….
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