“Industry payments to physicians are associated with higher rates of prescribing brand-name statins,” the study states. “As the United States seeks to [rein] in the costs of prescription drugs and make them less expensive for patients, our findings are concerning.”
The Institute of Medicine estimated deaths because of medical errors as high as 98,000 a year.
The Washington Post published a story so horrifying this weekend that it would stop your breath: “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”
“Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far.” The shameful, horrifying errors were uncovered in a massive, three-year review by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the Innocence Project. Following revelations published in recent years, the two groups are helping the government with the country’s largest ever post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.
The massive review raises questions about the veracity of not just expert hair testimony, but also the bite-mark and other forensic testimony offered as objective, scientific evidence to jurors who, not unreasonably, believed that scientists in white coats knew what they were talking about. As Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project, put it, “The FBI’s three-decade use of microscopic hair analysis to incriminate defendants was a complete disaster.”
Speaking to Washington policymakers last month, Helen Haskell, the highly respected national advocate who heads Mothers Against Medical Error, described what it’s like to lose a family member to an avoidable medical error. Haskell said the terrible grief is compounded tenfold when family members can’t get answers from hospital officials covering up mistakes they made. She described how excruciating it is for a beloved life to be dismissed in a cold, bewildering healthcare bureaucracy. “Two of these survivors recently committed suicide over this issue,” Haskell recounted. “They said they felt thrown away, treated like their lives and their loved ones’ lives were worth nothing.”
Unfortunately, secrecy is the first response for many if not most health systems when a patient tragedy occurs, compounding the sorrow of family after family across the country. The number of families touched by this is almost unimaginable, with upwards of 1,000 people a day in the U.S. estimated to die of preventable hospital errors.
Drug companies are now increasingly relying on direct marketing to American consumers. Last year, the pharmaceutical industry spent $5.2 billion on ads promoting specific drugs—an increase of 16 percent over the previous year. At a time when most other industries are spending less on television advertising, drug companies are spending more. They are also devising new forms of so-called direct-to-consumer outreach, like smartphone apps that consumers may not even realize are a form of marketing and that the FDA is still figuring out how to regulate. (The FDA recently asked Kim Kardashian to delete Twitter and Instagram posts touting a morning sickness pill she was taking, because she hadn’t explained its side effects.)
Concerns about direct advertisements of pharmaceutical products have become so acute that last November the American Medical Association called for an outright ban, saying that the practice was “fueling escalating drug prices.” Spending on prescription drugs already accounts for about one in every six dollars that go into medical care. Between 2013 and 2018, the government anticipates that the average annual increase in this spending will be about 7.3 percent—higher than the overall rate of health care inflation. One of the reasons for the increase is the massive sum that manufacturers pour into advertising.
The FDA said on Tuesday that it was adding new warning to the labels of diabetes drugs containing the saxagliptin and alogliptin. The FDA said the drugs “may increase the risk of heart failure, particularly in patients who already have heart or kidney disease.”
The announcement comes two years after an FDA panel recommended that the drugs’ labels should be updated but did not recommend any other harsher measures. The panel analyzed results from two large cardiovascular outcomes trials, SAVOR-TIMI 53 studied saxagliptin (Onglyza, AstraZeneca) and EXAMINE studied alogliptin (Nesina, Takeda Pharmaceuticals). The two drugs are members of the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitor class used to lower glucose.
In SAVOR, according to the FDA analysis, more saxagliptin patients were hospitalized for heart failure than placebo patients (3.5% versus 2.8%). A similar pattern emerged in EXAMINE, in which 3.9% of alopgliptin patients were hospitalized at least once compared to 3.3% of placebo patients.
The herbicide glyphosate does not show up in breast milk, according to findings from a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The study, however, is weighted with conflicts of interest that include having three Monsanto employees as authors. The first two authors also have received grants from Monsanto, and the costs of the chemical analyses for the study were covered by Monsanto. This study is not, however, the only one reporting this outcome.
Glyphosate is a widely used herbicide that Monsanto manufactures and that represented about 30% of the company’s net sales in 2009, although in 2016, the golden glyphosate goose started to slack off. While glyphosate’s been controversially classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a “probable carcinogen,” that classification is not in agreement with the conclusions of US and EU regulators regarding the compound, which works by inhibiting the production of certain amino acids in plants.
Eschewing the usual grim approach to anti-opioid abuse ads, Teva ($TEVA) is going for absurd humor in its new awareness effort. The Israel-based company--which sells two fentanyl-based painkillers, Actiq and Fentora--rolled out a three-part video series as part of its Pain Matters campaign
The words "opioid abuse" don't exactly conjure up laughs, but that's exactly what Teva ($TEVA) is aiming for its in latest opioid abuse awareness effort. The company recently launched an absurdly humorous three-part video series to educate people about the phenomenon as part of its Pain Matters campaign.
The videos play into Teva's Pain Matters campaign. The initiative is trying to reinforce that "we're all a part of this problem, and we're all a part of the solution," Golin Executive Director and healthcare practice lead Samantha Schwartz said, as quoted by MM&M. Teva makes two fentanyl-based pain drugs, Actiq and Fentora, and a recent CDC report showed that fentanyl abuse was linked to nearly 1,000 deaths in Ohio.
