Dec 1st, 2012
BOSTON (Reuters) – A grand jury is investigating the compounding pharmacy at the heart of a deadly meningitis outbreak, the Boston Globe reported on Saturday.
The grand jury has begun issuing subpoenas to people who worked for the New England Compounding Center, which closed after investigators determined it had produced the tainted injectible steroid that has killed 36 people, the newspaper reported, citing...
Nov 13th, 2012
(Reuters) – U.S. health inspectors found bugs, a flying bird and other unsterile conditions at Ameridose LLC, an affiliate of the Massachusetts compounding pharmacy at the heart of the deadly meningitis outbreak.
Westborough, Massachusetts-based Ameridose was closed on October 10 to allow state and federal investigators to inspect its facilities. On Monday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released the...
Oct 13th, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — The deadly meningitis outbreak linked to contaminated pain injections has prompted calls for tighter federal regulation of compounding pharmacies, which have periodically been blamed for crippling and sometimes fatal injuries. But this isn’t the first time Congress has pushed for more authority over the industry.
Such efforts stretch back to the 1990s, and after vigorous pushback by...
Oct 3rd, 2012
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. births fell for the fourth year in a row, the government reported Wednesday, with experts calling it more proof that the weak economy has continued to dampen enthusiasm for having children.
But there may be a silver lining: The decline in 2011 was just 1 percent — not as sharp a fall-off as the 2 to 3 percent drop seen in other recent years.
“It may be that the effect of the recession...
Sep 23rd, 2012
New research powerfully strengthens the case against soda and other sugary drinks as culprits in the obesity epidemic.
A huge, decades-long study involving more than 33,000 Americans has yielded the first clear proof that drinking sugary beverages interacts with genes that affect weight, amplifying a person’s risk of obesity beyond what it would be from heredity alone.
This means that such drinks are...
Sep 18th, 2012
NEW YORK (Reuters) – If Americans stick to their eating and exercise habits, future historians will look back on the early 21st century as a golden age of svelte.
The latest in a long string of reports on the obesity epidemic in the United States presents the usual glum picture of the present, when 35.7 percent of adults and 16.9 percent of children age 2 to 19 are obese, as the Centers for Disease Control...
Sep 6th, 2012
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. health care system squanders $750 billion a year — roughly 30 cents of every medical dollar — through unneeded care, byzantine paperwork, fraud and other waste, the influential Institute of Medicine said Thursday in a report that ties directly into the presidential campaign.
President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney are accusing each other of trying to slash Medicare and...
Sep 1st, 2012
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Critics call him a puritanical scold, Gotham’s Dr. No and a nursemaid to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s nanny state. Meet Thomas Farley, New York City’s health commissioner.
Farley, a pediatrician and endurance athlete, says they are wrong about his efforts to help New Yorkers eat better, smoke less and exercise more — moves that have been linked to New York’s...
