[JAMA] As of July 2010, the United States spent $2.6 trillion per year on health care.1​ It is not just the level of spending that is of concern but the rate of growth over time. During the last 30 years, the growth in US health care spending has been 2.1% more per year than growth [...]

[medpagetoday] Drug research, even from clinical trials sponsored by the federal government, routinely is suppressed, harming patients and increasing healthcare costs, according to a series of reports published by BMJ.
“The current situation is a disservice to research participants, patients, health systems, and the whole endeavor of clinical medicine,” according to an editorial published with [...]

(CNN) — A medical group in Argentina is asking for more drug-testing regulations in the South American country after a officials fined pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline for alleged irregularities in a pediatric pneumonia vaccine trial.
The Argentinian Federation of Health Professionals accuses drug maker GlaxoSmithKline of misleading participants and pressuring poor families into joining a trial for [...]

(CBS/AP) Scientists are worried that the government’s unprecedented action to ask two top scientific journals to withhold details of upcoming bird flu studies might impede scientific progress.
The scientists fear a chill may be descending on their field, particularly related to key studies on how viruses that normally infect birds and pigs evolve to infect people. [...]

[NYTimes] ChemGenex Pharmaceuticals found out the hard way how important it is to have a trustworthy companion.

 The Food and Drug Administration last year rejected the company’s drug to treat a subset of leukemia patients whose tumors had a particular genetic mutation. The main problem was not the drug itself, the agency said. Rather, ChemGenex had [...]

[Thomas V. Berg, hprweb]  My experience as a teacher, counselor and confessor has repeatedly confirmed that there is a tremendous amount of confusion, especially among Catholics, about the nature of moral conscience.  That experience has also taught me just how sensitive this topic is. Want to make a group of people immediately uncomfortable? Start talking [...]

BERKELEY —  Emotional differences between the rich and poor, as depicted in such Charles Dickens classics as “A Christmas Carol” and “A Tale of Two Cities,” may have a scientific basis. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that people in the lower socio-economic classes are more physiologically attuned to suffering, and quicker [...]

[amenews] Medical practices generally earn less giving a single shot that protects against five diseases than injecting component immunizations separately, even though the same amount of counseling time is often required for combination shots as single vaccinations, according to a study.

[WSJ] After an Israeli biotech company stopped working on a promising medication, two U.S. families took an unusual step: They bought the drug and decided to develop it themselves as a possible treatment for their children’s muscular dystrophy.
The Secklers, of Stockbridge, Mass., and the Wicka family, from Minneapolis, are hoping the experimental compound, called halofuginone, [...]

[washingtonpost] Physicians and the federal government cited the case of a San Francisco Bay area man who has fathered 14 children as an example of the risks posed by the informal market for sperm donations, which doctors consider unsafe but some people call a civil liberties issue.
Trent Arsenault, 36, of Fremont offers his sperm for [...]