Willkommen, generic plavix!
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Sometimes selling a $7 billion blood thinner sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis just finished cleaning up the mess from botched negotiations trying to keep generic Plavix off the market in the U.S. Today, word comes out of the blue that a copycat version of the drug from a Swiss company may hit the market in Germany any day now.
“We expect first sales already in the current quarter,” the chairman of Schweitzerhall Holding said in a statement that we presume was translated from the German.
The company says its generic doesn’t infringe on the European P...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Drugs Generics Source Type: blogs
Feds propose ban of hard sell on private medicare plans
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The federal government is likely to put the kibosh on aggressive sales tactics that have been used to push privately managed Medicare plans, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said yesterday.
Cold calling would be out, as would selling at health fairs and in waiting rooms. If a potential customer agreed to a meeting to discuss one Medicare product (the Part D drug benefit, for example), the salesperson wouldn’t be allowed to also pitch a second product, (such as a Medicare Advantage plan to cover other health expenses).
And companies that sell Medicare Advantage plans would have to get rid of commission ...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Medicare Source Type: blogs
More hepatitis c cases tied to las vegas clinic
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The hepatitis C outbreak tied to unsafe practices at a Las Vegas clinic got uglier yesterday, as health officials said some 77 cases of the chronic liver disease may be tied to the facility.
Those cases represent people who were treated at the clinic, tested positive for the disease and did not report other common risk factors, such as the use of intravenous drugs. “We can’t say for certain that they got it at the clinic; however, the clinic is the obvious source of infection considering they had no other risk factors,” a state epidemiologist told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
The 77 are among the 400 peo...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Infectious disease Public Health Source Type: blogs
Nuns sell unsellable hospital
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The hospital the nuns couldn’t give away for free is getting bought.
St. Francis Hospital in Blue Island, Illinois, has problems plenty of facilities can relate to: After a successful run through the 20th century, it’s faced tough times as other hospitals siphon off people with good insurance, and patients with conditions that tend to be especially profitable to treat.
Last month, SSM Healthcare, the owner, said it couldn’t find a buyer at any price, and would have to close the facility, which has been losing money.
But yesterday SSM Healthcare, which owns some 20 hospitals and is affiliated with the Fran...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Hospitals Source Type: blogs
What ibm has to do with consumer-driven health care
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Consumer-driven health care took another step forward this week, and IBM will be a little bit richer as a result.
Georgia will pay Big Blue $5.2 million to build a Web site that will let consumers compare hospitals on cost, quality and ratings by patients, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Plenty of docs and hospitals say health-care quality is too complicated to report on a consumer Web site. But many business types, conservative health policy wonks and others fervently believe that patients can improve health care by becoming savvier shoppers, if only they can get their hands on good information. So these sorts o...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: IT Health Reform Source Type: blogs
M.d. congressman goes without health insurance
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Steve Kagen, a Wisconsin Congressman who is also an M.D., is going without health insurance to prove a political point. Sure it’s something of a gimmick, but it’s a pretty compelling one — the guy is 58 years old, and he has no coverage.
Kagen, a Democrat and an allergist, is the only Congressman to refuse insurance, Scientific American reports this week.
He announced his insurance status to the world last year on the Huffington Post, and this year he introduced a bill that would bar insurers from denying coverage or raising rates because of pre-existing conditions. He’d also require companies to di...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Health Reform Congress Insurance Source Type: blogs
Patients sue icelandic drugmaker over recalled heart drug
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Out goes the drug, in come the lawsuits.
On April 25, Icelandic generic drug maker Actavis recalled its heart drug Digitek, or digoxin, over concerns that some batches of the medicine may have contained tablets that were twice the normal thickness and strength.
Common Foxglove, a flowering plant that was the original source for the heart drug digitalis (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Today, two weeks since the recall, a lawsuit seeking class action status was filed against privately-held Actavis, as well as Mylan and its UDL Laboratories unit, which distributed the meds. Plaintiffs are seeking damages over alleged injuries...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Heather Won Tesoriero Tags: Drugs Generics Source Type: blogs
Arthritis and diabetes: imperfect together
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We couldn’t let the week pass without a look at the findings that arthritis and diabetes are fellow travelers in this country.
