Current Events

The family of a New Jersey woman who died after using a prescription version of the potent opioid fentanyl filed a wrongful death lawsuit Thursday against the drug’s maker, her doctor, and a specialty pharmacy that provided the drug.

The lawsuit, filed in a New Jersey state court, alleges 32-year-old Sarah Fuller was the victim of a nationwide push by Insys Therapeutics to entice doctors to prescribe its Subsys fentanyl spray for patients for which the drug was not suitable.

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OAKLAND — Forty California residents are suing chemical giant Monsanto, alleging that exposure to the company’s Roundup weed killer caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The complaint, filed in Alameda County Superior Court, seeks compensatory and punitive damages from defendants Monsanto Co. and Willbur Ellis Company, LLC., for wrongful death and personal injuries.

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The co-owner of New England Compounding Center, whose contaminated drugs caused a fungal meningitis outbreak that killed more than 60 people, has been convicted of dozens of federal charges but acquitted of murder.

A jury in Boston convicted Barry J. Cadden of more than 50 counts of mail fraud for his part in peddling unsterile drugs that led to a national outbreak of fungal meningitis in 2012 that infected more than 750 patients and killed 60. Sentencing was set for June, the Boston Globe reported.

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Automakers recalled a record 53.2 million vehicles last year in the United States, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

In 2016, there was a total of 927 recalls, according to NHTSA. That means there was an average of 2.5 recalls per day and 145,753 vehicles affected daily.
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A federal appeals court on Wednesday revived claims by several hundred plaintiffs who accused Merck & Co of failing to adequately warn about the risks of thigh bone fractures associated with its osteoporosis drug Fosamax.

In a 3-0 decision, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said the plaintiffs may proceed to trial on their failure-to-warn claims, and a lower court judge erred in finding the claims pre-empted by federal law.

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People with breast implants have a small but increased risk for a rare form of deadly cancer.

The federal Food and Drug Administration states breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma, a form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, has been linked to at least nine deaths. On Tuesday, the agency confirmed the disease can occur after breast implant surgery.

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Doctors have tied a superbug outbreak at a foreign health facility to a medical scope that Olympus modified last year in an attempt to reduce its risk of spreading bacteria between patients.

Five patients treated with the modified device tested positive for the same potentially deadly bacteria, according to a report filed with the Food and Drug Administration.

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TUESDAY, March 21, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Many American doctors receive payments from drug companies, but few patients know about those financial ties, a new study finds.

Researchers surveyed 3,500 adult patients and then checked on their doctors in Open Payments, a government website that reports drug and medical device company payments to physicians.

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A rare cancer first linked to breast implants in 2011 has now been associated with nine deaths, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.

As of Feb. 1, the agency had received a total of 359 reports of the cancer associated with the implants. The deaths were not caused by breast cancer, the agency said, but by a rare malignancy in the immune system, anaplastic large-cell lymphoma. In cases linked to implants, this rare form of cancer grows in the breast, usually in the capsule of scar tissue that forms around an implant.
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Another legal salvo has been fired against top insulin makers, accusing them of colluding on prices, but this class action suit also targets pharmacy benefit managers CVS, Express Scripts and UnitedHealth’s OptumRx, claiming they were part of the alleged scheme.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Jersey last week, and four individual plaintiffs were joined by the Type 1 Diabetes Defense Foundation, a nonprofit group that supports patients with Type 1 diabetes. The suit alleges violations of ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.

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A U.S. appeals court on Monday upheld a $2.1 million award to a woman whose lawsuit against Wright Medical Group was the first to go to trial in multidistrict litigation over injuries blamed on the company's Conserve hip replacement system.

The 11th U.
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