Current Events

The Food and Drug Administration announced Sunday that USPlabs is recalling certain OxyElite Pro sports supplement products that have been linked to an outbreak of liver illnesses, including one death.

The action follows a letter the FDA sent Wednesday notifying the Dallas-based dietary supplement maker that if it did not recall the supplements voluntarily, the agency would order the company to stop distribution of the products immediately and notify other distributors and retailers to stop selling them.

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Viola Purcell can't even drink a bottle of water without choking. She twitches uncontrollably and has trouble breathing and eating. She says it all started after her doctor prescribed a generic drug for acid reflux.

"I was a happy person and I liked to smile, and I can't smile now," she said, breaking into tears. "There's no smile in there."

She took the prescription drug, metoclopramide, for more than five years, thinking it was safe.

"The doctor told me that 'this is going to make you feel better,'" Purcell said. "But it didn't; it only got worse."

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Two sisters from Mount Horeb say a cervical cancer vaccine shut down their ovaries and almost certainly left them unable to get pregnant, a claim scheduled for a hearing Thursday and Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Madelyne Meylor, 20, and Olivia Meylor, 19, say their premature ovarian failure came from the vaccine against human papillomavirus, or HPV.

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Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)’s Janssen unit pleaded guilty to misbranding its anti-psychotic medication Risperdal as part of a $2.2 billion settlement with U.S. prosecutors, the largest for a single drug.

The company, based in Titusville, New Jersey, entered the guilty plea today to one misdemeanor at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage in Philadelphia.

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The former chief executive officer of New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery, John R. Reynolds, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for taking almost $300,000 in kickbacks from a subordinate and lying about it, federal prosecutors said.

U.S. District Judge Harold Baer Jr. sentenced Reynolds today in a hearing in Manhattan federal court, the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement.

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In February 2011 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded a 10-month study finding that computer flaws had not caused Toyota sedans to speed up on their own. NHTSA engineers worked with NASA software experts who, in addition to poking and prodding Toyota throttles, bombarded test cars with electromagnetic radiation to see if that provoked a problem. “We enlisted the best and the brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics systems, and the verdict is in,” said Ray LaHood, then secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. “There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas.”

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A southern New Mexico man who was pulled over for not making a complete stop was taken to two hospitals and forced to have anal probes, three enemas, two body X-rays and a colonoscopy because police thought he was hiding drugs, according a federal lawsuit. In El Paso, a woman crossing the border was stripped searched, vaginally probed then taken to the hospital for more invasive tests, a forced bowel movement, X-rays and scans, the American Civil Liberties Union says.

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Curis Inc. (CRIS), a developer of cancer medicines, fell the most in more than three years after U.S. regulators placed a partial hold on a trial of its drug for solid tumors after a patient died from liver failure.

Curis dropped 21 percent to $3.08 at 10:16 a.m. New York time after falling to $3.03 in its biggest intraday decline since June 2010. The shares of the Lexington, Massachusetts-based company had risen 13 percent this year through yesterday.

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(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a new warning on the use of the anticoagulant Lovenox in patients fitted with a spinal catheter because of the risk of spinal column bleeding and potential paralysis.

The FDA said on Wednesday that healthcare professionals should carefully consider timing when inserting or removing a spinal catheter in patients taking Lovenox, which is made by Sanofi SA, or its generic versions, which are sold under the name enoxaparin.

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On a day when consumers in Washington State were voting on whether to require food companies to label products containing genetically engineered ingredients, Cargill announced that it would begin labeling packages of ground beef containing what is colloquially known as pink slime.

Pink slime, or what the beef industry prefers to call “finely textured beef,” is made from beef trimmings left over after the processing of higher-quality cuts of meat that is washed in citric acid or ammonia to kill contaminates. It became the stuff of consumer nightmares last year after an ABC News report exposed its widespread use as a binder in ground beef, and companies from Kroger and Safeway to McDonald’s scrambled to drop it from their shelves and products.

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Vehicles Affected: Approximately 2,310 model-year 2014 versions of the Nissan Pathfinder crossover; only vehicles with almond-colored interiors built between July 25 and Sept. 5, 2013, are affected.

The Problem: An improperly manufactured seam on the instrument panel could cause the front passenger airbag to deploy incorrectly, increasing the risk of injury.

The Fix: Dealers will inspect and replace the affected instrument panel assemblies for free.

What Owners Should Do: Nissan will notify owners in early November. Owners can call Nissan at 800-647-7261 or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration at 888-327-4236 for more information.

Information obtained here.