Current Events

A multi-state cluster of at least 10 people infected with E. coli bacteria has been identified and public health officials are interviewing victims about possible foodborne sources.

As of this afternoon, patients had been identified in four states, said a spokeswoman with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Takata has finally pleaded guilty to deceiving automakers about the safety of its airbags. Now automakers are disputing charges that they knowingly installed the defective airbags in their cars.

But what about the millions of U.S. consumers still waiting to replace or fix the potentially deadly Takata airbags?

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Juno Therapeutics Inc on Wednesday said it decided to shut down development of an experimental leukemia treatment from a highly promising new class of immunotherapy following an investigation into toxicity that led to a handful of patient deaths.

The drug, JCAR015, uses a technology known as CAR-T being pursued by other companies as well. CAR-T therapy removes a key component of the immune system called T cells from a patient's blood and re-engineers them to more efficiently attack cancer before returning them to the patient.

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Japanese auto parts maker Takata Corp. has pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, and agreed to pay $1 billion for concealing a defect in millions of its air bag inflators.

The decision played out in a federal courtroom in Detroit on Monday, following a deal with the U.S. Justice Department.
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Pfizer Inc. received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after inspectors found “significant violations” at a manufacturing plant for drugs made by its Hospira unit.

The inspection, conducted over about three weeks in May and June last year at a McPherson, Kansas, drug plant, found “significant violations of current good manufacturing practice” rules, according to a Feb.
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(Reuters Health) - Pacemakers may fail to properly regulate patients’ heartbeats near certain appliances and tools that generate electric and magnetic fields, a German study suggests.

Researchers tested how electric and magnetic fields impact pacemakers, small battery-operated devices that help patients’ hearts beat in a regular rhythm, for 119 people under different conditions.

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Vehicles Affected: Approximately 5,500 model-year 2017 Volvo XC90 SUVs, S90 sedans and V90 Cross Country wagons
The Problem: The bolts that secure the inflatable curtain airbags in place may break, possibly resulting in the airbag deploying improperly in a crash and increasing the risk of an injury.

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Feb 27 A federal judge has certified a class-action lawsuit accusing the big U.S. debt collector Midland Funding LLC of violating New York usury laws by charging thousands of struggling borrowers interest rates above 25 percent when trying to collect.

Monday's decision by U.S.
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DETROIT -- Japanese auto supplier Takata, one of the world's largest automotive suppliers, pleaded guilty Monday as a corporation in federal court, agreed to a $1 billion plea deal and told a federal judge its behavior over a 15-year period was "deeply inappropriate."

Takata, a 70-year-old supplier of airbags, seatbelts and other safety equipment to nearly every global automaker, made airbags that have been tied to 17 deaths globally. The potentially defective airbags, which can spray shrapnel into the faces of occupants when they activate, are on more than 42 million vehicles worldwide. Its headquarters is in Tokyo but its U.S.
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If anything about driverless cars can be considered an old riddle it is this one: the car is driving itself down a residential street when a woman pushing a baby stroller suddenly enters a crosswalk. Unable to stop, should the car’s computer opt to hit mother and child, or veer off to strike a tree, almost certainly killing its passengers?

That macabre scenario has been fodder for ethicists almost since the prospect that cars might drive themselves first entered the horizon. It also, however, provides a second riddle: Regardless of the choice made by the car’s computer, who pays for the damages?

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Rising infections caused by a type of bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics is causing longer hospitalizations and may mean a higher risk of death for children in the United States, according to a new study.

The study, published this week in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, found that 3 out of 5 children admitted to hospitals already had an antibiotic-resistant infection — suggesting these infections are spreading more often in the community.

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