Although most states, including most recently Virginia, have eased restrictions on the recreational or medical use of marijuana, expectant moms should take note of serious studies that show pot, especially in heavy consumption, isn’t great for the health of unborn babies. Researchers at the University of California San Diego examined a decade of medical records….
Continue ReadingGynecology
USC to pay $1.1 billion to settle gynecologist’s hundreds of sex abuse cases
The University of Southern California apparently has set a record — one which parents should pray no college has reason to challenge and for which the educators and leaders at the Los Angeles campus should be sorry and ashamed. The Trojans have announced they will pay $1.1 billion to settle lawsuits over the tawdry actions….
Continue ReadingRich investors buy up MD practices and seek to strip patient safeguards
Wealthy investors want to enrich themselves yet more, partly by pushing doctors to oust patients from their practices unless they sign away invaluable constitutional rights. These rights can protect them if they are harmed while receiving medical services. Patients’ safeguards, however, too often vanish when businesses compel customers to sign on to “forced arbitration,” Bloomberg….
Continue ReadingUC offers $73-million settlement in class-action suit over abusive gynecologist
The University of California has offered to pay $73 million to settle with 5,000 women their class-action lawsuit asserting a staff gynecologist sexually abused them during medical procedures. This is yet another big case involving claims of years of widespread and sordid professional misconduct that somehow went undetected at a major institution, which has acknowledged….
Continue ReadingGynecologist guilty on U.S. charges, but questions linger about his practices
A federal criminal case concluded with felony convictions for a Virginia gynecologist. But the questions are only now beginning as to how a doctor could have caused so many women so much harm for so long without other clinicians, hospitals, administrators, insurers, and regulators stepping in to stop him. As the Washington Post reported, jurors….
Continue ReadingVirginia gynecologist’s fraud trial surfaces hundreds of mistreatment claims
A Virginia criminal case, while focusing on claims of fraud against the federal government, also has exposed a long-running and nightmarish pattern of what prosecutors assert has been a Chesapeake gynecologist’s rampant mistreatment of his patients, many of them women of color and poor. Dr. Javaid Perwaiz is on trial because authorities say he “manipulated….
Continue ReadingConcern rises over bias in race-based algorithms for medical decision-making
High-tech wizards may be pushing medicine into a brave new world where important medical decisions rely on supposedly data-driven findings that also may be rooted in an old malignancy: discrimination against black patients. A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine warns that race-based tools and formulas, algorithms aimed to assist doctors….
Continue ReadingBuyer beware: J&J pulls its baby powder, as officials warn about vapeware
Consumers have gotten stark reminders of the safety risks of two different kinds of products, one a household classic and the other a bootlegger’s nightmare. Caveat emptor about baby powder and street-purchased vaping devices. As for Johnson and Johnson’s family familiar talc, the company may have timed well its decision to yank it from shelves….
Continue ReadingFor 70+ women and their MDs, more reasons to rethink routine mammograms
As Americans live longer, clinicians may need to reconsider whether they need to subject older patients to routine screenings that may trigger even more costly, invasive, painful, and unnecessary medical testing and procedures. For women 70 and older, for example, yet more new evidence raises doubts about mammograms designed to detect breast cancers. As the….
Continue ReadingVoluntary recall of textured device raises more alarms about breast implants
An Irish medical manufacturer voluntarily withdrew its textured breast implant and related tissue expanding devices from markets after the federal Food and Drug Administration tracked a spike in a rare cancer and deaths tied to the products and asked that they be recalled. U.S. regulators, the New York Times reported, lagged their European counterparts by….
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