Purdue Pharma of Stamford, CT, hired Rudolph Giuliani and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, in 2002 to help stem the controversy about OxyContin. Among Giuliani's missions was the job of convincing public officials that they could trust Purdue because they could trust him.
Nemours Children's Clinic in Orlando, FL, announced that its new division of orthopedics will be led by Suzanne Jaffe Walters, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in pediatric and adolescent sports medicine.
Scientists blamed Alzheimer's on misfolded proteins, broken neural pathways, misprinted gene maps, and much more. For years they have laid plans to fight the disease with all of the Big Pharma firepower they could muster. But they also talked about inhaling insulin, eating turmeric, fixing vitamin deficiencies, injecting stem cells and inventing neuro-protective vaccines.
Now, annual checkups for the nearly half a million Massachusetts children on Medicaid will carry a new requirement: Doctors must offer simple questionnaires to detect warning signs of possible mental health problems, from autism in toddlers to depression in teens. Over the last several years, such questionnaires have increasingly become the standard of care in pediatric practices, but spurred by legal action Massachusetts is jumping ahead of other states by requiring the screens for all its young Medicaid recipients.
Under a bill signed into law, all pregnant women in New Jersey will be tested for HIV as part of their prenatal care unless they object. The law also requires testing for newborns if the HIV status of the mother is unknown. The new testing procedures are some of the most aggressive HIV-prevention measures in the country for pregnant women and newborns, making New Jersey one of just a handful of states with laws requiring some form of prenatal testing.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is on the attack against her main rival, charging that Barack Obama's health plan would leave millions of Americans without medical protection while hers provides coverage to all. The assertion, flatly rejected by the Obama campaign, rests on a pivotal difference between the two Democratic presidential candidates' health proposals. Clinton says she wants the government to require all citizens to buy insurance or face a penalty. Obama relies on a mandate for children only, and instead emphasizes ways to make coverage more affordable.