From IndoxConsulting.com:
Using enoxaparin or heparin to bridge long-term anticoagulation therapy with warfarin for secondary stroke prevention has been associated with a high risk for serious bleeding in patients with cardioembolic stroke (CES). A retrospective study of 204 CES patients showed that only those who received bridging with enoxaparin went on to have symptomatic intracranial bleeding. Similarly, all CES cases with systemic bleeding were treated with intravenous heparin.
"Our study suggests doctors should think twice before using enoxaparin, or intravenous heparin for that matter, to bridge anticoagulation therapy with warfarin in patients with cardioembolic stroke," principal investigator Hen Hallevi, MD, from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, told Medscape Neurology & Neurosurgery.
Clinical Dilemma
While it is widely acknowledged that CES patients require long-term anticoagulation, the issue of when and how to initiate it remains a clinical dilemma, said Dr. Hallevi.
Routinely bridging CES patients in the acute phase with enoxaparin or heparin until warfarin therapy begins to work is a widespread practice, but one that is not supported by the literature or current guidelines, he said.
He added that the current study was initiated based on anecdotal observations that CES patients tend to have more intracranial and systemic bleeding, also described as hemorrhagic transformation, than other types of stroke patients.
To examine possible explanations for this phenomenon, the researchers looked at the type of treatment administered to CES patients who were admitted to a single stroke center between April 1, 2004 and June 30, 2006 and who were not treated with tissue plasminogen activator.
Patients were categorized into one of 5 possible treatment groups. These included no treatment, aspirin only, aspirin followed by warfarin, intravenous heparin in the acute phase followed by warfarin, and full-dose enoxaparin combined with warfarin.
The study's primary outcomes included serious bleeding (defined as a parenchymal hematoma, grade 2, or systemic bleeding) and stroke recurrence during hospital stay.
Secondary end points included discharge with a favorable outcome (modified Rankin Scale score of 0 to 3), stroke progression, and in-hospital mortality.
All Intracranial Hemorrhage Occurred in a Single Group
Of the total study group, 8 subjects received no anticoagulation, 88 received aspirin alone, 35 were treated with aspirin followed by warfarin, 44 received intravenous heparin followed by warfarin, and 29 received full-dose enoxaparin combined with warfarin.
Hemorrhagic transformation occurred in 23 (11%) patients. Of these cases, 3 were symptomatic. Systemic bleeding occurred in 2 patients, who were both taking heparin.
"We found that all of the hemorrhage cases were in 1 group - those who were bridged with enoxaparin," said Dr. Hallevi. "When you think about it, this is really not surprising, because the good thing, as well as the bad thing, about this drug is that it does exactly what it is supposed to do, it fully anticoagulates," he said.
"We believe the infarct damages the small and medium-sized vessels, which are later reperfused and tend to leak blood. But the difference between this patient group and patients with other types of stroke is that those with cardioembolic stroke get anticoagulated really quickly, which promotes bleeding," he added.
Stroke progression occurred in 11 (5%) of patients and was significantly associated with poor outcome. All except 1 of these cases occurred in the aspirin-only group. In fact, the analysis revealed that patients receiving aspirin alone were 12.5 times more likely to experience progressive stroke compared with individuals on other types of anticoagulation. This finding, said Dr. Hallevi, suggests aspirin may not be as potent as other forms of anticoagulation therapies.
Despite these findings, Dr. Hallevi, cautioned that the retrospective nature of the study cannot prove causality. Nevertheless, he added, clinicians treating CES patients may want to consider these findings before opting for anticoagulation with enoxaparin or heparin.
Arch Neurol. Published online July 14, 2008. Abstract
The rapid rise of the number of deaths by methadone overdose is receiving attention all over the country.
Maurreen Skowran of The News & Observer reported on the increase of methadone deaths in North Carolina as the drug is used more commonly as a painkiller. In her article, found here, Skowan reports on the deadly effects of the drug, even when used as directed.
"Even legal prescriptions can turn fatal when doses accumulate over time into overdoses.
That phenomenon may have contributed to the death of a Winston-Salem woman. Jewel Imperial, 25, a student and musician, overdosed in September 2007. Her father, Bobby Imperial, said she died five days after being prescribed up to 80 milligrams per day for back pain. He declined to identify her doctor because the family is pursuing legal action. Imperial's dosage was more than double the recommended maximum for patients new to opioids, the family of drugs that includes methadone. Her parents didn't know she had been prescribed methadone then. But a few days after she started the prescription, her mother, Nancy Imperial, took her back to the same doctor. Her symptoms were disorientation, aches, sweats, cough and, sometimes, a spacey feeling, her father wrote. She died the next day."
