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More Johnson & Johnson Drug Factories Cited for Terrible Quality Control

Parija Kavilanz
CNN
Fri, 23 Jul 2010 15:08 UTC
Image
© unknown
Another Johnson & Johnson manufacturing plant -- this one making heartburn and gas relief drugs Pepcid, Imodium and Mylanta - was cited for a pattern of quality lapses similar to those seen at the company's shuttered Tylenol plant.

Earlier this month, safety inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration issued a "Form 483" to Johnson & Johnson's Lancaster, Pa., plant.

A Form 483 is issued after an FDA inspection finds problems with a company's manufacturing practices.

The Lancaster plant is owned by Johnson & Johnson-Merck Consumer Pharmaceuticals, a joint venture of J&J and Merck (MRK, Fortune 500), but is operated by the company's McNeil division.
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Health

Australia: Hospital Food Fails Those Too Ill to Eat It

Amy Corderoy
The Sydney Times Herald
Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:00 UTC
Image
© Ben Rushton
Apology ... Robin McLennan and her mother, Gwen.
Hospitals will be forced to show they are preventing malnutrition in their patients or else lose their accreditation after continuing concerns about how vulnerable patients are fed.

Elderly patients who stay are hospitalised for long periods are dying from malnutrition because hospitals do not currently consider food part of clinical care, said Claire Hewat, the chief executive of the Dietitians Association of Australia.

And nearly two years after the Garling inquiry heard elderly people were "starving" in public hospitals, some NSW patients were still left unable to open and eat their food.
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Cookie

Family doctors debate if they should take Coke money, after they took it

Michele Simon
Appetiteforprofit.blogspot.com
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 01:01 UTC
Image
© Unknown
In this week's Health Blog, the Wall Street Journal's Katherine Hobson asks readers to chime in on a "debate" among family doctors over the ethics of corporate sponsorship of medicine.

But first, the backdrop. Last year, the American Academy of Family Physicians announced "a new corporate partnership program" and its first partner was to be The Coca-Cola Company. Soon thereafter, about 20 doctors resigned from the organization in protest, drawing attention to the matter by Food Politics author Marion Nestle as well as advocacy groups such as the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. (Full disclosure: I serve on CCFC's steering committee.)

The grant amount was described as being in the "strong six figures" by AAFP. Here is how the group described the partnership in its October 2009 press release:
The Consumer Alliance is a program that allows corporate partners like The Coca-Cola Company to work with the AAFP to educate consumers about the role their products can play in a healthy, active lifestyle. As part of this partnership, The Coca-Cola Company is providing a grant to the AAFP to develop consumer education content on beverages and sweeteners for FamilyDoctor.org, an award-winning consumer health and wellness resource.
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Pills

FDA Sued for Failure to Alert Diabetics to Effective Drug Alternatives

Sandra Quinlan
Justice News Flash
Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:42 UTC
Image
A nonprofit doctors group filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this month, after they failed to notify patients of dietary alternatives to dangerous diabetes drugs such as Avandia, a highly scrutinized diabetes medication. The group, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), alleged they petitioned the FDA to require that such alternatives be included on labels for the drugs, but to no avail, according to a Monday, July 19, 2010 PCRM news release.

Plaintiffs in the case, who are all doctors, alleged that while the PCRM sent the FDA an administrative petition regarding the lack of labels alerting patients of substitutes to dangerous diabetes medications, administration commissioner Margaret Hamburg, M.D., did not appear to act on the matter.
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Bell

Adults Ingest More than 1,000 Times "Safe" Levels of Dioxin

Cameron Scott
San Francisco Chronicle
Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:03 UTC
The Environmental Protection Agency is holding public hearings today to review a proposed safe exposure limit for dioxin, a known carcinogen and endocrine disruptor produced as a common industrial byproduct.