More than half of Americans diagnosed with diabetes also have arthritis, according to telephone survey data analyzed by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Arthritis, broadly defined to include rheumatic conditions such as gout and lupus, was more common in diabetics than people without diabetes, regardless of sex or age.
Is there some hidden link between the conditions, we wondered? “We don’t have any evidence that diabetes causes arthritis or that art...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Scott Hensley Tags: Diabetes Public Health Source Type: blogs
White coat protest on hybrid embryo research bill
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Like most people I generally can’t be bothered to protest or write huffy letters to my MP about things like embryonic stem cell science and animal-human hybrid embryo research, because I have a vague notion that nobody will listen to the religious fruitcakes anyway and it will all take care of itself.
In the case of [...] (Source: badscience)
Source: badscience - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Ben Goldacre Tags: bad science Source Type: blogs
Drew carey on cory maye
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Drew Carey and our friends at Reason have produced a great 25 minute documentary about the Corey Maye case.
For additional background on the Maye case, go here. (Source: Cato-at-liberty)
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Tim Lynch Tags: Civil Rights Constitutional Studies Criminal Justice Civil Liberties Source Type: blogs
Back to the past
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Lyndon Baines Johnson, May 22, 1964, at the University of Michigan:
The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization…. For in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society….
The Great Society … is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community…. It is a place where man can renew contact with na...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: John Samples Tags: Libertarian Philosophy Source Type: blogs
Cracking down on legal permanent residents, pt. ii
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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a legal permanent resident who was arrested because he shared a common name with a suspected illegal immigrant. It illustrated how the E-Verify program would foul things for legal workers, a prominent subject of this paper.
Here’s another story of legal permanent resident mistreatment. This illustrates how overblown terror fears can cloud officials’ judgments and foul things for . . . well, everyone.
It seems that a woman in Florida asked her relatives in Monterrey, Mexico to ship her the birth certificates of two relatives who want to apply for their Mexican passports at...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jim Harper Tags: Criminal Justice Defense & National Security Tech, Telecom & Internet Civil Liberties Cato Publications Source Type: blogs
Medical dogma and the circle game
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When I was a medical registrar, I treated many patients with heart failure. Some of them had just come from coronary care where they had spend two days slugged out with morphine whilst I taught the medical students about the ECG changes during the evolution of a myocardial infarction - from raised ST segments until, if they survived, the development of "q" waves. No clot busters, no emergency angiography and no stents in those days. It makes me shiver. If I had gone on to treat any of these heart failure patients with beta blockers, they would have died, and I would have been sued as beta-blockers were known to be dangerou...
Source: NHS Blog Doctor - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: perversity Medical dogma Source Type: blogs
Friday favorites - may 9,2008
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Happy Friday everyone!
My favorites this week include the following:
Thirstiness
Elderly lack strong thirst signal - I’ve heard this before, but its really important to spread around. Apparently as people get older they “become easily dehydrated because their thirst signal can be diminished”. I need to print that out and show it to my mom, I don’t know if she drinks enough and I worry about her.
However, I have to raise one point. The word “elderly” implies weakness and frailty, the proper word here would have been “elders”, I believe. Read here to learn more from Tim...
Source: Ideas For Women News Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Trisha Tags: Favorites Source Type: blogs
On advanced practice nurses
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A premed student writes:
We see a trend that people are starting to say NP’s and CRNA’s, particularly in rural settings, are helping control costs while providing general care and limited anesthesia. I also see a trend that a lot of MD’s ad MD anesthesiologists are ranting that these types of advanced practice nurses are ruining general/family care and cannot and never will have the necessary training do to such a role without having been through med school - though not so much ranting about crna’s so long as they practice under an anesthesiologist and not solo.
