Current Events

Sometimes you do everything right and it still goes wrong.

Michael Pirron runs a technology consulting company in Richmond, Va. For some time, he fretted about his parents, about what would happen if, like most older Americans, they needed expensive care as the years passed. They were still young-ish and comparatively healthy, but his father’s mother had lived to be 105.

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More than 1,000 Florida borrowers will share in a $831,110 class action award for being billed unlawful foreclosure-related fees by the Law Offices of David J. Stern.

The judgment, which is believed to be the first successful class action lawsuit against the former foreclosure titan, was finalized last week by Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Lucy Chernow Brown.

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Fourteen months after Chrysler said it would recall about 745,000 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Jeep Liberty sport utility vehicles because the front or side air bags might deploy without the vehicle being in a crash, about 94 percent of them had not been repaired, leaving some owners angry and scared.

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A leading critic says that the FDA has been remiss for not removing a stent from the market although strong evidence exists that its use leads to more deaths and strokes.

The Wingspan intracranial stent, manufactured by Stryker Neurovascular, was approved in 2005 by the FDA through the humanitarian device exemption (HDE) for the rare condition of intracranial atherosclerosis. The approval was based on one single-arm study of 45 patients. But then in 2011 came the startling results of a much larger and well controlled trial from the NIH. 451 patients were randomized in the SAMMPRIS trial to either aggressive medical therapy or the same medical therapy plus stenting with the Wingspan stent system. The trial was terminated early due to a much higher rate of stroke or death in the Wingspan group. In response to SAMMPRIS the FDA narrowed the indication for Wingspan but did not remove it from the market.

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Sorin SpA (SRN) fell the most in almost five years in Milan trading after Forbes reported that potentially fatal blockages have developed in the company’s Mitroflow heart valve when used in children.

A girl who had a Mitroflow valve died last year during a severe gastrointestinal illness, and an examination revealed that the device was severely obstructed, surgeons at Boston Children’s Hospital said in a Jan. 14 letter to the American College of Cardiology. An echocardiogram seven months before she died found no signs of blockage, according to the letter, which was reported on Forbes.com on Jan. 21.

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Fifty years after the U.S. surgeon general first linked cigarette smoking to deadly diseases such as lung cancer and heart disease, his successors continue to add to the list of health problems associated with tobacco use.

Smoking is a cause of liver cancer and colorectal cancer, the fourth-most-diagnosed form of the disease in the United States, Acting Surgeon General Boris D. Lushniak found in a report released Friday. In addition, he said, smoking is a cause of Type 2 diabetes mellitus, age-related macular degeneration, erectile dysfunction and rheumatoid arthritis. It can impair the immune system, worsen asthma and cause cleft lips and palates in fetuses. And exposure to secondhand smoke can cause strokes.

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Jan 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration appears skeptical that data submitted by Johnson & Johnson proves its anticoagulant Xarelto is effective in reducing the risk of further heart problems in patients who have recently suffered a heart attack.

The agency questioned the way in which J&J analyzed clinical trial data, and said there was no convincing proof the drug confers significant benefit or fills an unmet medical need, given that there are other therapies on the market.

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Merck said it is recalling its combination cholesterol drug Liptruzet, which was introduced in May, because of packaging defects that could reduce effectiveness.

In a statement on its website, Whitehouse Station-based Merck said the recall will clear out the entire stock of Liptruzet, which includes all four dose strengths and every batch it has distributed.

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Detroit — The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it is upgrading and expanding its investigation into nearly 600,000 Chrysler SUVs over reports of fires in vehicle headlines.

NHTSA said it has upgraded its investigation into 593,000 2011-2013 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango SUVs to an engineering analysis. NHTSA said there may be 52 unique fire incidents — including three injury allegations — on Grand Cherokee and Durango vehicles.

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USA TODAY - General Motors is recalling 303,000 of its new 2014 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra full-size pickup trucks in the U.S. to reprogram software to prevent them from catching on fire.

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Altria Group Inc. (MO), Reynolds American Inc. (RAI) and other tobacco companies agreed with the U.S. on how they will publicize admissions that they deceived the American public on the dangers of smoking.

The companies and the Justice Department resolved that “corrective statements” will appear in the print and online editions of newspapers and on television as well as on the companies’ websites. Expanded information on the adverse health effects of smoking will appear on cigarette packages, according to the agreement filed yesterday in federal court in Washington.

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