Rideshare Accidents on the Rise Use of rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft has risen rapidly since these services first became available about ten years ago. Uber is available in 65 countries and over 600 cities worldwide and 14 million Uber trips are completed each day. In the United States, Uber controls about 70% of….
Continue ReadingArchives for July 2019
Taming Big Pharma profiteering is no snap, White House learns in dual defeats
It takes more than a lot of huffing and puffing to blow down the ever-rising high costs of prescription drugs, the Trump administration has found. Two defeats happened last week: officials were forced to pull a plan to curb profit-making by drug industry middlemen, and a federal judge axed on First Amendment grounds a plan….
Continue ReadingWashington D.C. Scooter Laws
Electric scooters have zipped into major cities across the United States over the last several years, and the District of Columbia is no exception. When electric scooters were first introduced into the District of Columbia in 2017, they came as part of a pilot program. This program was extended several times before the District Department….
Continue ReadingA harsh reminder of hospital infection risks: outbreaks in areas treating kids
Parents and the public received grim reminders of the risks of medical care as prominent institutions on opposite coasts battled hospital-related infections among some of the most vulnerable patients around: babies and children. In the Pacific Northwest, a mold outbreak has taken a terrible toll — with one patient dead, five others infected, 1,000 surgeries….
Continue ReadingCritics fear a key watchdog’s decline as FDA eases up its regulatory actions
Consumers may want to think long and hard about whether the federal Food and Drug Administration protects the interests of the vulnerable public or profit-raking Big Pharma and medical device makers. As a scrutiny of data by Science magazine shows: “From monitoring clinical trials and approving medicines and vaccines, to ensuring the safety of blood….
Continue Reading53 million Americans suffer ‘second-hand’ harms from booze, study finds
Even as the nation grapples with an opioid- and drug-overdose crisis, alcohol, one of the oldest intoxicants known to mankind, causes significant harms, including to as many as a fifth of American grownups who have suffered harm due to drinking by others and not themselves. A newly published study, based on data from a survey….
Continue ReadingA $229-million Baltimore malpractice case? It’s worth digging into this news
Headlines can command attention while not always fully informing, as might be the case with these eye-catching story titles, one fresh, the others a few years back: Baltimore jury awards record $229 million for brain injury during child’s birth at Johns Hopkins Bayview (July 2019) Baltimore jury awarded $21 million to a Glen Burnie couple….
Continue ReadingSan Francisco, Beverly Hills blaze new regulatory path with e-cigarette bans
Cities are daring to tread where federal regulators have not: They’re cracking down on vaping and its potential harm, particularly to the young, by banning e-cigarettes and tobacco products. San Francisco supervisors’ e-cigarette ban, recently enacted, packs a symbolic punch because Juul, a “tech startup” whose product has become the market-dominating maker of vaping devices,….
Continue ReadingSuffering of rural poor a reminder of how much health policy debates matter
Twenty Democrats who are campaigning for president took to network television for four hours and two nights last week to put health care as a central issue of their campaigns. The format of this initial candidate “debate,” including hand-raised answers to complex issues, failed to allow the presidential aspirants to delve much into the details….
Continue ReadingCourts, by too readily sealing records, contributed to opioid crisis, report finds
The blame and shame for the opioid-drug overdose crisis that kills tens of thousands Americans annually has moved to yet another set of individuals and institutions now — judges and courts that handled Big Pharma lawsuits and may have been too quick to seal from the public information that would have warned of painkillers’ addictive….
Continue Reading