Current Events

Despite two decades of dire health warnings and threats of federal intervention, the specialty drugmakers at the center of the nation’s deadly meningitis outbreak have repeatedly staved off tougher federal oversight with the help of powerful allies in Congress.

Over the years, industry friends like Tom DeLay, the former House Republican leader from Texas, have come to its defense. Even Senator Edward M. Kennedy, regarded as the strongest health care advocate in Congress in recent times, dropped efforts to impose new safeguards.

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The largest and longest restoration effort in LIPA's history is now also the subject of a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of two ratepayers who allege the authority and its operating partner, National Grid, were "grossly negligent" in restoring power to more than 945,000 customers.

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Dr. Bryan A. Cotton, a trauma surgeon in Houston, had not heard much about the new anticlotting drug Pradaxa other than the commercials he had seen during Sunday football games.

Then people using Pradaxa started showing up in his emergency room. One man in his 70s fell at home and arrived at the hospital alert and talking. But he rapidly declined. “We pretty much threw the whole kitchen sink at him,” recalled Dr. Cotton, who works at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. “But he still bled to death on the table.”

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Merck & Co. Inc., which made the controversial arthritis painkiller Vioxx, just settled an unusual class-action lawsuit involving Missouri residents who sued on consumer-fraud grounds without having shown that they incurred physical harm. The economic argument was that Vioxx did not provide what Merck claimed it would.

Vioxx was on the market from 1999 until it was withdrawn in 2004 because previously hidden clinical trials showed that it caused increased risk of heart attacks.

Merck has large operations in the Philadelphia region.

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The following products and vehicles were recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Unless otherwise indicated, discontinue use of the products immediately and return them to the store where purchased for a refund. For more information about the products, call the manufacturer or CPSC’s toll-free hotline, 800-638-2772. Only some cars or trucks recalled are affected. Contact a dealer for your model to see if it is included in the recall. The dealer will tell you what to do.

Product • Graco Classic Wood Highchairs, sold at Babies R Us, Burlington Coat Factory and other retail stores nationwide, and at Target.com and Walmart.com and other online retailers, from September 2007 to December 2010 for about $130.

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A drug producer linked to the pharmacy at the center of a national meningitis outbreak announced a recall of all of its products Wednesday after federal regulators found that it had not provided enough assurance that all the medicines it made were sterile.

The company, Ameridose, which is based in Massachusetts and is a major supplier of sterile injectable medications to hospitals across the country, underscored that there had been no reports of impurities in any of its products and said that it had announced the recall “out of an abundance of caution.”

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Shortly before a national fungal meningitis outbreak was linked to New England Compounding Center, the Framingham company sent customers a “Quality Assurance Report Card” trumpeting the cleanliness of its labs, even as internal tests showed widespread contamination.

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Medtronic Inc. (MDT) ghost-wrote sections of medical papers and paid physician authors hundreds of millions of dollars in “consulting fees” to promote its bone- growth product Infuse, a U.S. Senate investigation found.

Medtronic, the world’s biggest maker of heart-rhythm devices, helped write, edit and shape at least 11 medical journal articles about the product, which is used to spur bone growth after spinal surgery, according to report released today by the Senate Finance Committee.

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BMW is recalling certain 7-Series cars from the 2005 to 2007 model years that are equipped with optional features called Comfort Access and Soft Close Automatic doors. The company built the affected cars from Aug. 23, 2004, through Sept. 3, 2007. The recall includes 7,485 vehicles.

In a filing with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the car maker said a software problem could cause the doors to open unexpectedly even after they appear to be closed and latched.

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The disclosure this week that the deaths of five people since 2009 may be linked to a popular energy drink has revealed major gaps in the way federal regulators and companies monitor product safety.

Food and Drug Administration officials say that they are aggressively investigating the death reports, which are associated with Monster Energy, a highly caffeinated beverage. And its producer, the Monster Beverage Corporation, insists its products are safe, adding that it was unaware, apart from one fatality report, of other filings about deaths and serious injuries linked to its drinks.

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Johnson & Johnson has recalled more than 157,000 surgical stapler devices and accessories used in hemorrhoids treatment procedures due to potential malfunctions that pose a serious safety risk.

J&J's Ethicon Endo-Surgery division also has stopped selling one of the products in the U.S. "as part of a business decision," the company said.

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