American Medical News- 23 January, 2012
Author: Amy Lynn Sorrel
“Medical staff membership and employment are separate roles. But the worlds can collide in ways that impinge on physicians’ rights and privileges if caught unaware.”
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Irish Medical News- 20 January, 2012
Author: Marie Feely
“A small number of Irish doctors were found to have solicited payment from pharmaceutical company medical representatives in recent years, according to a submission to the Medical Council Ethics Guide review obtained by IMN. The Council is in the process of reviewing the section of the Seventh Guide to Professional Conduct and Ethics for Registered Medical Practitioners dealing with the relationship of doctors with the pharmaceutical industry.”
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The Los Angeles Times- 26 January, 2012
Author: Melissa Healy
“A new proposal to toughen the Food and Drug Administration’s power to regulate dietary supplements has the makers of vitamins, minerals and botanical extracts up in arms. But an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine says the drug-safety agency’s proposed new powers do not go nearly far enough.”
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The Jakarta Post- 19 January, 2012
Author: Luh De Suriyani
“A local NGO has divulged that as many as 300 mentally-ill people are still confined with wooden stocks by their families across the island and is urging the provincial administration to design a humane and comprehensive approach in dealing with mentally-ill persons.”
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TIME.com- 23 January, 2012
Authors: Dr. Jesse M. Pines and Dr. Zachary F. Meisel
“Health care access — as measured by the ease and timeliness with which people obtain medical services — is a key indicator of quality of care. Some people have high-quality care, with round-the-clock access to doctors. Others don’t, waiting months for an appointment, resorting to Google for medical advice and the ER for primary care. In other words, having an insurance card or even a doctor doesn’t mean you have good access to health care.”
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The Guardian- 24 January, 2012
Author: Alan Travis
“Recreational drug users who naively buy small quantities to share with their friends could avoid jail under sentencing guidelines for drug offences published on Tuesday.”
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American Medical News, online 25 January 2012
Author: Pamela Lewis Dolan
“The Food and Drug Administration is giving pharmaceutical companies some rules for how they interact with consumers on social media. But the companies say they need a lot more clarification from the FDA before they’re comfortable getting back online again. The draft guidance encourages all responses to unsolicited requests for information, which could include requests from physicians for information on off-label uses for certain drugs, to be made in a nonpublic format.”
Find article here.
New guidance prevents doctors being ‘gagged’ and says they must raise concerns about patient safety
Jan 27
GMC media release, 26 Jan 2012
“New guidance from the General Medical Council will prevent doctors entering into contracts or agreements that seek to stop them raising concerns about poor quality care.”
Find release here.
NEJM, January 25, 2012 (10.1056/NEJMp1113325)
Author: Pieter A. Cohen
“Recently, a well-respected dietary-supplement company in Utah announced the recall of Zotrex, a sexual enhancement supplement labeled as containing “Ophioglossum polyphyllous.” The problem with Zotrex was twofold: not only is no species of ophioglossum (adder’s tongue) an established dietary ingredient, but Zotrex actually contained sulfoaildenafil, an analogue of sildenafil that has never been tested in humans.1 By the time of the recall, the company had distributed nearly 14 million capsules containing, among other things, sulfoaildenafil (under a variety of trade names, including Stiff Nights and OMG), and thousands of customers may have inadvertently consumed the untested analogue. Although Zotrex represented a particularly brazen violation of the law, surprisingly, many new supplement ingredients are introduced into the market as Ophioglossum polyphyllous was, without any regulatory oversight.”
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Med Law Rev (2012) doi: 10.1093/medlaw/fwr046
Author: John Coggon
“This essay presents an analytic approach to understanding patients’ responsibilities. Prompted by arguments in Margaret Brazier’s article ‘Do No Harm—Do Patients Have Responsibilities Too?’, the paper demonstrates how medical lawyers can attempt to answer the questions Brazier raises, particularly regarding the translation of ethical responsibilities into legal ones. It suggests that the expansive nature of medical law as a discipline renders increasingly unhelpful the paradigm ‘autonomous patients’ found in a narrowly understood medical ethics.”
Find abstract here.
