Current Events

Medical device maker Medtronic has agreed to pay investors $43 million in a proposed class-action legal settlement that would resolve one of the last remaining lawsuits dogging the company’s bone-growth product Infuse.

The institutional investors who sued Medtronic alleged that the company secretly paid spine surgeons to conceal Infuse adverse events and side effects and to overstate the disadvantages of alternative treatments.

Infuse contains a synthesized human protein that causes bone to grow, avoiding the need for other bone-graft materials for spine-fusion surgery. It can also lead to unwanted bone growth and swelling.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A woman who claimed her cancer was caused by using Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder for decades said she believes justice was served after a jury found the company should pay her and 21 other women $4.69 billion in damages.

A St. Louis jury on July 12 concluded that J&J’s talc-based products contained asbestos, causing the 22 women, six of whom have died, to develop ovarian cancer.

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BEIJING (Reuters) - The Chinese bulk manufacturer of the common blood and heart drug valsartan said it was recalling the product from consumers in the United States and would halt supplies to the country, after an impurity linked to cancer had been detected.

Earlier this week, European regulators said the problem likely dates to changes in manufacturing processes at Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical in 2012, suggesting that many patients could potentially have been exposed to cancer risk.

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Survivors of the worst mass shooting in modern American history feel they are again in the line of fire.

MGM Resorts International took aim at more than 1,000 victims in a pair of lawsuits filed this month in its bid to avoid all liability for the deadly Las Vegas Massacre last October.

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A Suffolk judge ruled this week that opioid manufacturers and distributors have shown no reason why dozens of suits against them by counties and municipalities from across New York State should be dismissed.

Similar suits from around the state, including those filed by Nassau and Suffolk counties, were consolidated into one action before state Supreme Court Justice Jerry Garguilo in Central Islip, who is hearing Suffolk suit. After he resolves all pretrial issues, the suits will return to their home jurisdictions for trial.

The suits claim the businesses fueled the opioid epidemic through a fraudulent marketing campaign that misrepresented the drugs' safety and effectiveness. They seek compensation for the governmental costs of dealing with opioid addiction, which include higher expenditures on Medicaid, rehabilitation programs, law enforcement and even a greater number of autopsies.
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The Food and Drug Administration has announced a voluntary recall of a widely prescribed blood pressure medication made in China, reviving fears about the safety of imported drugs.

Three companies that sell the generic drug, valsartan, in the United States agreed to recall it after the F.D.A. said it might be tainted by N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), considered a probable human carcinogen.
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The source of romaine lettuce E. coli bacteria that sickened 210 people in 36 states, including 11 in New York, has been detected in canal waters in the Yuma, Arizona, growing region, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced.

The CDC said this week that the agency and the U.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is telling people not to eat Kellogg's Honey Smacks cereal, which has been linked to an outbreak of salmonella infections now numbering at least 100 people in 33 states.

"Do not eat this cereal," the agency declared on Twitter.

An updated advisory from the CDC recommends that consumers throw away the sweetened, puffed wheat cereal "regardless of package size or best-by date." It's still not clear how the contamination might have occurred.

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McDonald's has stopped selling salads at some 3,000 locations across the country amid a multi-state parasite outbreak that has sickened dozens of customers.

Officials with the fast-food restaurant chain said in a statement Friday that the salads have been removed from “impacted restaurants,” mainly in the Midwest, “out of an abundance of caution” until it can find a new supplier. The announcement comes after public health authorities in Illinois and Iowa warned that a number of recent cyclospora infections in those states appear to be linked to the salads.

“McDonald's is committed to the highest standards of food safety and quality control,” McDonald's said in the statement, adding that it is cooperating with public health officials investigating the outbreak.

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The size of the award sends a message that should be heard by the whole drug and medical device industry: Stop placing profits over safety. Or, as the women’s lawyer, Mark Lanier, put it in his closing remarks, “You don’t jack with people’s lives like this.”

Johnson & Johnson and its peers were once lauded as a collective of hero-innovators and credited with bringing an avalanche of lifesaving, world-changing technology from lab bench to patient bedside. Today they are more readily associated with rampant price gouging, the worst drug overdose epidemic in modern history and a steady beat of cases similar to the talc-cancer one, in which profitable products caused real harm.

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A salmonella outbreak linked to a popular Kellogg's cereal has infected 100 people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday.

The agency is urging consumers to avoid Honey Smacks, a sugary puffed wheat cereal which has been the subject of a recall by the company since mid-June. At least 30 of the 100 have been hospitalized, while no deaths have been reported, the CDC said.

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