Current Events

When Tove Schuster raced to help a fellow nurse lift a patient at Crozer-Chester Medical Center near Philadelphia in March 2010, she didn't realize she was about to become a troubling statistic.

While working the overnight shift, she heard an all-too-common cry: "Please, I need help. My patient has fallen on the floor."

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Dietary supplement fans got a big "buyer beware" warning this week when the New York attorney general's office ordered GNC, Target, Walgreens and Wal-Mart to pull a number of store-brand products from their shelves, following an investigation that found most didn't contain herbs listed on their labels. In some cases, the attorney general said the supplements didn't even identify potentially dangerous allergens.

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(Bloomberg) -- The people investigating the fiery commuter rail accident in New York are looking into why the electrified third rail that powers the train became dislodged during the crash and whether it contributed to the severity of the casualties.

It’s not yet clear if the electricity to the track shut off automatically as it is supposed to do in an accident, Robert Sumwalt, a member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said Wednesday at a news briefing near the crash site in Westchester County, New York.

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A federal judge in Philadelphia says $765 million isn't enough, especially for those who may have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain disease.

Resist cheap Super Bowl metaphors. No allusions to the Seahawks' inexplicable last-second play calling. Here's what you need to know about the latest twist in the deadly serious matter of NFL concussions.

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The main system for keeping track of the dangerous side effects of prescription drugs is deeply flawed, primarily because drug makers are submitting incomplete information about the problems to the Food and Drug Administration, according to a new study by a nonprofit group that tracks drug safety issues.

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The number of people killed in General Motors cars with defective ignition switches was raised to 51 today, as the victim's compensation fund began final evaluations of thousands of claims.

Deadline for filing a claim was Saturday, but the fund's deputy administrator, Camille Biro, says, "We still have thousands to go through. We'll likely be working through the end of spring."

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Melissa Rivers has filed a malpractice lawsuit against the clinic where her mom was being treated, stopped breathing and later died.\

The “Fashion Police star” was at the clinic for a routine medical procedure when reportedly the doctors performed another medical procedure called a laryngoscopy on her vocal cords without consent. Among the shocking details of the suit, Dr. Gwen Korovin left the operating room to avoid being caught.

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Two papers co-authored by a University of Illinois expert in the regulation and financing of health care conclude that tort reform has had relatively little impact on the U.S. health care system.

Tort reform advocates have hailed caps on noneconomic damages as a silver bullet for controlling health care costs – as a way to reduce defensive medicine and attract more physicians to a state, particularly those practicing in high-risk specialties. But according to David Hyman, the H. Ross and Helen Workman Chair in Law and professor of medicine at Illinois, there's scant evidence to support any of those claims.

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Syracuse, N.Y. -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants to pull the plug on a free state website that provides details about New York doctors' medical malpractice records, hospital affiliations and other background information.

A two-sentence item buried in Cuomo's proposed budget says the New York State Physician Profile website should be eliminated because much of the information is available elsewhere on the web. Scuttling the website would save the state $1.2 million annually.

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Buying a used car in the United States can be a dangerous proposition — if the vehicle has an unadvertised safety defect.

This month, Carlos Solis died after the airbag in a used car he bought last year from a Texas dealer exploded, sending a piece of metal into his neck. Mr. Solis, 35, was not aware when he bought the vehicle that its airbags could be defective and had been recalled, according to a lawsuit filed by his family on Friday.

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Sen. Charles Schumer on Friday called on the Long Island Rail Road to begin testing its locomotive engineers for sleep disorders to prevent an accident if one fell asleep at the controls.

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