So then nursing profession pu...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: rcentor Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs
Shs a true international community
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I just did a little research on where SHS's 30,000 visits each month (and slowly going up) come from. Most, not surprisingly, come from the good ol' USA. But I am very gratified to learn that people come here literally from all over the world. In the last month, f0r example, 583 visits came from Australia. We had 86 visits from China, 31 from Argentina, 91 from South Africa, 163 from India, 2169 from Canada, and 1 from Kazakhstan. We had 12 visitors from Vietnam, 113 from Brazil, 9 from Nigeria, 205 from France, and 1 from Greenland. In fact, there are only about 20 countries in the world, most in sub Saharan Africa, from ...
Source: Secondhand Smoke - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: SHS Visitors Source Type: blogs
Friday five: top five “best” breastfeeding 1-2-3 blog posts
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When my channel editor asked everyone in the Health and Wellness channel to compile the five best posts from each blog, I had to stop and think for a while. What makes a “best” post? I don’t think it’s necessarily the most popular post or the most commented on post. I think it’s the post of which I am most proud, the post into which I put extra effort and care. So I offer for your consideration, in no particular order:
1. Everything You Wanted to Know about Breastfeeding, Sex and Breast Milk Fetishes but Were Afraid to Ask — talk about tackling a difficult, taboo subject!
2. How to Get G...
Source: Breastfeeding 1-2-3 - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Angela White, J.D., breastfeeding counselor Tags: blogging breastfeeding breast feeding breast milk CIO cry-it-out crying-it-out fetish friday five gentle discipline mothering product reviews sex sleep top five Source Type: blogs
University of washington medical school teaches futile care theory as if the right to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment already exists
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An intrepid reader sent me this on-line syllabus from a bioethics course at the University of Washington Medical School. I checked on the link protocol and the author Nancy Jecker, Ph.D presumes that the right to refuse wanted life-sustaining treatment already exists. From the syllabus:While you will hear colleagues referring to particular cases or interventions as "futile", the technical meaning and moral weight of this term is not always appreciated. As you will make clinical decisions using futility as a criterion, it is important to be clear about the meaning of the concept.Futilitarians often deny that Futile Care The...
Source: Secondhand Smoke - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: Futile Care Theory. Medical School Training. Source Type: blogs
Fighting back against biological colonialism
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Biological colonialism (as I call it) is a real and growing international problem, in which rich Westerners pay destitute people for kidneys, the use of their wombs, and potentially coming soon to a poor country in Asia or Africa, for eggs to do mass human cloning. I have reported on some of the devastating consequences to the lives of the exploited here at SHS.Now the Philippines has struck an important blow against the practice by banning foreigners from receiving kidney transplants in the country. From the story: Foreigners will be permanently banned from receiving kidneys for transplant in the Philippines to prevent th...
Source: Secondhand Smoke - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: Biological Colonialism. The Organ Trade. Source Type: blogs
Treating stage iii and stage iv ckd with calcitriol
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Activated Vitamin D Associated with Mortality Drop in Chronic Kidney Disease
For patients with moderate-to-severe chronic kidney disease and hyperparathyroidism, activated vitamin D appears to lower the risk of death over two years, an observational study found.
The 429 patients with stage 3 or 4 disease who took oral calcitriol had a 26% reduced risk of death (P=0.016) and a 20% reduced risk of death or long-term dialysis (P=0.038) compared with 989 patients who did not take oral calcitriol, Bryan Kestenbaum, M.D., of the University of Washington here, and colleagues reported online in the Journal of the American ...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: rcentor Tags: Clinical articles Source Type: blogs
"who" vs. "whom"
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By David Bowman (Guest blogger)Do you remember Johnnie Cochran, the powerful lawyer who lead OJ Simpson's defense team? He was good, really good. And he used good grammar.One of his more powerful statements, actually a rhetorical question to the jury, was, "Who is kidding whom?" I admit to cheering when I heard him say that."Whom" is starting to drop out of the English language, I suspect, because many people don't know what it means or how to use it. Those who do are sometimes considered snooty by those who don't, like wearing a suit and tie to a ball game might be considered snooty by those who are dressed in shorts. Usi...
Source: Medical Writer - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Will they vandalize pepsi machines this time, too?