Spike Hurst of Altoonamirror.com reported on methadone's effects in Pennsylvania and the surrounding region in his "Killer or Cure," found in its entirety here. According to the article, methadone could be the region's number one killer.
"It's killing people at therapeutic levels," said Marti Hottenstein, vice president of Helping America Reduce Methadone Deaths, a grass-roots group battling to tighten regulations on the drug. "It's killing more than illicit drugs - drugs it's supposed to help people from."
Hurst's article emphasizes the critical need for education about methadone, quoting Dr. Westley Clark, of the Substance Abuse Treatment Center director for the U.S. Department of Health's SAMHSA agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Inside state-regulated clinics, education and counseling are part of methadone maintenance programs, Clark said.
Those added measures - combined with "lock boxes" for take-home doses - something SAMHSA recommends - all work to curb the likelihood of overdosing, as well as opportunity for thefts, he said.
But with practitioners, "there has to be a greater emphasis placed on educating them about the dangers of opiates like methadone," said Clark, who believes that, in many cases, there may be better alternatives for pain treatment. He says SAMHSA is working on drug policy and with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration on strategies to "encourage" practitioners to learn more about methadone.
Because things could get worse, Clark said."We need to reach out to patients, the public and the media because we need to be aware that we have a boomer population that will be running into more pain problems associated with getting older. There's going to be that demand [for pain medication]."
His message to physicians: Know the drug. "Know the drug and know your patient," Clark said, because it might be the best option available for those who cannot afford high-priced anesthetics.
Issued back in 2006, this Health Advisory from the FDA warns against the dangers of methadone and includes important prescribing information for its safe use.
FDA Public Health Advisory: Methadone Use for Pain Control May Result in Death and Life-Threatening Changes in Breathing and Heart Beat
FDA has received reports of death and life-threatening side effects in patients taking methadone. These deaths and life-threatening side effects have occurred in patients newly starting methadone for pain control and in patients who have switched to methadone after being treated for pain with other strong narcotic pain relievers. Methadone can cause slow or shallow breathing and dangerous changes in heart beat that may not be felt by the patient.
Prescribing methadone is complex. Methadone should only be prescribed for patients with moderate to severe pain when their pain is not improved with other non-narcotic pain relievers. Pain relief from a dose of methadone lasts about 4 to 8 hours. However methadone stays in the body much longer--from 8 to 59 hours after it is taken. As a result, patients may feel the need for more pain relief before methadone is gone from the body. Methadone may build up in the body to a toxic level if it is taken too often, if the amount taken is too high, or if it is taken with certain other medicines or supplements.
To prevent serious complications from methadone, health care professionals who prescribe methadone should read and carefully follow the methadone (Dolophine) prescribing information
FDA is issuing this public health advisory to alert patients and their caregivers and health care professionals to the following important safety information:
- Patients should take methadone exactly as prescribed. Taking more methadone than prescribed can cause breathing to slow or stop and can cause death. A patient who does not experience good pain relief with the prescribed dose of methadone, should talk to his or her doctor.
- Patients taking methadone should not start or stop taking other medicines or dietary supplements without talking to their health care provider. Taking other medicines or dietary supplements may cause less pain relief. They may also cause a toxic buildup of methadone in the body leading to dangerous changes in breathing or heart beat that may cause death.
- Health care professionals and patients should be aware of the signs of methadone overdose. Signs of methadone overdose include trouble breathing or shallow breathing; extreme tiredness or sleepiness; blurred vision; inability to think, talk or walk normally; and feeling faint, dizzy or confused. If these signs occur, patients should get medical attention right away.
FDA recently approved new prescribing information for methadone products approved for pain control. The information in the new prescribing information is based on a review of the scientific literature completed by FDA. A Medication Guide for patients is planned.
Prescription painkiller overdose is becoming a common killer in Nevada, and nationally.
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, overdoses caused by prescription painkillers are increasing, and Methadone abuse is escalating more rapidly than any other drug. In fact, methadone overdoses have increased over 500% between 1999 and 2005.
Methadone is given to heroin users in liquid form to treat addiction, and doctors have progressively been prescribing methadone in pill form to treat chronic pain. As reported by Kathleen Fackelmann of USA Today, most methadone overdoses are caused by the abuse of the prescription painkiller pills.
Methadone is difficult to prescribe safely, according to Fackelmann, because it remains in the user's bloodstream long after the few hours of pain relief it provides. Too much methadone in the system will cause a user to go into a coma and stop breathing.
Another difficulty posed by methadone as a painkiller, reported by Holly Ramer of the Associated Press, is that methadone is metabolized slowly. Because a user may not feels its effects immediately, he or she might continue to take them, until the level of methadone becomes deadly.
