With students returning to classes in a few weeks, motorists need to make an important safety pledge to youngsters and their communities in Washington, D.C.: Please, for goodness’ sake, slow down. This is not happening as it should, putting kids at heightened risk, a new study has found. As the Washington Post reported: “D.C. drivers….
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Diabetes drugs that cause weight loss find plus-size online demand
They’re expensive and often uncovered by health insurance. They’re unfamiliar for now to many doctors, especially those in primary care. But — as expected — patients are hearing a lot about the effectiveness of new prescription medications aimed at treating diabetes and how these drugs have another positive outcome: They help users lose weight, potentially….
Continue ReadingWith 350 lawsuits filed, hospital now can’t ignore outcry over orthopedist
The nurses complained, and so did a handful of doctors. The patients howled. Yet, for years, administrators at a Florida hospital ignored the repeated alarms, critics say. Now, 350 lawsuits have been filed and 100 more are expected, all asserting that Dr. Richard David Heekin, a seasoned orthopedist, suffered from a progressively debilitating, rare, neurologic….
Continue ReadingSenate panel assails transplant system for causing deaths and disease
UNOS, the independent medical network responsible for procuring and distributing human organs for transplants in this country, needs big changes because it is failing desperate patients, making screening errors, among other missteps, that have killed dozens of them and caused hundreds to develop procedure-related diseases. The U.S. Senate Finance Committee reviewed hundreds of thousands of….
Continue ReadingA top FDA tobacco expert suddenly quits — to work for Big Tobacco
The ink was barely dry on statements from the head of the federal Food and Drug Administration about a planned external, independent review of the agency’s tobacco oversight division when one of its top regulators created a personnel stink of his own. Matt Holman, chief of the office of science in FDA’s much-criticized Center for….
Continue ReadingBig Pharma’s rough summer could be a boon for struggling patients
Big Pharma has run into a rare rough summer — and that could be positive news for all the rest of us regular folks. Just how? Consider: One of the world’s largest makers of prescription medications — which also is one of several pharma titans implicated in the record-breaking opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis,….
Continue ReadingWhen admitting a loved one to a nursing home, be sure to read what you sign (because you could be sued later)
When seniors need full-time institutional care, or when the injured or debilitated require similar 24/7 attention, loved ones — and even friends — must take care to read and re-read any documents that nursing homes and other long-term care facilities shove before them to sign during the stressful admissions process. That’s because the owners and….
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