Current Events

At an invitation-only gathering late last year, U.S. regulators and their guests huddled at a hotel near Washington, D.C., to discuss the best way to detect cancer-causing asbestos in talc powders and cosmetics.

The “Asbestos in Talc Symposium,” sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration, was dominated by industry hands: Most of the 21 non-government participants had done work for talc companies, such as testing and serving as expert witnesses and consultants, symposium documents and other records show.

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Carlos Solis never knew he was driving with a “shrapnel bomb” inside his steering wheel.

The 35-year-old father of two was waiting to make a left turn on a suburban road outside Houston when another car struck the front end of his Honda Accord, triggering its airbags.

Instead of protecting Solis, the defective airbags shot a piece of metal into his neck and severed his carotid artery, killing him within minutes.

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Many supplements marketed for brain health may contain piracetam, an ingredient not proven effective for preventing or easing dementia or cognitive impairment and not approved for sale in the U.S., researchers say.

In an analysis of five products purchased online, researchers found that four contained piracetam, sometimes in dangerously high amounts. The fifth, which was labeled and sold as piracetam, contained no detectable amount of the drug.

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A Pennsylvania appeals court upheld a $70 million verdict against Johnson & Johnson in a lawsuit charging its Risperdal anti-psychotic drug caused a man to grow female breasts and also ruled that punitive damages may be available in the case.

In addition to upholding the verdict for Tennessee resident Andrew Yount, the Pennsylvania Superior Court Tuesday sent back to the Philadelphia trial judge the issue of punitive damages in the case, potentially raising the stakes for J&J. The company was hit last month with $8 billion in punitive damages in another Philadelphia Risperdal case.

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Federal health and regulatory officials warned consumers Friday not to eat romaine lettuce of any kind harvested from the Salinas Valley, one of California’s major agricultural regions, because it may be contaminated with a particularly dangerous type of E. coli bacteria that has sickened 40 people in 16 states.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration told consumers to throw away any romaine lettuce they may already have purchased. Restaurants should not serve it, stores should not sell it, and people should not buy it, if it was harvested from Salinas, a growing area in Northern California. It doesn’t matter if it is chopped, whole head, precut or part of a mix.

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More than 1,350 Australian women won a seven-year-old class action lawsuit on Thursday against Johnson & Johnson (J&J) for misleading patients and surgeons about the risks of the pharmaceutical giant’s pelvic mesh implants.

The suit is one of many J&J has faced in the United States, Canada and Europe over the implants, used to treat urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, in which organs shift from normal positions. J&J in October agreed to pay nearly $117 million to resolve claims in 41 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

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IKEA pulled in $6 billion in U.S. sales last year. Crystal Ellis wants that number to be lower.

The Seattle mom's 2-year-old son, Camden, was killed by a falling IKEA dresser in 2014, which has since been recalled by the company. Three years later, she requested to meet with the president of the retailer, pleading for action to get the dresser out of other homes.

That meeting has not yet happened. And Ellis is not the only parent demanding it.

There have been at least 186 reports of Malm dressers tipping over, with 91 resulting in injuries. There are 113 more reports of other IKEA dresser fall-overs, resulting in 53 injuries. In all, eight children have died from the incidents.

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The Food and Drug Administration has issued a Class 1 recall—its most serious such notice—of the Forte Gamma Camera System, worried it could cause serious injury or even death.

Concerns stem from the possibility that the 660-pound system’s detector may become detached from the device without warning, potentially crushing or trapping patients, according to an FDA notice issued Monday, Nov. 4.

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After unanimously voting to recommend a miraculous hepatitis C drug for approval in 2013, a panel of experts advising the Food and Drug Administration gushed about what they’d accomplished.

“I voted ‘yes’ because, quite simply, this is a game changer,” National Institutes of Health hepatologist Dr. Marc Ghany said of Sovaldi, Gilead Science’s new pill designed to cure most cases of hepatitis C within 12 weeks.

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The total cost of data breaches at healthcare organizations is projected to reach $4 billion by the end of 2019, according to a Black Book survey released Monday morning.

Nearly all information technology (IT) professionals at provider organizations believe that data hackers are outpacing organizational efforts to protect sensitive healthcare data, a trend which is expected to worsen in 2020.

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(Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Monday classified the recall of Abbott Laboratories’ CentriMag blood pumping system following the death of a patient, as Class 1 or the most serious type of recall.

The CentriMag System pumps blood through a patient for up to six hours during open heart procedures and is also used to provide temporary blood circulatory support to patients for up to 30 days.

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