Tainted Drug May Still Be in U.S. Almost Decade After Deaths
Heparin tainted with unauthorized Chinese-made ingredients may be on the market in the U.S. and the Food and Drug Administration hasn’t moved swiftly enough to prevent it, according to a congressional probe nearly a decade after hundreds of deaths were linked to sullied batches of the blood-thinning drug.
This possible contamination is different from the...
Volkswagen’s Quality Issues Widen With Latest Recalls
Volkswagen AG, still struggling to reach a deal with U.S. environmental authorities to fix nearly 600,000 tainted diesel-powered cars, could also be facing wider quality issues across a broad range of models in addition to its emissions-cheating scandal.
Read more.
Takata Puts Worst-Case Airbag Recall Costs at $24 Billion
Takata Corp., the supplier behind the auto industry’s biggest recall ever, estimated that a comprehensive callback of its airbag inflators would total about 2.7 trillion yen ($24 billion), according to a person familiar with the matter. The shares plunged to a record low.
The worst-case recall scenario would involve 287.5 million airbag inflators, said the...
Obama joins fight against opioid abuse
Lending his voice to the fight against a drug scourge that kills 28,000 Americans a year, President Obama told nearly 2,000 policymakers, professionals and parents Tuesday that the nation must provide more treatment for people addicted to opioids and reframe the addiction problem through the lens of public health.
“The most important thing we can...
F.T.C. Sues Volkswagen Over ‘Deceptive’ Diesel Car Ads
For years, Volkswagen ran ads that emphasized how efficient, fun and, above all, clean its diesel cars were. A series of online ads last year featured three sisters debunking old wives’ tales about diesel, including that it was dirty and that it smelled bad.
But in the latest headache for the German automaker — which...
Nearly All U.S. Doctors ‘Overprescribe’ Addictive Narcotic Painkillers: Survey
When American doctors give their patients narcotic painkillers, 99 percent of them hand out prescriptions that exceed the federally recommended three-day dosage limit, new research suggests.
And some doctors exceeded that limit by a lot: Nearly one-quarter gave out month-long dosages, despite the fact that research has shown that a month's use of prescription narcotic...
GM recalls Chevrolet Malibus over air bags
General Motors is recalling about 3,200 of its 2016 Chevrolet Malibus in the U.S. and Canada to replace side-impact air bag assemblies.
Two weld studs that secure the front- and rear-side-impact air bag assemblies could fracture and separate when the air bag deploys. As a result the inflated cushion may not remain in its intended...
Scope maker Olympus sought price hike amid superbug outbreak
Soon after doctors at UCLA's Ronald Reagan Medical Center traced deadly infections to tainted medical scopes last year, they pressed the device maker to lend them replacements.
But Olympus Corp. refused. Instead, the Tokyo company offered to sell UCLA 35 new scopes for $1.2 million — a 28% increase in price from what it charged...
J&J Ordered to Pay $502 Million Over Pinnacle Hip Failures
Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $502 million to a group of patients who accused the company of hiding flaws in its Pinnacle artificial hips that caused the devices to prematurely fail and left them facing surgeries and pain, in J&J’s first loss over the products.
A federal-court jury in Dallas concluded Thursday that...
Now There’s Proof: Docs Who Get Company Cash Tend to Prescribe More Brand-Name Meds
A ProPublica analysis has found for the first time that doctors who receive payments from the medical industry do indeed tend to prescribe drugs differently than their colleagues who don’t. And the more money they receive, on average, the more brand-name medications they prescribe.
We matched records on payments from pharmaceutical and medical device makers...
