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On 1 July 1992 Mark R Chassin took up the post of health commissioner of New York state. I spoke to him about New York's health problems and his plans [...]

Why then send Lampreys? Fie, for shame! `Twill set a virgin's blood on flame. This to fifteen a proper gift! It might lend sixty-five a lift. 'To a Young Lady, [...]

Many websites with information on herbal remedies routinely violate a 1994 US law, which restricts manufacturers of supplements from making any claims for disease prevention, treatment, or cure. Dr Robert [...]

A joint venture of Takeda Chemical Industries and Abbott Laboratories--TAP Pharmaceutical Products--has agreed to pay $875m (583 £) to settle criminal and civil charges that it had illegally manipulated the [...]

Health maintenance organisations serving nearly half a million older Americans plan to pull out of Medicare, the managed health programme for people aged over 65. Karen Ignagni, president of the [...]

Cerivastatin (Baycol in the United States, Lipobay in the United Kingdom), a cholesterol lowering drug made by Bayer Corporation and initially approved in the US in 1997, has been withdrawn [...]

Patients vulnerable to type 2 diabetes can more than halve their risk of developing the disease by eating a low fat diet and taking half an hour of exercise a [...]

Senescence begins And middle age ends, The day your descendants Outnumber your friends. Ogden Nash (1902-71), American writer of light verse. Much of his writing has appeared in the New [...]

Blue Cross of California, one of the United States's largest health maintenance organisations, with 2.2 million members, has become the first commercial health maintenance organisation to pay bonuses to its [...]

Abortion clinics in the United States want greater safeguards because of what they feel are growing threats of violence against them and their staff. Three abortion rights organisations--Planned Parenthood Federation [...]

A study sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that less than half of all Americans receive some of the most valuable and effective preventive health [...]

The US Senate Committee on Finance chaired by Democratic senator Max Baucus of Montana held hearings last month on how self styled consultants run seminars teaching doctors how to boost [...]

The American Medical Association is to ask drug manufacturers to insert a statement into all its direct to consumer advertisements saying: 'Your physician may recommend other appropriate treatments.' Direct to [...]

The Center for Equal Opportunity, a private non-profit making think-tank based in Washington, DC, has found that black and Hispanic students are being admitted to American medical schools with substantially [...]

The American Medical Association (AMA) is in turmoil after a decision by its chief executive to sue the association's board of trustees and its incoming chairman. Dr E Ratcliffe Anderson, [...]

The tobacco industry was hit by two legal judgments in the United States last week. It was ordered to pay $3bn (2.1bn £) in punitive damages to a smoker who [...]

Three counterfeit prescription drugs have reached the shelves of American pharmacies and in some cases have been given to patients. Some phials contained cheap generic versions of the drugs named [...]

A report last month by the inspector general of the United States Department of Health and Human Services criticised the National Practitioner Data Bank for failing to protect patients from [...]

An advisory panel of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has voted overwhelmingly that three allergy remedies--loratadine, cetirizine, and fexofenadine--are safe enough to be bought at pharmacies and supermarkets [...]

Endpiece Now Charito is 60. But her hair is dark: Her ample bosoms firm and fair: Her skin is like a young girl's, warm and white: Her legs and thighs [...]

A new oral drug to treat chronic myeloid leukaemia has been approved in record time by the US Food and Drug Administration. At a news conference in Washington, DC, attended [...]

Americans spent $132bn (94bn £) on prescription drugs last year, an increase of $20.8bn (18.8%) over 1999. Spending on prescription drugs in the United Kingdom in 2000 was 7bn £. [...]

Foreigners seeking medical treatment are flocking to Havana, lured by advertisements and lower costs. Cuban officials have said that 3500 foreigners came for health care last year. 'People with a [...]

Oxycodone hydrochloride (OxyContin) is believed to be responsible for more than 120 fatal overdoses among drug misusers in recent years in several states, including Maine, Kentucky, Virginia, and Florida. The [...]