Check back soon for more entries about the dangers of methadone.
Here's a great link to the Las Vegas Review Journal's Clearinghouse page of links. Highly recommended!
Review Journal Links on Hepatitis Scare: http://www.lvrj.com/hottopics/hepatitis_investigation.html
A number of weeks back I was flying into Vegas, and as we were nearly on the ground I looked out my airplane window and noticed an unusual sight, even for Vegas: the top floor of the Monte Carlo was on fire and there were flames jumping off the top of the hotel. And then, suddenly, the pilot aborted the landing and we were back up in the air. No explanation given.
That's the way authorities now seem to want to handle the Ricin find: they want us up in the air without explanations.
That's fair enough, but if they're going to handle things that way then why reassure us that there's no link to terrorism? Every statement from authorities as of yesterday emphasized that: no reason to suspect terrorism.
Or is it that what they're really saying is that there's no reason to suspect "foreign" terrorism? And since they allegedly know so little, why urge even that conclusion?
Associated Press reports that:
As police tried to piece together how a rare, deadly poison ended up in a motel for transients, the 57-year-old man who could hold the key lay unconscious in a hospital.
Adding to the mystery, police said firearms and an "anarchist type textbook" were found in the same room where the ricin was discovered two days later.
I'm not much of a criminologist, and less of a conspiracy theorist, but when one finds a bunch of Ricin in a transient hotel and along with it they find an "anarchist type textbook," perhaps eliminating terrorism, domestic or foreign, from the list of what's conceivable might be a tad premature.
And if authorities, who according to their own admission don't really know much, then why eliminate the possibility that a man with Ricin and a chemical weapons cookbook might just want to do some harm?
As many as 40,000 infected with Hep C in what looks like a potential mass negligence case against an endoscopy center and possibly a products manufacturer.
Stay tuned to this blog and I will bring you extensive independently researched details on this developing case.
I reprint here a summary from the recent important decision in Riegel v. Medtronic. This comes directly from the People Over Profits Grassroots Action Center:
Riegel v. Medtronic
In this case, Charles Riegel received a balloon catheter made by Medtronic which subsequently ruptured due to overinflation. Riegel developed a heart block and underwent emergency surgery. The Riegels later brought claims against Medtronic in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. The court found that the Riegels claims were preempted under the Medical Device Act, and the Second Circuit Court affirmed the decision. In this opinion, the Supreme Court affirms.
Summary
- The Supreme Court holds that state law claims regarding medical devices are preempted under the Medical Device Amendments (MDA) where the device manufacturer complied with federal requirements.
- The Court notes that review of the MDA turns on the definition of "requirements" in the statute. The decision states: "Absent other indication, reference to a State's 'requirements' includes its common-law duties." Thus, the holding expands beyond conflicting State regulations and statutes, which Congress was addressing in the MDA.
Limits of the Decision
It appears that the Court tried to limit the decision in several ways.
- The opinion applies to medical devices only (not approved drugs) based on the preemption language included in the Medical Device Amendments.
- The Court draws a distinction between state law claims made regarding devices approved under substantial equivalent review requirements and section 510(k) pre-market approval requirements.
- The Court discusses the extensive FDA review process for Class III medical devices only, rendering the application of the opinion to Class I and II devices uncertain.
- The Court expressly states that the decision does not apply to cases where the manufacturer did not comply with federal requirements.
- In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg's first footnote states that the "Court's holding does not reach an important issue outside the bounds of this case: the preemptive effect of section 360k(a) where evidence of a medical device's defect comes to light only after the device receives premarket approval."
Attacks on the Civil Justice System
This decision makes several derogatory claims about the civil justice system:
- Justice Scalia claims that the "Dalkon Shield failure and its aftermath demonstrated the inability of the common law tort system to manage the risks associated with dangerous devices."
- The opinion claims that lay juries do not appreciate the benefits of medical devices. "A jury, on the other hand, sees only the cost of a more dangerous design, and is not concerned with its benefits; the patients who reaped those benefits are not represented in court."
Washoe District Court Judge Robert Perry has reduced the recent landmark jury award against pharmaceutical giant Wyeth arising from Wyeth's development and marketing of Prempro.
Judge Perry cut the award from $134 million to $58 million. $23 million is allocated toward compensatory damages and $35 million is punitive damages. Wyeth wanted the Judge to reduce the total award to $4 million.
Wyeth is up against 5300 similar lawsuits throughout the United States.
It will be interesting to see what the Nevada Supreme Court has to say about this case since it is almost certainly bound for full appeal.