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In an encouraging step for New Jersey children, the state’s Senate Economic Growth Committee has approved a K-12 scholarship donation tax credit bill like the ones already operating in Florida, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Iowa, and Rhode Island. It would allow businesses to make donations to nonprofit scholarship funds that would in turn bring the option of private schooling within reach of low-income families.
Needless to say, the bill has earned the “intense opposition” of New Jersey’s large and powerful public school employees union. The last time somebody offered Jersey’s poor kids an escap...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Andrew J. Coulson Tags: Education & Child Policy Source Type: blogs
Now you see them, now you don't: 2007 lists of payments made by orthopedic device companies vanish into cyberspace
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Starting last year, we posted (here, here, here, and here) about the payments, often huge, that five manufacturers of prosthetic joints (Biomet, DePuy Orthopaedics (a unit of Johnson & Johnson), Stryker Orthopedics,a unit of Stryker Inc, Zimmer Holdings, and Smith & Nephew) revealed they made to orthopedic surgeons and various academic and other organizations. We also noted that some of the leadership of the major orthopedic societies have received substantial amounts from these companies, as have the societies themselves.The information we used in those posts about the payments came from lists posted on the intern...
Source: Health Care Renewal - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: DePuy orthopedic surgeons medical devices Zimmer Smith and Nephew Biomet Stryker conflicts of interest Source Type: blogs
When will they ever learn?
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(Above image is from Wikimedia commons.)I've been pondering what lessons there may be in the recent disaster in Burma. (The people from that country who now live in Massachusetts seem to prefer Burma to Myanmar, so I'm going with it.) The "Reverend" John Hagee -- who John McCain has not been called up on to reject, eject, object, subject, deject, project or retroject -- says that God sent Katrina to destroy the Mississippi coast, Plaquemines Parish, and the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans because a homosexual parade was planned for a couple of weeks later in the French Quarter, which God was kind enough to spare. Mysteriou...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Dude, where's my artificial womb?
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A couple of our bloggers (Terry Tomsick and Jennifer Bard) have written articles on ectogenesis (aka the artificial womb or the uterine replicator), which is a fascinating area, considering all the...
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]] (Source: Women's Bioethics Blog)
Source: Women's Bioethics Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Harnessing human energy - a green microgym.
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Could this be the wave of the future - human-powered energy-generating gyms.
I have a hard enough time getting to any gym. But maybe I’d be more enthusiatic if I knew that my sweat (and tears) was able to generate enough electricity to power a music system or DVD player.
There’s a guy in Seattle who is working on making this happen. Adam Boesel, a personal trainer, is setting up The Total Body Turnaround - a green microgym - in Portland, Oregon.
You can read all about it here
Tags: Exercise, Fitness, Green, gymsShare This (Source: Healthbolt)
Source: Healthbolt - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Liz Tags: Exposed! Fitness Green Health Misc. Exercise gyms Source Type: blogs
Global warming and the burmese cyclone
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In his excellent blog, Roger Pielke, Jr., notes that “On NPR’s Fresh Air earlier this week, Al Gore suggests that Typhoon Nargis, which may have killed 100,000 people in Myanmar, is linked to greenhouse gas emissions, or does he? He said ‘we’re seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.’”
So I checked the sea surface temperature (SST) “anomalies” (that is, differences in temperature from the long-term average) along the track of Cyclone Nargis to see if SST might have been unusually warm from April 28th to May 3rd (when it hit Burma...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Indur Goklany Tags: General Environment & Climate Source Type: blogs
The spark: art on the go
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Back to Back Beetles(Photo by D.L.)
Look -- down the
road! It's a fish...
it's a dragon...
it's an art car!Talk about a hobby with some pizzazz. Cartists, as art car creators
are often known, possess visions as varied as the personalities who wander our
planet. From their favorite sport, to
beloved childhood
tales, to Mother
Nature, their inspirations are limitless. Some even choose to use the dirt on the car as
their palette, while others turn their cars into living art.Although it may seem that art car creation is only for the
art-car-driving enthusiast, this hobby appears to be without limitations. Famous artists have t...
