A laptop and a cardboard box. These two items could be major tools in improving regular folks’ health throughout this year — and beyond — if they get launched on important tasks, pronto. What needs to happen is for patients to be hyperconscious, persistent, and skeptical enough to start gathering vital records about themselves and….
Continue ReadingDisclosure
High court lets stand California ban on flavored tobacco products
Californians have accomplished something that federal regulators have failed to — despite long, difficult campaigning. Voters in the biggest state in the nation not only have banned Big Tobacco from peddling its flavored products that target and exploit communities of color and the young. They also have defeated the industry in its legal challenges. Big….
Continue ReadingBig investors aid struggling vaping pioneer in $1.7 billion settlement
While regular folks will count their pennies and fret about affording gifts for loved ones during an inflation-plagued holiday season, plutocrats have given the hoi polloi a rare glimpse of the major loot they see in the business of peddling health-wrecking e-cigarettes and vaping. The concerning disclosures are emerging as part of the financial struggles….
Continue ReadingWhile surgeons operate often on the elderly, studies are just starting to detail the risks
Seniors and their loved ones should take note of new and increasing data that researchers are developing about the risks undertaken by elderly patients who choose to undergo significant surgeries — procedures that make up a little less than half of costly operations performed in this country. The numbers about invasive medical work can be….
Continue ReadingIn nursing homes and hospices, too little oversight, too much profiteering
What happens when the highly vulnerable — older, sick, injured, and debilitated people — get left in the hands of profit-obsessed private enterprises operating under woefully lax regulatory oversight? Big messes abound, as news organizations have reported after taking deep dives into the workings of the “hustle” of for-profit hospice programs, or the chronic staffing….
Continue ReadingCollege sports organization prevails in an early, difficult case on head injuries
Armchair quarterbacks of the legal kind have raced onto the field, arguing that a Los Angeles jury verdict will help shield the National Collegiate Athletic Association from a potential avalanche of claims asserting the group did too little to protect young players from debilitation and death due to head trauma. Maybe, maybe not. Jurors rejected….
Continue ReadingAs marijuana gains wide acceptance, new study details health concerns
Marijuana, as the kids say, isn’t as dope as users would like it to be. Instead, a new study finds that marijuana can do greater damage to humans’ respiratory system than cigarette smoking — a nasty habit that research also has proven to be a major cause of cancer, heart and circulatory damage, and other….
Continue ReadingGiving many thanks on yet another holiday fraught with health concerns
Millions of us will have much to give thanks for during the annual holiday, which, like several of its recent versions, again will be a time of health wariness and uncertainty, too. The seasonal feast — which brings so many the joy of not only a grand meal but also the pleasure of gathering with….
Continue ReadingBig Tobacco may talk of transitions. Its pursuit of profits speaks louder.
Consumers, politicians, and federal regulators should not make the mistake of thinking that Big Tobacco somehow will go, as the poet put it, quietly into that good night. The fortunes are still too big to be made in peddling products that persist as some of the greatest preventable threats to Americans’ health, industry players keep….
Continue ReadingFDA knew of, but didn’t act on little devices’ deadly racial problems
Until the coronavirus pandemic struck, few regular folks knew about pulse oximeters, much less had one on hand for urgent use. The devices, which fit over a finger, are supposed to give fast readings on the levels of oxygen in patients’ blood — a key measure of their respiratory wellness. But the devices, whether in….
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