HEALTH & SCIENCE

UNDISCLOSED SIDE EFFECTS OF THE DAY

HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL - Bayer Corp. will pay $8 million to 30 states,
including $200,000 to Texas, as part of a settlement requiring the
company to fully disclose when drugs pose risks for patients with
specific health conditions. According to the settlement, Bayer failed to
adequately warn physicians, pharmacies and patients of clinical studies
revealing serious consequences of taking Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering
drug. The company pulled the drug from the market in August 2001 due to
its muscle-weakening side effects. The terms also extend to the
disclosure of clinical studies involving other Bayer drugs with possibly
harmful side effects.

http://houston.bizjournals.com/houston/stories/2007/01/22/daily29.html

COALITION AGAINST BAYER DANGERS
http://www.CBGnetwork.org

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HEALTH INSURANCE UPDATE

PROGRESSIVE POPULIST - If it's any comfort, Bush's plan will get nowhere
in Congress, where Rep. Pete Stark, chair of the House Health
Subcommittee, already has dismissed the idea of hearings. We hope Stark,
D-Calif., will give a favorable hearing to the National Health Insurance
Act, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich. It would expand Medicare to
cover all Americans.

Stark was one of 78 co-sponsors of the bill, which never got a hearing
in the past two GOP-majority Congresses. The bill, endorsed by 225 labor
organizations, has the advantage of efficiently providing patients with
their choice of health care providers, guaranteeing those health care
providers with payments for their services and relieving businesses of
the burden of administering health insurance plans.

The problem is that it does away with the need for insurance companies,
which makes for a formidable and well-funded adversary. Perhaps to head
off the possibility of Medicare expansion, the insurance industry has
put together a coalition to promote more government subsidies for
private health insurance. With the American Medical Association, the US
Chamber of Commerce, the health insurance lobby and a dozen other
interested groups, including AARP and Families USA, the Health Coverage
Coalition for the Uninsured proposes a two-phase expansion of health
care. . . We have to be suspicious of a plan that is embraced by the
insurance racket, but this one probably has a better chance of getting
through Congress and helping some of the 47 million uninsured Americans
in the short term.

The insurance industry and the AMA have poisoned debate about
'socialized medicine' to the point where a November 2006 poll found 51%
support keeping the current private-insurance-based system, while 39%
support replacing the current system with a government-run health-care
system. (10% were unsure.) AARP was snookered in 2003 into lending its
credibility to the badly flawed Medicare drug plan, but Families USA has
been a standup force for universal care, so perhaps this insurance plan
is worth a look. Certainly congressional Dems would rather proceed with
a bill that does not make enemies of the insurance racket as well as the
doctors. That is, unless you, the people, can persuade them to expand
Medicare. Now.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/populist-news/message/163

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PREVIOUSLY UNREPORTED SIDE EFFECT OF THE DAY

PRESS WATCH - Canadian researchers have indicated that older people
taking antidepressants such as Prozac and Seroxat are twice as likely to
break bones. A study involving a group of people over the age of 50 who
had been prescribed treatments from a class of antidepressants known as
selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors indicated that the greater the
dose, the greater the risk of fractures. The findings, published in
Archives of Internal Medicine, were unable to definitively decide
whether SSRIs weakened bones or caused problems with balance.

http://www.presswatch.com/health/#4

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ONE THIRD OF BRITISH MENTAL HEALTH PATIENTS FOUND TO BE GIVEN TOO MANY
DRUGS

BBC - Up to one in three mental health patients are being
over-prescribed drugs, says the Healthcare Commission. A report found
mental health patients were more likely to have problems with medicines
than those in other trusts. . . In research undertaken by the
Prescribing Observatory for Mental Health, 36% of people were found to
have been prescribed more than the maximum recommended dose of
anti-psychotic medicines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6256185.stm Mental health drugs
overused

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SYPHILIS SOARING IN CHINA

Jill McGivering, BBC - The Lancet reports that China - which virtually
eliminated syphilis in the 1960s and 70s - is now seeing the disease
return with alarming intensity. It reveals that reported rates have
risen from 0.2 cases per 100,000 in 1993 to 5.7 cases per 100,000 in
2005. . . Dr Myron Cohen, a co-author of the report, described the
spread of the disease as "fantastically rapid".

The disease is most prevalent amongst those in particular high-risk
groups, like commercial sex workers and men who have sex with men. In
those groups, as many as one in ten to one in five has syphilis,
according to some of China's top specialists.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/6253807.stm

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