Source: The Spark of Yahoo! - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Oh how the government despises nurses!
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Yet another example of how much our 'government' cares about the people that work in the NHS. Or perhaps it is just an example of how the government cares about people in general. (BBC Story)Basically, the NHS poached a third-world nurse because so many UK trained nurses leave the profession because the UK taxpayer is too fucking mean to pay a reasonable amount of tax to pay nurses properly or provide staff:patient ratios that are not inhuman.Having ripped off the Phillipines, who can ill afford to pay to train nurses and then lose them to the NHS, the NHS then goes and kills the poor fucking nurse during childbirth.Not co...
Source: Dr Rant - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Dr Rant Source Type: blogs
Simple innovation saves women's lives
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Around the globe, 500,000 women die every year from complications related to giving birth. The most common cause is obstetrical hemorrhage, or heavy bleeding, which can cause death in two hours or less. Consider that in many rural areas a...
[This is a content summary only. Click the headline to visit Our Bodies, Our Blog for the full post, links, other content and more!] (Source: Our Bodies Our Blog)
Source: Our Bodies Our Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Kiki Source Type: blogs
Timelines for agelessness through medical technology
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I thought I'd point out a couple of Future Blogger posts today, as it's good to be able to demonstrate the spread of ideas when it comes to longevity science and the future of longer, healthier lives through advanced medicine. Let's start with a life span of 1000 years - which is the average age you'd reach if you lived as incautiously as folk do today, but age-related cellular and molecular damage in your body was regularly repaired:
10 Reasons You Will Live to 1000
#9: Human Desire. I understand perfectly well that a vast majority of people are terribly uncomfortable with the idea of radical life extension. Nevertheles...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Disabled vs insensitive
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I thought this makes the picture of the week!
From NST
THE fiery Ibrahim Ali met his match at Parliament lobby yesterday when a group of disabled confronted him over an “insensitive” statement about DAP chairman Karpal Singh.
The independent member of parliament for Pasir Mas was jeered by the 30-strong group for asking the speaker on April 30 why the wheel-chair-bound Karpal, the MP for Bukit Gelugor, had not stood to ask questions.
I hope this sends a loud and clear message to the elected representatives that we are watching how they behave!
Post from: Malaysian Medical Resources (Source: Malaysian Medical Resources)
Source: Malaysian Medical Resources - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Palmdoc Tags: - Palmdoc - Photoblog Source Type: blogs
Using influential kids can lower smoking by 22%
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Using Influential Kids can Lower Smoking by 22%
A smoking deterrence program that trains influential teens to pass on an anti-smoking message to their peers helps reduce teen smoking rates, according to research published in the latest issue of The Lancet.
Here are some recommendations for helping adolescent patients avoid tobacco use:
• Help patients develop refusal skills and give them educational materials.
• Ask patients if their parents, siblings, or friends use tobacco. If someone does smoke around the patient, assist the patient in developing refusal skills and provide educational material.
• If ...
Source: Malaysian Medical Resources - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Palmdoc Tags: - Insidermedicine - Medical Updates Source Type: blogs
Wilds of world to get converted to farm land?
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The Financial Times reports the Chinese government wants the Chinese to buy lots of farmland in other countries in order to boost production to feed China. Chinese companies will be... (Source: FuturePundit)
Source: FuturePundit - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Randall Parker Tags: Trends Agriculture Source Type: blogs
Wal-mart drops drug prices, shakes up market -- again
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By Jane Sarasohn-Kahn Wal-Mart continued its first-mover tactics in health by dropping the price of prescriptions again. This time, the target is maintenance meds, which Wal-Mart will price at $10 for a 90-days supply. This move puts Wal-Mart squarely in... (Source: The Health Care Blog)
Source: The Health Care Blog - May 9, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Matthew Tags: Jane Sarasohn-Kahn The Industry Source Type: blogs
Brace yourself…a peek at the 20 worst foods in america
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While researching post ideas today, I got caught in the killer vortex that is the World Wide Web. Link after link, interesting article after interesting article. And here I wanted to hit the hay early. *Sigh*
Anyway, though my travels were fun, my final resting spot for the evening was a real eye-opener. Because sadly, dear readers, I happened upon the Men’s Health list of 20 Worst Foods in America. The worst part? Some of my favorites (and I’ll bet, yours) were on there.
