Current Events

In the wake of two fatal crashes of Boeing’s new 737 MAX 8, the Federal Aviation Administration faces growing criticism for delegating much of the safety certification of the aircraft to the aerospace company itself.

As The Seattle Times reported Sunday, some of the agency’s own engineers complained they were pressured to hand off too much safety analysis to Boeing on a new flight control system for the MAX, and that system is suspected of playing a role in both October’s Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian Airlines crash March 10.

Read More

A study published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation found an association between people who consume sugary drinks and an increased risk of death.

The observational study found adults who consumed more than two sweetened drinks a day had their risk of death increase by 21 percent over adults who drank less than one sweetened drink a month. For women, their risk increased by 25 percent, while the risk for men was up 12 percent.

Read More

Families of schoolchildren gunned down in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre can sue Remington Outdoor Co Inc, a Connecticut court ruled on Thursday, in a setback for gun makers long shielded from liability in mass shootings.

Read More

(Reuters) - A California jury on Wednesday awarded $29 million to a woman who said that asbestos in Johnson & Johnson’s talcum-powder-based products caused her cancer.

Read More

(Reuters Health) - Mothers who smoke during pregnancy are more than twice as likely to have babies die suddenly in their sleep as women who avoid tobacco, a U.S. study suggests.

More than 3,700 U.S. infants up to 12 months old die each year of sleep-related causes like sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) or accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed or other unknown causes, researchers report in Pediatrics. Smoking has long been linked to an increased risk of these fatalities, known as sudden unexpected infant death (SUID), but the current study offers fresh evidence of how much cutting back or quitting might help improve babies’ survival odds.

The Food and Drug Administration announced a sweeping plan on Friday to review and address the safety of surgical staplers, including a new examination of seven years’ worth of hidden reports highlighted Thursday in a Kaiser Health News investigation.

In a letter sent to health care providers Friday, the FDA said it will convene an advisory meeting on the safety of the devices and signaled that it might reclassify surgical staplers to put them under tighter control. The agency also said it plans to issue proposed recommendations to companies that make the devices, which are used in countless surgeries.

Read More

The NHTSA on Tuesday said that Audi will recall 74,881 vehicles over a fault fuel rails may leak and lead to a fire.

The recall covers certain 2015 through 2018 model year Audi A8, A7, A6, and Q7 crossover SUV, according to documents filed with the NHTSA in January. The fuel rails in certain Audi vehicles may have been improperly welded, the automaker said after conducting an internal an engineering analysis. Variations in the welding process may cause fuel to leak in the end cap area over time, though the amount of fuel will be very low, per the brand. Owners may notice a fuel odor if the problem exists.

Read More

Zoll Medical Corporation, which received FDA clearance a few years ago for both home and hospital versions of its wearable defibrillator LifeVest, is now dealing with a range of lawsuits and FDA actions over problems with the device. At least two people have died because their vests failed to activate due to an electrical problem, the FDA reports, while local media in Pittsburgh reports that other patients are having the opposite problem, with burns and rashes caused by the device activating erroneously.

Read More

The drugmaker Eli Lilly will begin selling a cheaper version of its most popular insulin, Humalog, in an effort to head off criticism about the rising costs of prescription drugs, the company said Monday.

The devices' maker stands behind Durata leads' long-term safety and durability, and the devices remain on the market.

A new study of malfunction reports says hundreds of thousands of special wires called “leads” for heart defibrillators made by St. Jude Medical are vulnerable to a problem that can cause unneeded high-voltage shocks or a sudden loss of lifesaving therapy in unsuspecting patients.

The company’s Durata leads are susceptible to internal insulation breaches that “may result in serious adverse events without forewarning,” concludes the paper, which was underwritten by the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation. The paper also says standard tests may not uncover these insulation defects.

Losing defibrillator therapy in this way could be fatal because patients may not realize their device won’t correct potentially lethal heart problems like ventricular tachycardia. Conversely, receiving unneeded defibrillator shocks can be psychologically traumatic for some patients.

Read More

OKLAHOMA CITY — Big pharma is facing a major test in a small courthouse 20 miles south of here: the first trial at which a jury could decide whether drug companies bear responsibility for the nation’s opioid crisis.

Thousands of cities, counties, Native American tribes and others have filed lawsuits up and down the opioid supply chain, advancing various allegations of culpability for the crisis that began with widespread abuse of powerful painkillers. Most of the cases have been consolidated in a major federal action in Cleveland. But as that case lags, smaller state cases like the one in Oklahoma are moving quickly to hear the allegations, creating an early test of how costly the opioid crisis might be for the pharmaceutical companies that made billions of dollars off the drugs.

Read More