Jun 23rd, 2022 - NEW YORK (AP) — For decades, New York's leaders boasted that its strict limits on handgun ownership made it one of America's safest places, a claim backed by statistics showing the state — and its biggest city — consistently have among the nation's lowest firearm death rates. Now, in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision striking down key portions of the state's gun-licensing law, lawmakers...

Jun 22nd, 2022 - A pharmacology researcher with four retractions appears to have left the University of Pennsylvania, where he had worked for at least 30 years and won more than $7 million in NIH grants. The school's faculty page for William Armstead, who held ​​a research professorship in Anesthesiology and Critical Care, now bears only the statement that "Dr. Armstead may no longer be affiliated with the Pere...

Jun 22nd, 2022 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Certain game apps popular with young children may lure them into spending money or too much time playing, a new study suggests. An analysis of data from a study that assessed child development and use of mobile devices in 3-to-5-year-olds revealed the presence of manipulative software promoting prolonged gameplay or purchases, researchers report in JAMA Network Open....

Jun 22nd, 2022 - A new South Carolina law that allows physicians, medical students and nurses to refrain from doing procedures that violate their conscience has prompted concern that the measure will restrict healthcare options for the state's LGBTQ population. Signed into law by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster on June 17, the "Medical Ethics and Diversity Act" gives medical practitioners, health care institutio...

Jun 21st, 2022 - A New York nurse practitioner allegedly pocketed $1 million in a disability loan fraud scheme and could spend nearly 30 years in prison as a result. Catherine Seemer, 42, of Elmsford, New York, faces charges of wire fraud, federal financial aid fraud, and aggravated identity theft, according to federal officials. The charges carry a possibility of up to 27 years in prison.   From June 2017 thro...

Jun 20th, 2022 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted unanimously Thursday to increase scrutiny of pharmacy benefit managers that act as middlemen between drug companies and consumers in a renewed effort to combat soaring healthcare costs and drug prices. The five-member commission, including two Republican commissioners, voted to increase scrutiny of discounts that pharmaceutical mid...

Jun 20th, 2022 - A tracking tool on approximately one third of hospital websites in the United States has sent private patient information to Facebook, based on an investigative report jointly published by STAT and The Markup. The tracker, known as Meta Pixel, was identified in online appointment schedule features in 33 of Newsweek's top 100 hospitals in America; in 7 of these hospitals, the tracker also was li...

Jun 17th, 2022 - ROME (Reuters) - An Italian man, paralysed 12 years ago in a traffic accident, died on Thursday in Italy's first case of assisted suicide, according to an association that has long campaigned for legal euthanasia. Federico Carboni, 44, died with his family at his bedside after administrating the lethal medicines himself via a specially designed machine. "I don't deny that I regret saying goodby...

Jun 17th, 2022 - Moral distress — a reaction to being unable to provide appropriate care or being forced into making questionable decisions — is common in oncology practice. About 75% of the attendees at a recent session on the issue, held during the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), said they had experienced moral distress in their clinical practice in the past 6 months. When ...

Jun 17th, 2022 - A former physician assistant (PA) from Georgia was indicted by a federal grand jury on healthcare fraud charges — her second such illegal activity in the last decade. Theresa Pickering, 53, of Norcross, Georgia, was arraigned on charges of healthcare fraud, aggregated identity theft, and illegally prescribing controlled substances while illegally acting as a PA. In 2015, Pickering was sentenced...

Jun 16th, 2022 - (Reuters) - Arkansas on Wednesday urged a federal appeals court to revive the state's first-of-its-kind law prohibiting doctors from providing puberty blockers, hormones and surgery as part of gender transition treatment for minors. Arkansas Deputy Solicitor General Dylan Jacobs told a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, Missouri that "medical uncertainty" a...

Jun 16th, 2022 - This transcript has been edited for clarity. Hi. I'm Art Caplan. I'm at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where I run the Division of Medical Ethics. Sadly, I don't have to remind viewers that we have seen an explosion of gun violence in the United States over the past year, and it really is worse than it was even 4 or 5 years ago. Children have been obliterated at a number of schools. There...

Jun 14th, 2022 - A federal jury found Alexander, Arkansas family physician Joe David May, MD, known locally as "Jay" May, guilty on all 22 counts for which he was indicted in a multi-million-dollar conspiracy to defraud TRICARE, the federal insurance program for US veterans. The indictment alleged that May, 41, signed off on illegitimate prescriptions for pain cream. A pharmacy promoter paid recruiters to find ...

Jun 14th, 2022 - Unlike the countless inexperienced middlemen and outright swindlers who jumped into the mask market at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Tim Morgan knew what he was doing. In the 1990s, he taught English in Japan and later traveled throughout Asia, scouting factories that produced Nike watches and shades for Sunglass Hut, before he returned to Cleveland in 2000 to form his own import busi...

Jun 14th, 2022 - CHICAGO — Candidates for public office should not accept contributions from organizations that oppose evidence-based public health measures to reduce firearm violence, the American Medical Association (AMA) said Monday. In the wake of recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, Ryan Englander, a medical student and AMA delegate from Connecticut, called the US "a wounded patie...

Jun 14th, 2022 - The American Medical Association (AMA) this week enacted a new policy designed to combat public health disinformation at the annual meeting of its House of Delegates. The policy focuses on healthcare professionals who spread misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines and promote unproven treatments for the disease. But it has wider implications for other public health issues, as well. Some componen...

Jun 13th, 2022 - A Los Angeles County internist will pay nearly $9.5 million to resolve accusations that he submitted false claims to Medicare and California's Medicaid program. Part of the payment was a settlement in a civil case in which Minas Kochumian, MD, an internist who ran a solo practice in Northridge, California, was accused of submitting claims to Medicare and Medi-Cal for procedures, services, and t...

Jun 10th, 2022 - TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Shionogi & Co Ltd said its COVID-19 projects in Vietnam are still progressing, after fraud scandals enveloped its partner there and the health ministry. Shionogi is carrying out trials of its experimental COVID vaccine and oral treatment in Vietnam, following a memorandum of understanding with the government and Advanced International Joint Stock Co. (AIC) in November....

Jun 9th, 2022 - When most people imagine inspections from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), they might think of bureaucrats with clipboards scouring baby formula factories for unkempt equipment and rat droppings. But they probably don’t know that the FDA has another group of investigators who carry firearms and have the authority to arrest. Meet the Office of Criminal Investigations (OCI) — or, if you...

Jun 9th, 2022 - Injections of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) are commonly offered to men with erectile dysfunction (ED) by a variety of healthcare professionals at high cost, despite the lack of evidence-based guidelines to back its use or any standardized protocols or duration of treatment, according to a new study. Investigators researched over 100 clinics in eight populous metropolitan areas of the United State...