Categories were set up for entries like worst fast food chicken, worst drink, worst kids meal, worst steak, dessert, Chinese food, pasta, nac...
Source: Healthbolt - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Liberty Tags: Diet Food Nutrition Obesity Your Body Calorie Count Fast Food Health and Fast Food Health and Restaurant Food Health Food Worst Foods Source Type: blogs
Nih expert panel recommends smoking cessation pharmaceuticals for every smoking patient; panel chair and 8 members have financial ties to big pharma
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An NIH expert panel this week released a 2008 update of the clinical practice guideline regarding the treatment of tobacco use and dependence (see: Fiore MC, Jaén CR, Baker TB, et al. Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence: 2008 Update. Clinical Practice Guideline. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Public Health Service. May 2008).The guideline recommends that every patient who wishes to quit be treated with pharmaceuticals, unless medically contraindicated. The guideline also recommends the use of Chantix, despite concerns about its potential suicide risk, a risk that is currently being investigat...
Source: The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Nhs meltdown: the implosion continues
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What is left of the NHS in the UK is continuing its awful meltdown. Now, the bureaucrats in charge intend radical surgery. From the story: Scores of hospital departments such as maternity units and cancer clinics will be closed or merged across the country under plans for a radical shake-up of the NHS...The plans, which appear to have been held back until after last week's local elections, will be released over the next four weeks by the nine Strategic Health Authorities in England. They include setting a local target of reducing the four-hour wait in A&E to two hours, setting up dedicated trauma centres and better co-...
Source: Secondhand Smoke - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: NHS Meltdown. Reducing Local Care Source Type: blogs
A promising farm bill development
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Excellent. (Source: Cato-at-liberty)
Source: Cato-at-liberty - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Sallie James Tags: Domestic Issues Trade Budget & Tax Policy Source Type: blogs
Fed up with bureaucracy, a family doc gives up on tricare
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Chalk up one more casualty to the growing hassles of medical bureaucracy. Ben Brewer, Illinois family doc and WSJ.com columnist, says he’s stopped accepting an insurance plan that covers current and retired military personnel and their families.
“It seemed too often that I was doctoring with one hand tied behind my back,” Brewer writes.
The paperwork was “three times the work” of other health plans, including Medicaid, and Brewer was one of the only docs in a wide area who worked with the Tricare program. Specialists were in especially short supply.
In one case, he struggled to find a high-r...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Insurance Source Type: blogs
Ex-pfizer r&d chief lamattina joins human genome board
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Old researchers never die; they just join corporate boards.
John LaMattina (Photo: Pfizer)
John LaMattina, a chemist who retired as head of Pfizer R&D last year, has been named to the board of directors of Human Genome Sciences, a biotech company still looking for its first product.
LaMattina joins a cast of former Big Pharma honchos on the HGS board, including Chairman Jerry Karabelas, formerly of Novartis; Jürgen Drews, ex-Roche; and Maxine Gowen, ex-GlaxoSmithKline.
It’s a different vibe on the HGS board from the heady days of all things human genome around the turn of the millennium. Bill Haseltine, th...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Scott Hensley Tags: Cancer Biotech Drugs Research Source Type: blogs
Is bush softening in fight over children’s health insurance?
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In the long fight over expanding government insurance to cover children from middle-income families, the Bush administration may be backing down a bit.
A letter the feds sent to state officials this week suggests a somewhat softer tone than the administration set last August, when it said it would require states to cover 95% of eligible children from poor families before expanding coverage to other children. A bunch of states have sued the feds over the rule, which applies to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
States will now be given more flexibility in meeting that requirement, which could allow...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: SCHIP Congress Source Type: blogs
Lipitor, vytorin & procrit commercials scrutinized in congress today
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Even as we type, Rep. Bart Stupak is delivering opening remarks in a Congressional hearing on “potentially misleading and deceptive tactics” in direct-to-consumer drug ads. Watch the hearing online here.