It's all but impossible to avoid exposure to dioxin. Research done by the Environmental Working Group has shown that adults are exposed to 1,200 times more dioxin than the EPA is calling safe - mostly through eating meat, dairy and shellfish - and mothers pass it on to babies in the womb and in breast milk. A nursing infant ingests an amount 77 times higher than what the EPA has proposed as safe exposure. (Formula is also widely contaminated with the stuff.)
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Red Flag

Malicious Adults Use Drugs and Alcohol to Abuse Kids

JoNel Aleccia
msnbc.com
Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:42 UTC
Sleeping pills, cough syrup, laxatives harm 160 children a year, study says

Parents and caregivers who slip young, healthy children doses of common drugs - including painkillers, sedatives and laxatives - are fueling a dangerous but hidden form of child abuse, new research finds.

About 160 kids are hurt in the United States each year - and at least two die - after being forced to ingest antidepressants, cough and cold medicines, even drugs to treat high blood pressure. Many are given alcohol, marijuana or cocaine, according to the first large-scale study of the issue published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

"We believe that the malicious use of pharmaceuticals may be an under-recognized form and or component of child maltreatment," said Dr. Shan Yin, who led the study conducted at the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver.

Yin, a medical toxicologist, analyzed more than 21.4 million calls to the National Poison Data System between 2000 and 2008. When he looked at cases of drug and alcohol poisoning coded as "malicious" in children younger than 7, Shin found 1,439 cases of kids who'd been exposed. Some 172 children were seriously injured and 18 died.
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Red Flag

Do Well-Educated People Think They Are More Left-Wing Than They Actually Are?

Sarah Graham
The Telegraph
Wed, 14 Jul 2010 05:00 UTC
University graduates mortar boards
© Rex Features
University graduates are less able to recognise their conservative tendencies than people who leave school at 16, according to the research.

Its author suggests that adults fail to notice as the political opinions of their youth weaken as they join the workforce and start families.

Additionally, because well-eductated people tend to socialise with others who have conservative views, their perception of where the ideoligical middle ground lies is skewed, wrote James Rockey, an economics lecturer at the University of Leicester.

However, earning a high salary can jolt employees into a better awareness of where they sit in the political spectrum, he added.
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Magnify

Word Games May Predict Life of Relationship

Kathleen Doheny
USA Today
Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:29 UTC
Image
© Getty Images
Word Association Game
Want to know if your romantic relationship will last "'til death do you part" - or if you are cruising toward a breakup?

A simple word association game may reveal the hidden truth about your union, a new study suggests.

Most research on successful relationships is flawed because it relies on asking the people involved how they feel about each other, said researcher Dr. Ronald Rogge, an associate professor at the University of Rochester and co-author of a study recently published online in the journal Psychological Science.

That strategy assumes partners know how happy they are - and tell the truth - which is not always the case, he said.

Instead, Rogge and his colleagues used word association games that are often used to detect bias to see what people really think about their partners.
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Family

Scientists Prove That Women Are Better At Multitasking Than Men

Richard Gray
The Telegraph
Sat, 17 Jul 2010 18:17 UTC
Womens work is never done
© Photolibrary
Psychologists have proven that men really are worse at multitasking than women
Psychologists have proven that men really are worse at multitasking than women, although it does depend on the task.

It is an age old complaint - that men are incapable of doing more than one thing at once.

Researchers decided to test the truth of the commonly held belief after discovering that no scientific research had ever been done into it.

They found that when women and men work on a number of simple tasks - such as searching for a key or doing easy maths problems - at the same time, the women significantly outperformed the men.

Scientists believe that the results show that females are better able to reflect upon a problem, while continuing to juggle their other commitments, than men.
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Question

How Safe Are Cosmetics? New Bill Wants to Find Out

Andrew Schneider
Aol News
Wed, 21 Jul 2010 02:40 UTC
Image
© Mark Schapiro
Most Americans use about 10 personal care products each day. The toothpaste, shampoo, deodorant, baby powder and other things that we routinely douse or slather on our bodies expose us to at least 100 different chemicals. Many of these, public health experts say, have been linked to adverse health effects like cancer, birth defects and learning disabilities.

There is nothing that the Food and Drug Administration can legally do about it.

But that may begin to change as two Democratic lawmakers - Reps. Jan Schakowsky from Illinois and Edward Markey from Massachusetts - introduced the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010 today. If passed, it will be the first meaningful effort to give the FDA the teeth, tools and mandate to protect consumers from harmful products that are used by almost everyone.
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