On December 27, 2007 the Nevada Supreme Court clarified in Awada v. Shuffle Master, Inc., 123 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 57, the manner in which a Nevada District Court may handle mixed claims for legal and equitable relief at trial and found as follows:
In this appeal, we consider the primary issue of whether a district court has the authority to bifurcate the legal and equitable claims presented in a single action, conduct a bench trial on an equitable claim, and then use the findings of fact and conclusions of law from that bench trial to dispose of the case. On this issue of first impression, we conclude that Nevada district courts have discretion to bifurcate legal and equitable claims in a single action and to first conduct a bench trial on an equitable claim. Furthermore, a district court that exercises such discretion may then use its findings of fact and conclusions of law as a basis for disposing of claims remaining in the case, so long as it does so in a manner consistent with Nevada law and our rules of civil procedure.
We also consider whether the district court abused its discretion by sua sponte disposing of the remaining claims in a summary judgment-like manner after conducting a bench trial on respondents' counterclaim for rescission. In this case, the district court did not abuse its discretion when it first considered respondents' counterclaim for rescission and rescinded the parties' agreement. Based on its findings and conclusions, the district court properly disposed of all of appellants' contract-based claims against respondent Shuffle Master, Inc., because those claims could not stand absent a valid contract. However, the district court improperly granted summary judgment as to the claims against respondent Mark Yoseloff and appellants' remaining claims against Shuffle Master because those claims can survive absent a valid contract between the parties. Additionally, the district court erred in resolving those claims without satisfying the procedural requirements of NRCP 56.
Accordingly, we affirm the district court's judgment as to appellants' claims for breach of contract and contract-based claims for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing; we reverse the district court's judgment as to appellants' claims for fraud, civil conspiracy, conversion, unjust enrichment, and tortious interference with contractual relations/prospective economic advantage and as to appellants' claims against Yoseloff; and we remand this case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
In the ongoing squabble over Allstate defense attorney Phil Emerson's repeated misconduct in arguing cases at trial, the Nevada Supreme Court rendered its latest decision on January 17, 2008.
In its introduction to Lioce v. Cohen, 124 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 1, the Court stated:
On December 28, 2006, this court issued an opinion in these consolidated appeals.[2] The defendants in each of the four underlying personal injury cases were represented by the same attorney, who gave substantially the same closing argument on behalf of his clients at each trial. Asserting that defense counsel's closing arguments constituted misconduct, the plaintiffs sought new trials, with varying success.
In that opinion, we revised the standards under which district courts are to evaluate requests for new trials based on attorney misconduct. Next, we reversed the denial of the motions for new trials in Lioce v. Cohen and Lang v. Knippenberg, and affirmed the grant of new trials in Castro v. Cabrera and Seasholtz v. Wheeler. Additionally, we determined that the defendants' attorney's closing arguments in Castro and Seasholtz amounted to misconduct, and we remanded those cases with instructions to the district courts to calculate and impose monetary sanctions on defense counsel and his clients.[3] Finally, we referred defense counsel to the State Bar of Nevada for disciplinary proceedings. This petition for rehearing followed. Having considered the petition, answers, amici curiae briefs, and the replies, we conclude that en banc rehearing is warranted in part under NRAP 40(c). We therefore grant the petition in part, vacate our prior opinion in this matter, and issue this opinion in its place. On rehearing, we reach substantially the same conclusion as in our prior opinion, but we decline to impose monetary sanctions on defense counsel and his clients.
Because defense counsel's closing arguments encouraged the jurors to look beyond the law and the relevant facts in deciding the cases before them, we agree that they amounted to misconduct. In determining whether the district courts properly decided that this misconduct warranted new trials or not, we take the opportunity to revise our attorney misconduct jurisprudence. New trial requests based on attorney misconduct must be evaluated differently depending upon whether counsel objected to the misconduct during trial. When a party successfully objects to the misconduct, the district court may grant a subsequent motion for a new trial if the moving party demonstrates that the misconduct's harmful effect could not be removed through any sustained objection and admonishment. With respect to unobjected-to misconduct, we conclude that the district court may grant a motion for a new trial only if the misconduct amounted to plain error, so that absent the misconduct, the verdict would have been different. When ruling on a motion for a new trial based on attorney misconduct, district courts must make express factual findings, applying the above standards.
In these consolidated appeals, we conclude that in Castro and Seasholtz, the district courts did not abuse their discretion by granting the plaintiffs' motions for a new trial, and therefore, we affirm the district courts' orders in those matters. In Lang and Lioce, however, we are unable to ascertain from the record whether the district courts abused their discretion in denying the plaintiffs' motions for a new trial. Accordingly, we vacate those orders and remand those two matters for a new decision on the new trial motions, based on the standards announced today. In addition, we refer defense counsel to the State Bar of Nevada.
