[FDA] Thomas George, the former Chief Executive Officer of Sterling Seafood Corporation, was sentenced today to 22 months in prison for importing falsely labeled fish from Vietnam and evading over $60 million in federal tariffs, as well as selling over $500,000 in similarly misbranded fish purchased from another importer, United States Attorney Paul J. Fishman [...]

[Prehospital and Disaster Medicine]  There have been great efforts on the federal and local levels to prepare for the specter of a severe influenza pandemic, however knowledge gaps and operational challenges remain. It is critical to assess if current top-down efforts actually are improving and/or likely to improve the ability of on-the-ground clinicians to respond [...]

[NYTimes] — Perhaps the only consistent thing about Britain’s socialized health care system is that it is in a perpetual state of flux, its structure constantly changing as governments search for the elusive formula that will deliver the best care for the cheapest price while costs and demand escalate.

Even as the new coalition government [...]

[SeattleTimes]  A simple bowl of white rice sits on a conference table inside the Seattle headquarters of global-health nonprofit PATH.  What looks and tastes like ordinary rice is actually the product of two decades of research and development.

For every 100 grains of rice, the bowl contains one grain of Ultra Rice. It’s actually not rice [...]

[Bloomberg] — Potent stem cells derived from reprogramming skin or other adult body tissues may have limits on their usefulness as an alternative to cells from human embryos, researchers said.
The study found that induced pluripotent stem cells, or IPS cells, retain a “memory” of their original adult tissue, making it more difficult to turn them [...]

[wsj] Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, is under scrutiny. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving. Dr. Emanuel is part of a school of thought that redefines a physician’s duty, insisting that it includes working for [...]

[NYTimes] On a clear and mild March day in 1993, the Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry spoke at a rally in southern Florida against abortion. “We’ve found the weak link is the doctor,” he told the crowd. “We’re going to expose them. We’re going to humiliate them.” A few days later, Dr. David Gunn, an [...]

[WSJ]  A former Food and Drug Administration official said the maker of diabetes drug Avandia withheld from regulators information suggesting the drug posed an increased risk for serious heart problems, according to people familiar with her statements. The allegation comes as one of the biggest recent drug-safety fights nears a climax. Starting Tuesday, a panel [...]

[reliefweb] A new position paper by three human rights organizations, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-IL), Al-Mezan and Adalah, reviews Israel’s exit policy at the Erez Crossing regarding Gaza patients seeking medical treatment unavailable in Gaza. The paper argues that there is a consistent Israeli policy of distinguishing between life-threatening cases and cases that affect quality [...]