Current Events

Johnson & Johnson officials destroyed or misplaced documents related to its vaginal-mesh implants and should be barred from relying on some defenses in planned trials over the devices, patients’ lawyers said.

Officials of J&J’s Ethicon unit, which made the company’s Gynecare Prolift implant, lost or disposed of potentially hundreds of thousands of documents over a decade even though they were ordered by executives to preserve them, attorneys for women who blame the devices for their injuries said in a court filing in West Virginia Dec. 2.

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When a Metro-North train jumped the tracks in the Bronx on Sunday morning, killing four people and injuring more than 70, it was going 82 miles per hour, on a 30 m.p.h. curve. Why it hit that horrific speed — whether because the engineer was sleeping, distracted or incapacitated, or because of some catastrophic mechanical failure — is a question for the National Transportation Safety Board, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs Metro-North, and criminal investigators and prosecutors.

The question for the rest of us is why that train — and thousands of other trains in commuter and freight railroads across the country — had no automated system to slow or stop it when it ran out of control.

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This is your heart on an energy drink, and it’s contracting significantly faster than it was before you opened that can full of liquid stimulant.

System enables new uses, but critics say this flexibility comes with risks.

The Mayo Clinic's Dr. Richard Marsh helps control brain seizures in epileptic patients with a fiber-optic laser first introduced to treat prostate tumors.

At the University of Minnesota, Dr. Ganesh Raveendran has figured out how to treat young stroke victims with a device designed for congenital heart defects.

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Patients injured by a flawed hip implant sold by Johnson & Johnson have directed their anger at myriad places over the years. The regulatory system that allowed the product’s sale. The company that repeatedly denied problems with the device. Even the doctors who implanted the hips.

Now, some patients have found a new target for their ire: the legal system and the lawyers they hired to sue Johnson & Johnson.

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Ten former N.H.L. players sued the league Monday for negligence and fraud, saying the sport’s officials should have done more to address head injuries but instead celebrated a culture of speed and violence.

The players, who were in the league in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s, filed their suit in federal court in Washington. One of the lead lawyers is Mel Owens, a former N.F.L. player who has represented scores of other retired players in workers’ compensation cases.

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A patient with abdominal pain dies from a ruptured appendix after a doctor fails to do a complete physical exam. A biopsy comes back positive for prostate cancer, but no one follows up when the lab result gets misplaced. A child's fever and rash are diagnosed as a viral illness, but they turn out to be a much more serious case of bacterial meningitis.

Such devastating errors lead to permanent damage or death for as many as 160,000 patients each year, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Not only are diagnostic problems more common than other medical mistakes—and more likely to harm patients—but they're also the leading cause of malpractice claims, accounting for 35% of nearly $39 billion in payouts in the U.S. from 1986 to 2010, measured in 2011 dollars, according to Johns Hopkins.

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Guardrails and their terminal heads are designed to save lives.

But according to some lawsuits, they have become more dangerous since the guardrail head model changed in 2005.

Guardrail piercing cars

In 2010, a guardrail in Florida punctured the floorboard of a truck, slicing through the leg of the 18-year-old passenger.

Two years earlier in Tennessee, a mother died when a guardrail cut straight through the front of her sport utility vehicle.

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The Justice Department is set to announce a $13 billion settlement with JPMorgan Chase over the bank’s questionable mortgage practices in the run-up to the financial crisis, people briefed on the deal said on Monday, as prosecutors and the bank hashed out the final details of the deal.

The announcement, expected as soon as Tuesday, will detail how the government will divide the record $13 billion payout, with $4 billion directed to struggling homeowners. Under the settlement, the people briefed on the deal said, JPMorgan will have to hire an independent monitor to oversee the distribution of the $4 billion in relief, a black mark for a bank once considered one of Wall Street’s most trusted institutions.

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Federal health officials say that defects in some Medtronic devices used in heart procedures are severe enough that they could cause serious injury or death.

The warning covers about 15,000 recalled guidewires, which are inserted through an artery and used to guide other devices into place, such as stents to hold open blocked arteries.

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Fearing the spread of a meningitis outbreak that has caused seven people at Princeton University to be hospitalized this year, university officials have warned students to stop sharing drinks and to avoid kissing. Bright orange posters urge students to “keep healthy and carry on,” and red cups labeled “Mine. Not Yours” serve as reminders not to share drinks at parties.

Despite the campaign, a male student last week was found to have bacterial meningitis, nearly eight months after the outbreak’s first case, in which a female student returned from spring break showing symptoms. Although the previous six patients have recovered from the disease, in which bacteria cause infections that can maim or kill people within hours, the university’s leaders are considering a stronger step to halt the outbreak: distributing a vaccine not approved for use in the United States.

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