Stupak (D-Mich.) aims to lay the groundwork for legislation to clamp down on drug marketing, including giving the FDA the power to force changes in TV drug ads before they are broadcast.
Stupak and Co. will look specifically at ads for three drugs:
Lipitor, a Pfizer drug that until recently was hawked by medical inventor Robert Jarvik, who has an M.D. but doesn’t practice medicine
Vytorin, from Merck and...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Congress Drugs Advertising Source Type: blogs
In georgia, millions in tax breaks for insurers on high-deductible plans
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High-deductible insurance plans got another boost yesterday, as Georgia’s governor signed a bill that will give insurers millions of dollars in tax breaks for selling the plans.
Many conservative health wonks say the plans, which are tied to health savings accounts, will drive improvements in efficiency and quality by bringing market forces to health care — give patients skin in the game, and they’ll become better shoppers for care. Georgia’s own Newt Gingrich, former Republican Speaker of the House, even showed up at the signing of yesterday’s bill.
The Georgia bill will exempt insurers from...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Insurance Source Type: blogs
Amgen ceo: ‘last year was awful’
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With Amgen’s stock down and the outlook still pretty grim for the company’s anemia drugs, CEO Kevin Sharer took his licks at yesterday’s annual meeting. The LA Times was there, and reports a few choice lines in today’s paper.
“You say you are looking out for the best interest of shareholders. I don’t believe you are,” one shareholder told Sharer.
Several people asked about Sharer’s compensation, which topped $13 million last year. The CEO pointed out that his ‘07 compensation package was reduced from the year before, and that the value of his holdings fell. “I fel...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Biotech Source Type: blogs
Health blog q&a: a u.s. medical school in the middle east
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Sharon King, on the phone with the Health Blog
A few years back, Cornell’s med school launched a new campus in Doha, Qatar. This isn’t a semester abroad kind of thing, but a full-fledged school of medicine that grants the M.D. and qualifies grads to apply to U.S. residency programs on par with grads of U.S. med schools. Backed by a foundation created by the Emir of Qatar, the program strikes us as an interesting example of how U.S. medicine is going global.
Today was graduation day for the first class. Sharon King, the president of a class that included students from countries such as Qatar, India, and Bosnia...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Medical Education Source Type: blogs
Department of justice gets in on vytoringate
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Add a few U.S. attorneys to the long list of folks looking into what happened with that failed trial of Vytorin, the cholesterol drug from Merck and Schering-Plough.
There was a flurry of action in the early months of the year, as the company reported that the drug failed to show a benefit over a generic alone in a long-awaited study. Most of the questions had to do with why it took the companies nearly two years after the trial was completed to report the results.
In its quarterly report this week, Schering-Plough added the U.S. attorneys at the end of a laundry list of inquiries. The list, impressive enough to repeat her...
Source: WSJ.com: Health Blog - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Jacob Goldstein Tags: Drugs Source Type: blogs
Conference may 23rd in nyc: new dilemmas in medicine
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Conference: New Dilemmas in Medicine, co-hosted by the IHEU-Appignani Bioethics Center & Bioethics International Where: 777 United Nations Plaza, 2nd Fl.,...
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Source: Women's Bioethics Blog - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Ssris, stealth marketing, and public radio
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We have previously posted about instances of stealth marketing in public television (here and here.) Now Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer have published "Stealth Marketers: Are Doctors Shilling for Drug Companies on Public Radio" in Slate. Their take-home message was:A few weeks ago, devoted listeners of public radio were treated to an episode of the award-winning radio series The Infinite Mind called 'Prozac Nation: Revisited.' The segment featured four prestigious medical experts discussing the controversial link between antidepressants and suicide. In their considered opinions, all four said that worries about the dru...
Source: Health Care Renewal - May 8, 2008 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Tags: stealth marketing pharmaceuticals SSRIs conflicts of interest Source Type: blogs
“ideologues” strike back—with evidence!
