Current Events

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Hyundai and Mitsubishi are recalling certain car models because of problems the companies say can increase the risk of crashes.

Hyundai is recalling 2013 models of the Elantra because the brake pedal stopper pad can deteriorate, a condition that could lead to the brake light staying on or the transmission shifting out of park without applying the brake pedal. More than 64,500 cars are affected by the recall.

An environmental health group is calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate the ingredients that manufacturers use in sunscreens to boost sun protection factor (SPF) values.

The Environmental Working Group in a letter to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf on Thursday said it’s concerned that the ingredients being used only keep the skin from reddening — a warning sign of a sunburn — without truly offering enhanced protection from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

Insurance giant Aetna's announcement this week that it would sharply curb its participation in the insurance exchanges set up under the Affordable Care Act was seen by some as payback to the Obama administration for blocking its proposed merger with Humana. After all, in April, Aetna chief executive Mark Bertolini had called selling insurance in the exchanges "a good investment."

In a major blow to Obamacare, one of America’s largest health insurers said it was pulling out of most of the markets in which it was participating, citing huge losses in the past quarter.

In a statement Monday, Aetna reported that it lost $200 million in the second quarter of 2016 and as a result would participate next year in just four states’ Obamacare marketplaces: Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia.

Aetna had been offering health-insurance plans in 15 states’ Obamacare markets this year, but its retreat mirrors moves by several other major health-insurance providers in recent months.

“As a strong supporter of public exchanges as a means to meet the needs of the uninsured, we regret having to make this decision,” Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said.

Some conservative critics of Obamacare, and even some liberal advocates who favored socialized medicine, predicted that private insurance companies would mitigate their exposure to a potential “death spiral.

A weight-loss pill taken by millions of patients in the last two decades has been propped up by problematic clinical studies that “systematically understated” the drug’s potential harms, according to a new analysis. Danish researchers who reviewed data summaries and published journal articles found that seven drug trials funded by the drug maker Roche in the 1990s downplayed the frequency of apparent side effects like diarrhea or incontinence.

The drug, known to scientists as orlistat, and marketed in the US as Alli, has generated hundreds of millions in sales but has slumped in recent years in part because of a reputation for unpleasant gastrointestinal side effects.

The analysis shines light on “something that clinicians often are suspicious of: that the adverse event reporting in clinical trials doesn’t give the whole picture,” said Dr. Raj Padwal, a clinical pharmacologist and internist at the University of Alberta, who was not involved in the analysis.
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Johnson & Johnson’s Levaquin has been a courtroom headache for the drugmaker for years, and now, a new surge of lawsuits might have execs reaching for their Tylenol.

Plaintiffs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey are suing J&J, claiming that the company marketed Levaquin “aggressively” even though it knew the powerful antibiotic could cause peripheral neuropathy, a painful nerve condition.

The lawsuits come on the heels of stepped-up FDA warnings about serious risks, for Levaquin and the rest of the fluoroquinolone class.

Among the most recent lawsuits, filed in Pennsylvania federal court last week, plaintiff Michelin Rowell claims that taking Levaquin caused peripheral neuropathy that proved permanent. The suit alleges that Levaquin is a defective product, and that J&J committed fraud by failing to adequately warn doctors and consumers about the neuropathy risks earlier.
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A Chinese manufacturer of antibiotics sold in the U.S. hid quality testing results that may have indicated product contamination, the latest evidence of Read more . . .

A federal judge in Louisiana has selected two lawsuits to serve as the first test trials amid more than 7,200 cases challenging the safety of Bayer AG and Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Janssen's blockbuster blood thinner Xarelto.

The first trial, slated to start in February, involves claims Xarelto caused a Louisiana man to develop gastrointestinal bleeding, according to an order Friday from U.S. District Judge Eldon Fallon in the Eastern District of Louisiana.

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The Justice Department has found evidence of criminal misconduct by Volkswagen in the handling of its diesel-emissions fiasco and is trying to negotiate a settlement, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday based on unnamed sources.

Prosecutors have not yet settled on specific criminal charges, but are in discussions with the automaker with the hope of wrapping up the case by the end of the year.

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According to new research, drinking from refillable water bottle can be “many times worse than licking your dog's toy” in terms of the amount of bacteria it will bring you into contact with.

The website Treadmill Reviews commissioned EmLab P&K to test 12 water bottles of four different types - screw-top, slide-top, squeeze-top, and straw-top. Each water bottle had been used by an athlete for a week without being washed.

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The Food and Drug Administration has found hidden drug ingredients, potentially harmful to human health, in more than a dozen products shipped from abroad.

All 14 items in question have either been promoted for weight loss or sexual enhancement. The FDA said they were intercepted and identified during routine examinations of international mail shipments in recent months.

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