Troubling but perhaps predictable news is traveling from a vanity trend-setting capital of this country: Hollywood stars have made the taking of a relatively new prescription drug, targeted for the treatment of diabetes, into a fad. The injectable drug semaglutide, whose brand name is Ozempic, has become a must-have among A-listers because of one of its….
Continue ReadingCosmetic Treatments
With a ‘Zoom boom’ still going, cautions rise on cosmetic surgery
While the coronavirus pandemic has forced patients, doctors, and hospitals to curtail crucial tests, procedures and treatments in worrisome fashion, a trend with one kind of medical practice apparently continues apace: The so-called “Zoom boom” in plastic and cosmetic surgeries is still going strong. Patients, though, soon will get a tough reality TV warning about….
Continue ReadingSenator from small, poor state roils big plan to improve U.S. health
Record numbers of poor, working poor, and middle-class Americans are signing up to receive federal help to get affordable insurance to safeguard their health and finances. But will congressional politicking cost them this invaluable coverage — just before the nation goes to the polls for midterm elections? For months now, President Biden and the Democrats….
Continue Reading$1 trillion invested in ‘infrastructure’ can boost U.S. health and well-being
Although the chattering classes may have beat the term infrastructure into a hoary cliché, regular folks may see major benefits over time to their health and well-being from the Biden Administration’s finally passed, bipartisan $1 trillion bill that invests desperately needed money into the nation’s roads, highways, bridges, and more. The law will send a….
Continue ReadingWomen will receive more disclosures about risks of breast implants
Federal regulators have toughened the requirements for surgeons and medical device makers to inform women in detail about rising risks associated with breast implants, which also now will carry the government’s sternest warning — a “black box” label cautioning about the products’ potential harms. The implant alarms, announced after years of complaints by patients, include….
Continue ReadingPlaintiffs’ fortitude: It’s an admirable must when battling corporate fat cats
While too many of us get overdosed with clownish depictions — from doctors, hospitals, insurers, and corporations, especially Big Pharma firms — of how the civil justice system operates, it’s always worth a reminder of the tremendous fortitude ordinary folks show in pursuing malpractice and other personal injury or liability claims. Yes, the cases, on….
Continue ReadingSurgeons prosper anew as primary care doctors and pediatricians struggle
The Covid-19 pandemic continues to slam the practice of medicine, with patients’ infection fears and treatment delays putting at serious financial risk the providers of crucial medical services like primary care doctors and pediatricians. At the same time, as is too often the case in U.S. medicine, the rich may be getting richer, as resuming….
Continue ReadingAs J&J ‘trims’ talc loss to $2.1 billion, Bayer sees $10-billion-plus Roundup fix
Leave it to corporations, even with the pressure of the civil justice system, to figure billions of ways to never say they are sorry — and to leave consumers hanging about problematic products and practices. Johnson and Johnson just won a pyrrhic victory, prevailing in an appeals court, so a Missouri record $4.69 billion loss….
Continue ReadingAs FDA warns of implant perils, new questions arise about 3D mammograms
Angry women, anxious that officials were failing to protect their health, besieged a federal Food and Drug Administration hearing in the spring. That unusual outcry may have helped push regulators off their bureaucratic backsides, getting them finally to warn about risks of one of the most commonly used medical devices for women: breast implants. But….
Continue ReadingVoluntary recall of textured device raises more alarms about breast implants
An Irish medical manufacturer voluntarily withdrew its textured breast implant and related tissue expanding devices from markets after the federal Food and Drug Administration tracked a spike in a rare cancer and deaths tied to the products and asked that they be recalled. U.S. regulators, the New York Times reported, lagged their European counterparts by….
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