Ah the new and complicated world of how email production is handled by courts.
Scott Roseland, at cybercontrols (www.cybercontrols.net), cites to Benton v. Dlorah, Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. D. Kan, Oct. 30, 2007. There, the plaintiff informed defendant at her deposition that she had deleted e-mails, and defendant filed a motion to compel plaintiff to produce relevant documents, to produce her hard drive, and for sanctions for spoliation of evidence.
Initially, the court ruled that the requesting party (defendant) had not adequately shown that the requesting party had refuted producing party's (plaintiff) assertions that she had produced all relevant documents, but allowed requestor to amend if further discovery demonstrated that producer had not produced all documents or "had spoliated relevant evidence." Id. at *3-*4.
On their subsequent motion to compel, requestors asserted that producer had admitted failing to produce a relevant e-mail, that she used her personal account instead of her work e-mail and admitted deleting "hundreds" of possibly relevant e-mails. Producer responded that requestor's request was not sufficiently tailored, that her personal computer contained personal and privileged information, and that the request constituted a "fishing expedition", not outweighing the harm to her.
The court ruled that producer must produce the relevant e-mails, which were responsive to requestor's request.
Deleting these e-mails, even if done in good faith and at a time before Plaintiff contemplated her legal action, does not necessarily remove the e-mails from her possession, custody or control. Deleted documents should be retrievable from her computer system and thus remain within in her control.
Id. at *7. The court ordered that if she could not produce the e-mails, "she shall produce for inspection her computer hard drive from which the deleted e-mails were sent. This will allow Defendants to use the services of a computer forensic specialist, if necessary, to retrieve them." Inspection of the drive would be limited to the subject of requestor's request. Id.
The court made no reference to any distinction between accessible and inaccessible data. In effect, deleted e-mails may now have moved into the realm of "accessible" data.
There is and will continue to be lack of uniformity in the way that courts handle production of email and other electronic data.
Antidepressants are again under scrutiny.
According to a Yahoo! News Article dated December 18, 2007, the Supreme Court will hear a case regarding a teen, Christopher Pittman, sentenced to 30 years of prison for killing his grandparents and setting fire to their home at age 12.
His attorneys argue that the lengthy sentence violates the teen's Eighth Amendment protection from cruel and unusual punishment. They claim that this is the only case in the country that gives such a harsh punishment to a minor.
This case is most noted for its association with the drug, Zoloft. I n the original trial, Pittman's attorneys unsuccessfully tried to argue that the drug influenced their client.
According to an August 24, 2004 New York Times article written at the time the original case was pending, most medical experts do not believe in a link between antidepressants and acts of extreme violence and aggression.
Pittman claimed that something told him to commit the murders and that he was feeling isolated and aggravated a few days after starting the drug. Conversely, his doctor's notes about his behavior state that he was energetic and had no plans to harm himself.
The article also makes note of two other cases with similar fact patterns. In 2001, the drug company, GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil, paid $6.5 million to the relatives of a man in Wyoming who killed his wife, daughter, granddaughter and himself. This was the first time that a jury concluded a SSRI-type of antidepressant may lead users to suicide or homicidal behavior.
In April of 2004, a man in California was acquitted of attempted murder when it was found that his reaction to Zoloft made him unaccountable for his actions.
Zoloft is the most widely prescribed anti-depressant in the United Dates. Following some tests in 2004, the FDA put a "black box" warning on the drug, the strongest warning label that can be given to a drug, because of its association with an increased risk for suicide in children.
Alright, perhaps "plague" is too strong a word...
Last week the Washoe County District Health Department issued a boil water order for Cabela's and Boomtown Hotel and Casino. This was due to total coliform bacteria found in their water supply. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, total coliform bacteria are "natural and common inhabitants of soil and ambient waters (such as lakes and rivers) and are generally harmless. They are usually not found in ground water that is free of surface water or fecal contaminants."
Fortunately none of the 80 people evacuated from the hotel suffered side effects from exposure to the bacteria, symptoms of which include diarrhea, cramps, nausea, possibly jaundice, fatigue and headaches.
Last week the hotels worked to eliminate the bacteria in their water supply, but in the meantime Boomtown hotel wasshut down while the casino remained open. The Hotel appears to have now reopened.
According to the casino's general manager David Williams, "all the water systems have been disinfected including ice, soft drink and coffee machines, and chlorine has been added to the storage tank." He also stated that "we literally have a guy climbing up there [in order to add chlorine to the tank]."
