When Big Pharma gets jammed up by federal regulators overseeing what may be risky prescription drugs, what to do? How about hiring the help of a powerful, secretive business consulting company — which also happens to be advising the feds on how best to regulate drug companies? That’s the gist of yet more disturbing findings….
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Will Congress bog down or will it act on people’s health and other needs?
It may be tempting to get caught up in cynical views of congressional lawmaking, budgeting, and spending — seeing it as gross “sausage making” or in sporting “who wins and who loses” score-keeping. But for anyone who believes that health care in the wealthiest nation in the world ought to be a right and not….
Continue ReadingAs experts ponder vaccinating our kids, Covid orphans tens of thousands
The battle to quell the coronavirus pandemic and especially its deadly Delta variant surge soon may extend to the nation’s children. A drug maker has submitted required data and formally requested from federal regulators an emergency approval for a vaccine for youngsters ages 5 to 12. Officials say they will take up this request, pronto,….
Continue ReadingEx-president’s buddies schemed to exploit VA patients’ data, records show
A trio of former President Trump’s country club friends planned to use the clout he gave them over the Department of Veteran Affairs to set up a potentially enriching scheme to exploit the confidential, personal medical records of millions of U.S. veterans and their families, documents show. Congressional Democrats, now leading key House committees, have….
Continue ReadingFake pills, laced with lethal fentanyl, are circulating widely, U.S. warns consumers
Federal officials have sharply escalated their battle with opioid painkiller abuse and overdoses, issuing an urgent public warning that street drugs of many different varieties may be tainted with tiny but lethal doses of the synthetic painkiller fentanyl. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Justice Department also provided stark evidence of the risks involved,….
Continue ReadingFDA dithers dangerously on regulating sketchy ‘stem cell’ care and kid vaping
Yet more derelictions of duty by the federal Food and Drug Administration are happening now, in its handling of largely hokum treatments and health-threatening devices. The latest examples: drug safety regulators step back from their oversight of those who peddle sketchy “stem-cell” treatments for a bevy of ills. And twiddle their thumbs as who knows how….
Continue ReadingAnother milestone of lives lost needlessly
It’s one thing when toddlers in their terrible twos react to common sense directions for their own good, throwing themselves to the floor, declaring, “I won’t, I won’t — and you can’t make me …” When grownups behave in, basically, the same way, the results can be catastrophic. The estimated death toll of the coronavirus….
Continue ReadingExperts call for end to a race-based adjustment in a key kidney function test
Medical specialists and researchers have taken a big step in recognizing that how they diagnose black patients with kidney disease may be racially biased and harmful to a group that already and disproportionately suffers the illness’s harms. Doctors now should jettison race-based adjustments in equations used in a crucial and fundamental test to assess kidney….
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