Following up a story I wrote about earlier this week, today’s New York Times reports that a Los Angeles jury has “ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay more than $8.3 million in damages… in the first of more than 10,000 lawsuits pending against the medical products maker” and its subsidiary,…
An editorial published last month by the New York Times raises important questions about the legal and moral responsibility medical device manufacturers have, or ought to have, concerning their products. The newspaper focused on all-metal hip implants in general and the actions of DePuy Orthopaedics in particular. DePuy is a…
An article published yesterday in the New York Times raises serious questions about product safety issues concerning bed rails, and is worth our notice here in Oregon. The paper’s reporting is built around the shocking revelation that the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Food and Drug Administration have both…
An opinion piece published earlier this month in the Wall Street Journal is an impassioned plea for greater accountability among physicians and greater engagement by patients all in the name of dramatically improving medical care and patient safety. The piece by Dr. Marty Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins, begins…
The shocking case of a Portland doctor who, according to The Oregonian, faces “manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges in connection with two after-hours tummy-tuck operations she gave to employees in 2010” is a reminder that all of us need to keep Oregon patient safety in our thoughts when considering medical…
Earlier this month news broke of a head-spinningly large fraud settlement involving the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. According to ABC News the company “agreed to an unprecedented $3 billion settlement with the US government over allegations that the company advertised drugs for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.”…
The small-town pharmacist who knows all of his or her customers is a staple of TV and the movies. That fictional pharmacist has plenty of time to triple check medications and their dosage and to discuss things in detail with patients, most of whom have been his friends for years.…