What was the cause of this breakout? The hotel has had a clean bill of health according to Health Department records dating back to 1997, but a new water pump was recently installed. This pump is used to pump water from five wells into a 500,000-gallon storage tank for Boomtown, but it was evidently faulty and allowed bacteria to filter through with the water supply.
The Health Department does require the Boomtown public water system to take a sample for total coliform within its distribution system monthly, which is why this outbreak was caught. Fortunately, because nobody came down with any immediate symptoms this wasn't declared a medical emergency. It's also possible that people did come down with symptoms which they attributed to seasonal allergies, colds or the flu.
The name Aqua-Dots sends chills down the spine of families in the U.S. If you haven't heard about the recall that happened last month, then you are likely in the minority. About 4 million units of the product were recalled last month because they break down into a date-rape drug when ingested.
Currently 10 retailers and companies including Kmart, Walmart, Sears, Target and Mattel are being sued for their negligence in distributing Aquadots. Although they did put a disclaimer on the boxes that the dots are not for young children, it's impossible to police every child every second of every day. It only takes a second for a two-year old to grab a toy on a table and put it in his or her mouth, whether that toy was their elder sibling's or not. Four Australian children and two American children fell unconscious after ingesting the Aquadots, injuries which should not have happened in the first place.
Chinese companies are using increasing amounts of lead in their products to help increase the speed and volume of the toys that they are sending to the US and other countries. According to Macon.com, "lead poisoning - [is] the subject of about one-third of this year's recalls... from Oct. 1, 2006, through Sept. 31, 2007." All told there were about 25.6 million toys recalled this year, though the profiles of recalled toys were much higher this year than in previous years. Some parents are even going so far as to purchase lead testing kits to test on their children's toys or banning the purchase of Chinese made toys for their families all together.
It is true that products coming to the US must meet US standards, but regulating those products is sometimes sketchy. "It's not a new problem, but it's getting worse," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which released its annual report 'Trouble in Toyland'. "The reason it's getting worse is that manufacturers have stretched their supply chain to China, and the safety links are broken. Companies are not trying to pay attention to the law because they are not afraid of the CPSC [Consumer Product Safety Commission]."
So all things considered, it would probably be best to be careful of this year's toys and especially careful of most things made in China, not just toys. It's difficult to blame the Chinese for our own woes and even though toy manufacturers are going to put a foul-tasting chemical in Aquadots to prevent children from swallowing them, the fact that they need to in the first place makes a clear point: let the consumer beware.
General Electric recalled 92,000 combination wall and microwave ovens after at least 35 incidents of fire that damaged property, the company and the Consumer Product Safety Commission said Wednesday.
According to a Yahoo News article yesterday, the door switch in the microwave oven can overheat and ignite plastic components in the appliance, the company said.
The lower thermal oven does not pose a hazard and no injuries have been reported, according to the commission.
Department and appliance stores sold the ovens between January 2000 to December 2003.
Tests on more than 1,200 children's products, most of them still on store shelves, found that 35 percent contain lead -- many with levels far above the federal recall standard used for lead paint.
According to an AP article released today, a Hannah Montana card game case, a Go Diego Go! backpack and Circo brand shoes were among the items with excessive lead levels in the tests performed by a coalition of environmental health groups across the country.
For your very own toxic toy guide to to: http://www.healthytoys.org
Relax: your cell phone might not be a bomb after all.
A South Korean man whose death initially was blamed on an exploding cell phone battery was killed by a car accident involving his colleague, police said Friday.
The International Herald Tribune reports (November 29th) that the quarry worker, only identified by his family name Seo, was found dead Wednesday with a melted phone battery in his shirt pocket. Police and a local doctor who examined his body said the battery may have killed the man.
The colleague, identified only by his surname Kwon, confessed to police that he accidentally killed Seo while he was backing up a drilling vehicle but first reported to police that the death was caused by the battery explosion, Min said.
That's quite an alibi...
The insurance industry's $11 million bellyflop against Referendum 67 was an election bright spot for ruling Democrats, who otherwise took their lumps from a frugal electorate that sent establishment ideas packing.
According to Curt Woodward, writing for the AP, the referendum, which allows triple damages in lawsuits alleging bad faith by insurance companies, spawned a lively campaign pitting the industry against trial lawyers.
Supporters said R-67 would give consumers a powerful tool to punish bad actors in the insurance industry. Opponents countered that it was an unnecessary magnet for unfounded lawsuits, and would drive up insurance rates.
But even though Washington voters displayed an anti-tax mood in other races around the state, they weren't swayed by the prospect of higher rates. R-67 cruised to victory, winning about 57 percent of the vote in unofficial returns through Wednesday afternoon.
