Health Glance
From the time they arrived to the moment they laid their heads on hotel pillows, the thousands of cardiologists attending this week's Heart Rhythm Society conference have been bombarded with pitches for drugs and medical devices.
St. Jude Medical adorns every hotel key card. Medtronic ads are splashed on buses, banners and the stairs underfoot. Logos splay across shuttle bus headrests, carpets and cellphone-charging stations. And at night, a drug firm gets the last word: A promo for the heart drug Multaq stood on each doctor's nightstand Wednesday.
Who arranged this commercial barrage? The society itself, which sold access to its members and their purchasing power.
Pancreatic cancer drug Afinitor by Novartis AG's has been approved by the U.S. FDA for a rare type of pancreatic cancer that has few treatment options, reports Reuters. The Swiss drugmaker said in a statement, "Data show Afinitor delays tumor growth and reduces risk of disease progression in patients with advanced neuroendocrine tumours (NET) of pancreatic origin."
Ignorance about ingredients found in more than 600 over-the-counter and prescription drugs could account for increasing liver failure, U.S. researchers say.
By now most people probably realize that ground beef contains the meat from hundreds of animals from different parts of the world, but few would ever suspect that the same can be true for prime cut steaks! Well, that's possible through the use of so-called meat glue, used to "super-glue" small chunks of meat together that are too small to sell, and passing it off as prime cuts...
A case in point: it turns out that only about half of the new prescription medications pushed onto the market over the last decade had the proper data together for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration - yet the FDA approved them anyhow.
A desperate father whose son was suffering from a life-threatening brain tumour has revealed he gave him cannabis oil to ease his pain. And he has now apparently made a full recovery.
Three months after the federal government urged most Americans to sharply cut their salt intake, a new study questions whether the recommendation will benefit those without high blood pressure.
