Here is a sobering public health angle on Mother’s Day. Experts on international health and development, including the likes of Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent and columnist Nick Kristof, long have argued that a key way to major improvements in distant lands rests in boosting the lot of women and girls. It’s an issue that clearly also….
Continue ReadingArchives for May 2018
For bicyclists and pedestrians, new risks from unsafe drivers and dirty air
As traffic snarls grow and public transit headaches multiply, commuters in the nation’s capital and elsewhere may be deciding to be healthier and to hoof it or pedal their way to work. But other folks aren’t making alternative means of transportation safer or better for pedestrians or bike riders. Hit-and-run crash deaths are soaring across the….
Continue ReadingAsthma inhalers show how Big Pharma chokes us all with high costs
More than 18 million U.S. adults and 6 million children have asthma, a chronic lung disease that inflames and narrows airways and causes recurring wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath, and coughing. How and why Big Pharma jacked up prices for one of the common treatments for this disease tells a key story of not only the….
Continue ReadingCities battle opioid carnage that now includes lethal fentanyl mixtures
Ss the nation’s opioid crisis spirals into ever-more risky territory where synthetic painkillers get mixed with illegal drugs with fatal results, reporters are digging deeper into how drug companies got the country into this mess and cities now are stepping up with different approaches to curb deadly overdoses. Vox, an online news and information site,….
Continue ReadingMedical hype can be lethal, as ‘minimally invasive’ chest surgery shows
Doctors and hospitals have a right to blow their own horn a bit when they’re onto something good, don’t they? What’s the harm? Plenty, as reported by Healthnewsreview.org, an independent, nonpartisan health information watchdog site. As part of a series on patient harm from misleading media, Joy Victory, the site’s managing editor, details the tragic results….
Continue ReadingFDA busts e-cigarette sellers but stays silent on tough rules for device makers
The Food and Drug Administration has cracked down on illegal sales of vaping devices to minors, taking aim at the suddenly trendy, pricey, and small Juul e-cigarette. But this aggressive regulatory move itself added to criticism of the agency for its failure to clamp down on a key way kids get dosed with nicotine, a….
Continue ReadingDespite deaths and infections, dirty scopes get used even more
Undeterred by disclosures about the disastrous results of their growing use of dirty medical scopes, doctors, hospitals, and manufacturers have failed to figure how better to sanitize many of the devices. They, instead, may be taking short cuts that ensure the devices stay unsanitary when used in invasive procedures. Chad Terhune, a reporter now with….
Continue ReadingHospitals, cancer centers ripped for ‘tear-jerker’ hype and clinical trial ‘sell out’
With cancer care raining down more than $200 billion in billings on providers, giant hospitals and specialty treatment centers are resorting to unacceptable marketing and advertising hype, including pitches that “sell out” the credibility of science and a pillar of medical practice, commentators say. Credit’s due to journalist Steve Salerno and the Wall Street Journal….
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