[Los Angeles Times] A physician, a pharmacist and 15 others have been charged with bilking Medicare and Medi-Cal out of millions of dollars in an elaborate prescription drug fraud that resulted in the government paying over and over for the same pills.
Using stolen or illegally obtained Medicare beneficiary cards, members of the ring known as [...]

[Kaiser Health News] Some of the most popular and expensive brand-name drugs are about to go generic. Take Lipitor, for example. In November, the heart drug comes off-patent — and by next June, there are likely to be multiple generic versions.With almost $11 billion in sales last year, it’s the largest blockbuster to fall off what [...]

[Minn Post] Attendance at this year’s Health Care Social Media Summit, which kicked off Monday and continues through Wednesday at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has more than doubled from last year. And many of the summit’s 375 attendees have been keeping the Twitter stream #mayoregan flowing with something like 100 tweets an hour.
That’s because more healthcare [...]

By Joe Palazzolo
[Wall Street Journal Law Blog] Here’s a dispatch from our U.K. colleague, Gautam Naik, on a ruling by Europe’s top court over patenting stem-cell research.
Europe’s top court ruled that any research involving the destruction of human embryos cannot be patented, a major setback for stem-cell science on the continent.
While the ruling [...]

[AsiaOne] The Ministry of Health (MOH) is now reviewing its publicity regulations under the Private Hospitals and Medical Clinics Act.
This is in view of the evolving media landscape, which has brought up grey areas that are not covered by the Act, The Straits Times (ST) reported.
At present, health-care institutions are required to state only factual [...]

[Virtual Mentor] While leading a recent ethics discussion with pediatric resident physicians, one participant made the comment, “I don’t feel like I do anything for my patients. I am just a person who writes admission orders and notes. Where is the doctoring?” My heart sank. Do residents really feel this way? Do they not recognize [...]

A team of German, Canadian and American scientists have mapped the entire genome of the deadly Black Death plague from the 14th century. The Yersinia pestis bacterium responsible for the plague is still virulent, and scientists will compare genomes of present-day and ancient microbes in an effort to determine what made the disease so deadly [...]

[PAIN] This study examined the influence of patients’ likability on pain estimations made by observers. Patients’ likability was manipulated by means of an evaluative conditioning procedure: pictures of patients were combined with either positive, neutral, or negative personal traits. Next, videos of the patients were presented to 40 observers who rated the pain. Patients were [...]

[First Word] Cephalon said Friday that it received a subpoena from the US Department of Justice requesting documents regarding “certain promotional practices” related to its sleep disorder drugs Nuvigil (armodafinil) and Provigil (modafinil). The company indicated that it is responding to the subpoena and will cooperate fully with the investigation.
Natalie deVane, a spokeswoman for the [...]