Approve R-67 spokeswoman Sue Evans said the referendum fit squarely with voters' pocketbook-first mentality: if you pay for an insurance policy, you expect the company to play fair.
"Do people believe that insurance companies are going to be fair 100 percent of the time? Obviously, they don't," Evans said Wednesday. "And obviously, they expect to get what they pay for."
Reject R-67 spokeswoman Dana Childers sounded contrite, pledging to move past the bitter election and work with Democrats in Olympia. But opponents "remain convinced that Referendum 67 will result in more frivolous litigation and higher costs for consumers," she said.
The R-67 campaign was partially a proxy battle for the political parties, since trial lawyers often support Democrats and insurers are typically aligned with Republicans.
Supporters were also asking voters to endorse a plank of the Olympia Democrats' agenda, since the measure passed the Legislature on largely partyline votes and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire.
Democratic Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler -- up for re-election himself next year -- ended up with the sheen of a two-time winner and is clearly feeling his oats as a consumer advocate.
Kreidler, who successfully urged a double "no" vote on 2005's bruising medical malpractice initiatives, came out strong in favor of R-67 and won.
And even though his endorsement of R-67 in TV commercials prompted the opposition to question why Kreidler would "cede his authority to trial lawyers," Kreidler predicted a return to civility at the 2008 Legislature.
"I warned them in advance that if we were going to go to war, it was going to be difficult for me to do anything other than become active in support of the referendum," Kreidler said Wednesday.
"I would have been happier if we wouldn't have had to fight the battle at all," he said.
A 30-year-old woman was one of four patients infected with HIV and hepatitis after an organ transplant.
According to a Yahoo! News Article dated November 16, 2007, the woman was not informed that the donor engaged in high-risk activities and, after the transplant, she was not immediately tested for HIV. These two circumstances put the University of Chicago, where the procedure was done, and the Gift of Hope Organ and Tissue Donor Network ,in violation of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention regulations (and also obviously exposes those institutions to potential civil liability.
The only information teh victim received about the donor was that he was a healthy young man. Two years earlier, the woman had rejected a donor because of his high risk lifestyle, leading one to believe that if she had been properly informed about this donor, she may have rejected this donor as well.
The donor was tested for HIV and hepatitis, but the test results were negative. He was listed as a high risk donor because he was a sexually active 38-year old gay man. CDC guidelines say that this type of person should only be used as a donor in case of an emergency.
A petition is being filed on the woman's behalf in Cook County. It asks officials to prevent hospitals and organ procurement centers from destroying or altering records about a donor.
Ever wonder if a Red Bull could mess with your physiology? A better question for anyone who's ever had one might be: ever wonder how it couldn't?
A new study suggests a potential correlation between energy drinks and heart and blood pressure issues. Yahoo cites a new story from Will Dunham at Reuters:
The increasingly popular high-caffeine beverages called energy drinks may do more than give people a jolt of energy -- they may also boost heart rates and blood pressure levels, researchers said on Tuesday.
The results of a small study prompted the researchers to advise people who have high blood pressure or heart disease to avoid energy drinks because they could impact their blood pressure or change the effectiveness of their medications.
The drinks generally have high levels of caffeine and taurine, an amino acid found in protein-rich foods like meat and fish that can affect heart function and blood pressure, the researchers said.
"We saw increases in both blood pressure and heart rate in healthy volunteers who were just sitting in a chair watching movies. They weren't exercising. They were in a resting state," James Kalus of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, who led the study, said in an interview.
The increases did not rise to dangerous levels in the group of 15 healthy volunteers, whose average age was 26, the researchers said.
But the increases potentially could be significant in people with cardiovascular disease or those taking drugs to lower heart rate or blood pressure, they told a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida.
"While the amount of caffeine in energy drinks or coffee may cause a slight and temporary increase in blood pressure, it would have no greater effect than walking up a flight of steps," the American Beverage Association industry trade group said in a statement responding to the findings.
"So singling out energy drinks in a unique manner, particularly when compared to a more commonly consumed caffeinated beverage like coffee, does not provide a full and proper context for consumers."
BOOSTING ENERGY
The products have names like Full Throttle, Amp and Rush. Red Bull, made by Austrian company Red Bull GmbH, is a market leader. Beverage companies market various energy drinks as soft drinks that can boost a person's energy.
Kalus declined to say which brand of energy drink was used in the study. He said the drinks generally contain similar ingredients, adding, "By giving the brand, it would dilute the message that all of these drinks need to be looked at."
Coca-Cola Co. makes Full Throttle.