The International Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives handed the Bush administration a defeat last week when it voted by 26 to 22 to overturn his executive order [...]

The US House of Representatives last month passed a bill, by a vote of 252 to 172, that, if approved by the Senate, would give a new legal status to [...]

Resident doctors in the United States like gifts from the pharmaceutical industry but do not think they are influenced by them. Dr Michael Steinman and his colleagues at the Department [...]

Civil liberties groups, secular pressure groups, and some physicians have expressed concern at President George Bush's decision to set up a federal bureau for faith-based social services. Religious groups will [...]

The US Department of Health and Human Services told state Medicaid directors in a letter last month, that the abortion pill, mifepristone (RU 486), like abortions, would be covered only [...]

Antiabortionists in the United States have won the right to run a website publicising the names and addresses of doctors who provide abortions to pregnant women. A three judge panel [...]

The American Psychiatric Association has urged the World Psychiatric Association to protest to the Chinese government about the incarceration of political dissidents and Falun Gong members in mental hospitals. It [...]

'If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.' Eubie Blake (1883-1983) in the Observer, 13 February 1983 James Hubert Blake was born [...]

Health officials in the United States have been taking stringent precautions to prevent bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). Imports of beef and bovine products are banned, and no one who has [...]

The University of Wisconsin Hospital, the largest health care provider in Madison, has instituted a voucher program to replace free samples from drug companies. Samples have been banned from the [...]

Death rates from lung cancer among white women in the United States increased by 600% between 1950 and 2000, a report from the US surgeon general stated this week. The [...]

After seven years in which annual spending on health care in the United States grew by less than 6%, a new report predicts that spending growth will reach 8.6% during [...]

The American Medical Association and doctors groups representing different specialties are seeking relief from burdensome regulations that have resulted in many doctors refusing to accept new patients under Medicare, the [...]

Plague Wars Tom Mangold, Jeff Goldberg Pan, 7.99 £, pp 416 ISBN 0 330 36753 6 Rating: **** Plague Wars begins with an imaginary attack on the airport in Houston, [...]

A new drug trial on infants in Latin America has been criticised as unethical because the control group of babies in the trial will be given a placebo rather than [...]

A federal judge in San Juan, Puerto Rico, has awarded two abortion clinics and two patients a total of $350 000 (233 000 £) in damages for harassment by protesters. [...]

The University of California at Irvine (UCI), in a 29-page audit of its Willed Body Program that took more than a year and a half to complete, has faulted its [...]

President Bush this week moved to reinstate restrictions on abortion that had been in place under the previous Bush and Reagan administrations. He reversed the Clinton administration's policy on aid [...]

The glitz of President George W Bush's inauguration ceremony owed a considerable debt to the US pharmaceutical industry, which paid $1.7m (1.1 m £) towards the estimated $17m bill for [...]

Prescription drug shortages have been worrying doctors, pharmacists, and federal regulators over the past six months, especially in the hospital sector. A few years ago a hospital might run short [...]

Health officials in the United States have been taking stringent precautions to prevent bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). In addition to the long standing ban on imports of beef and bovine [...]

Loss and Possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun. Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), For a sundial Submitted by Fred Charatan, retired geriatric physician, [...]

The healthcare company HCA has agreed to plead guilty to criminal conduct and pay more than $840m (560m £) in criminal fines, civil penalties, and damages for alleged unlawful billing [...]

Alosetron hydrochloride (Lotronex), a prescription drag manufactured by GlaxoWellcome, and used to treat irritable bowel syndrome in women, has been withdrawn after reports of serious complications. The US Food and [...]

The bipartisan Pain Relief Promotion Act introduced by Oklahoma Republican senator Don Nickles will be voted on soon in the US Senate as part of a much larger year-end tax [...]

The Clinton administration has issued new rules giving Americans in private, employer based health plans the right to obtain faster decisions on their healthcare claims and appeals. The new rules [...]