With the coronavirus pandemic and its most recent Omicron surge ebbing by the day, federal officials have recommended new guidelines on how regular folks can safeguard themselves against a disease that has killed at least one million Americans and infected almost 80 million of us. The latest advisory from the federal Centers for Disease Control….
Continue ReadingArchives for February 2022
Racial bias: Another reason for patients to get and correct their own medical records
Patients, for their own protection, long have needed to secure copies of their medical records and correct inaccuracies they find — a safeguard that has grown even more vital as research builds about unacceptable biases that doctors and others may show in their recorded observations about those in their care. In two separate, published dives….
Continue ReadingMaryland’s medical examiner crisis is occurring nationwide, too
It’s a grim issue that too many of us would want to ignore in the best of times. But the coronavirus pandemic and its collateral harms have pushed beyond their limits the medical experts who study death, locally and nationally. In Maryland, the chief medical examiner has resigned, and a deputy has been designated as….
Continue ReadingCaliff confirmed to head FDA as Biden picks interim science advisors
The Biden Administration finally has a Senate-confirmed head of the federal Food and Drug Administration, as well as two new interim Cabinet-level appointees to advise the president on scientific matters. Still, the struggles to fill top health policy posts shows that leadership in the field is tough to find and keep. And it is harder….
Continue ReadingHealth workers hit deadline for coronavirus shots. Where’s the fuss now?
A proverbial tree fell in a forest — and did anyone hear it? The Biden Administration’s deadline came and went for health workers across the country to get vaccinated against the coronavirus or their employers might lose vital federal funding. And despite the political drama that engulfed that requirement, it apparently took force minus the….
Continue ReadingLet’s hear it for the right to be healthy, careful, safe, and follow science
Let’s flip the script on those who have rejected their role in quelling the pandemic and demanded their right to control their own bodies. It’s time to recapture common sense. Those who have advocated for increasingly unmoored and unfounded responses to the pandemic can’t stigmatize, criticize, mock, or abuse (physically or verbally) those who want….
Continue ReadingWhat’s really bankrupt? The newest liability dodge by Big Pharma
Big Pharma is blazing a legal trail that wealthy corporations are racing to follow. The corporatists are using a new approach to crush patients and other consumers who seek justice in the civil system with claims that drug makers and other big businesses harmed them with defective and dangerous products or demonstrable misbehavior. The U.S…..
Continue ReadingExperts still tussle with proper prescribing of opioid painkillers
As the opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis rages, experts — after decades now of experience with powerful painkillers — continue to struggle with their proper handling and prescribing. The federal Centers for Disease Control, on the one hand, has softened its earlier tough guidelines on the medications, while a top government commission assailed the….
Continue ReadingUCLA pays $243 million more for gynecologist’s sexual wrongdoing
The City of Angels has become an epicenter of big settlements paid to women harmed by doctors in university health care systems. The University of California at Los Angeles disclosed that it will pay $243 million to 203 patients who asserted they were sexually mistreated by James Heaps, a gynecologist who was affiliated with the….
Continue ReadingIn U.S. health care, the relentless pursuit of sky-high profits goes on
While the folks who toil in the front lines of U.S. health care deserve the highest praise and support in the continuing battle against the coronavirus pandemic, those who run care systems deserve a Bronx cheer and worse for their rapacious pursuit of profits — at the expense of patients: Just consider how health systems….
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