The study participants were asked not to consume other forms of caffeine for two days before starting the study and then throughout a study in which they consumed two cans of energy drinks daily over seven days. Each can contained 80 milligrams of caffeine and 1,000 milligrams of taurine.
The volunteers' heart rates rose by about 8 percent on the first day and 11 percent on the seventh day.
Maximum systolic blood pressure -- the top number in blood pressure readings that represents pressure while the heart contracts -- rose by 8 percent on the first day and 10 percent on the seventh day, the study showed.
Diastolic blood pressure -- the bottom number that gives the pressure when the heart relaxes between beats -- rose by 7 percent on the first day and 8 percent on the seventh day.
The study did not identify ingredients responsible for the changes, but Kalus said it probably was caffeine and taurine.
Kalus said the study did not address possible health effects from the way some people consume these drinks, such as mixing them with alcohol.
Apparently, it's the year of the product recall.
Now it's Nike, with their recall of 235,000 football helmet chin straps after receiving reports of head and facial injuries that resulted after the strap broke.
Not surprisingly, the chin strap was made in China. The strap was sold between 2006 and 2007.
You can see pictures of the strap at http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml08/08081.html
Merck agreed to pay more than $4 billion to settle the majority of the claims that have arisen from their popular drug Vioxx. Victims and their families claim that Vioxx causes heart attacks and strokes.
Merck has won most of the Vioxx cases that have gone to trial and many observers actually believed that this was a favorable settlement for Merck.
Approximately 38,000 or the 60,000 Vioxx plaintiffs must agree to the settlement for it to proceed. Merck has indicated that it will defend all claims not included in the ultimate settlement.
For more information on this settlement, see the InjuryBoard.com Vioxx page. http://www.injuryboard.com/topic/vioxx--rofecoxib.aspx
See also, Jane Akre's InjuryBoard National News Desk: http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/merck-to-settle-vioxx-claims.aspx?googleid=28392
As many Northern Nevadans are aware, a Reno jury recently handed down a major verdict against drug giant, Wyeth.
This comes from David Parker writing for the Reno Gazette Journal:
Wyeth plaintiffs Arlene Rowart, from left, of Incline Village, Jeraldine Scofield of Fallon and Pamela Forrester of Yerington listen shortly after the jury ruled in their favor in the trial against the pharmaceutical maker.
Three Nevada women, including one from Fallon, were awarded $99 million by Reno jurors in punitive damages Monday.
The women had claimed hormone replacement drugs distributed by pharmaceutical giant Wyeth caused their breast cancer.
An attorney for Wyeth called the award "an aberration" and said it would be appealed.
The Washoe County District Court jury initially issued a $134.5 million judgment against Wyeth last week, but Judge Robert Perry slashed that to $35 million after it became clear some of the jurors were under the mistaken belief the award was to include punitive damages intended to punish the company.
After lawyers for both sides gave closing arguments again Monday, the judge instructed the five-man, two-women jury to move to the punitive stage of the trial to consider whether the company's actions were so "reprehensible" that additional damages were warranted to punish it and discourage such behavior in the future.
"This verdict is an extreme aberration," said Heidi Hubbard, a partner in the law firm representing Wyeth. "It is inconsistent with every other hormone therapy case to be tried to date and it is inconsistent with the evidence."
The judgment for Jeraldine Scofield, 74, of Fallon; Arlene Rowatt, 67, of Incline Village; and Pamela Forrester, 65, of Yerington is by far the largest award to date against the Madison, N.J.-based company, which faces about 5,300 similar lawsuits across the country in state and federal courts.
All involve the drugs Premarin, an estrogen replacement, and Prempro, a combination of estrogen and progestin, prescribed for women to ease symptoms of menopause.
The jurors returned at 1 p.m. Monday, two hours after they began deliberations following an impassioned plea by one of the women's lawyers to return a large enough judgment to "get the attention and hold responsible" a company with a net worth of $14.6 billion.
"You already found Wyeth acted with fraud and malice. You found they did wrong. Now you can punish them for what they did to these women," Zoe Littlepage told the jurors.
"We're talking about a company that decided year after year to put their profits and money over the safety of their patients who got breast cancer," she said.
Dan Webb, Wyeth's lead attorney, urged the jury to re-examine the evidence thoroughly and resist the temptation to reissue the original $100 million judgment.
"You'll decide whether you've already punished Wyeth enough," Webb said. "For Ms. Littlepage to suggest you have not captured Wyeth's attention with your verdict is just wrong.
"My client has received the message."
Geraldine Scofield, 75, of Fallon said she was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago and is "somewhat optimistic" about her health.
Scofield, whose mother is 93, and who has no breast can |