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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 [...]

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 (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 [...]

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 [...]

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 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 [...]

A widower was awarded $200 000 (142 000 £) damages in a court in Tampa, Florida, last week for the death from lung and colon cancer of his 62 year [...]

Two lawsuits have been filed in federal courts in the US states of California and New Jersey asserting that the Novartis Pharmaceutical Corporation and the American Psychiatric Association conspired to [...]

The California Medical Association (CMA) has filed an antiracketeering lawsuit against the state's three largest for-profit national health insurance companies. The CMA alleges that the health insurers Wellpoint/Blue Cross of [...]

A new federal agency in the United States, established to protect the interests of patients who are the subjects of research, has shut down all government sponsored clinical trials at [...]

The California Medical Association (CMA) has fried an antiracketeering lawsuit against the state's three largest for-profit national health insurance companies. The CMA alleges that the health insurers Wellpoint/Blue Cross of [...]

A Texas jury has attributed the death of a 42 year old patient to an illegible prescription and has ordered the doctor who wrote it to pay $225,000 compensation to [...]

A Texas jury has attributed the death of a 42 year old patient to an illegible prescription and has ordered the doctor who wrote it to pay $225000 (140 625 [...]

In what seems to be the first such action in the United States, the Oregon Board of Medical Examiners has approved a disciplinary plan for a doctor who 'grossly undertreated' [...]

Research linking electromagnetic fields with cancer has been found fraudulent by the Office of Research Integrity of the US Department of Health and Human Services. In 1992 Dr Robert Liburdy, [...]

A six member jury in Miami has found that the seven largest American tobacco companies were guilty of fraud, misrepresentation, and conspiracy to conceal the addictiveness and dangers of cigarette [...]

The US state of Kansas is taking legal action against companies selling prescription-only medicines on the internet, in the first action of this kind. The Kansas attorney general, Carla Stovall, [...]

Since the emergence of managed care in the United States in 1990, clinical trials of new drugs have shifted from researchers working in university hospitals and medical schools to individual [...]

A special session of the Florida Legislature has authorised the state's governor to order a feeding tube to be reinserted in Mrs Terri Schiavo, who has been in a persistent […]

A right to die case in Florida that has passed through the hands of 19 separate judges drew the state's governor, Jeb Bush, into its ambit last week, when he [...]

Last month Schering-Plough, based in Kenilworth, New Jersey, said that it faced indictment on a number of charges listed in a letter from the US Attorney's Office. The charges included [...]

A lawsuit brought on behalf of 82 patients who were allegedly subjected to unnecessary cardiac surgery at Redding Medical Center, Redding, northern California, has been fried in a Californian county [...]

Cruise ship companies are advising passengers to wash their hands after several outbreaks of gastroenteritis among travellers. But they deny that the problem is caused by anything on the ships. [...]

Last month federal agents raided the offices of two doctors, Dr Chae Hyun Moon, 55, chief of cardiology, and Dr Fidel Realyvasquez, 53, chief of cardiac surgery, at Redding Medical [...]

A Los Angeles jury has awarded $28bn (18bn £; 29bn €) punitive damages to Betty Bullock, aged 64, of Newport Beach, California, a former smoker with lung cancer, against tobacco [...]

The first lawyer to sue the tobacco industry is predicting a series of similar suits against the fast food industry for its role in the obesity epidemic. Professor John Banzhaf [...]

A federal court in San Francisco has ruled that antiabortionists who distributed 'Wanted' posters identifying doctors who performed abortions had illegally threatened the doctors. The defendants, two antiabortion organisations and [...]

Dr David Franklin, a former employee of the Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company, has filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that its sales representatives encouraged doctors to prescribe gabapentin (Neurontin) for [...]

After deliberating for four days, a jury in Portland, Oregon, has ordered Philip Morris to pay more than $150m (105m £; 172m €) to the family of Michelle Schwarz, a [...]

A Texas jury of eight women and four men decided in only 35 minutes to spare Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in the family bath (16 March, p [...]

Brazilian medical associations have begun hearings to revoke the medical licences of doctors who took part in the torture of political prisoners between 1964 and 1985 during the military dictatorship. [...]

A coalition of abortion protesters in Portland, Oregon, has been ordered by a jury of four men and four women to pay $107.9m (67.4m £) in damages to Planned Parenthood, [...]

Officials from the University of Vienna have apologised for failing to investigate the university's involvement with Nazism. They have also promised to research archives in Germany and the United States [...]