TV News LIES

Children born outside the United States have lower rates of allergies, but after prolonged U.S. residence, reduced prevalence is reversed, researchers say.

Dr. Jonathan I. Silverberg of St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center and colleagues at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center and Oregon Health Science Center examined a sample of nearly 92,000 children from the 2007-08 National Survey of Children's Health.

Doctors should avoid 90 medical procedures that are performed regularly but often cost too much or do little good, according to a new list of expert recommendations.

The ABIM Foundation said it released its medical “don’ts” to help doctors and patients choose wisely and reduce health care costs.

Some examples: Physicians shouldn’t use feeding tubes for patients with advanced dementia or automatically order CT scans to evaluate children’s minor head injuries.

Roche Holding AG (ROG), the Basel, Switzerland-based drugmaker that manufactures the world’s best- selling cancer treatment and reached a five-year high this week, has minted at least 12 Swiss and German billionaires. Seven have never appeared individually on an international wealth ranking.

The dozen billionaires, who are drawn from the Engelhorn family of Germany and Switzerland’s Hoffmann-Oeri clan, have a combined fortune valued at more than $35 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Now there are 135. That's how many medical tests, treatments and other procedures - many used for decades - physicians have now identified as almost always unnecessary and often harmful, and which doctors and patients should therefore avoid or at least seriously question.

The lists of procedures, released on Thursday by the professional societies of 17 medical specialties ranging from neurology and ophthalmology to thoracic surgery, are part of a campaign called Choosing Wisely. Organized by the American Board of Internal Medicine's foundation, it aims to get doctors to stop performing useless procedures and spread the word to patients that some don't help and might hurt.

In 1929, the Monsanto company introduced a new class of chemicals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), substances that would revolutionize electronics. Seven years later, several workers at the Halowax Corporation in New York who worked with PCBs fell ill, and three died of severe liver failure. By the mid-1930's, officials Monsanto and General Electric (GE), which was one of the leading licensees of the technology, knew about the potential health effects of PCBs. Soon more studies linked PCB exposures to cancer, developmental problems, and damage to the immune, reproductive, nervous and endocrine systems.

But the corporations continued their production and use of PCBs for decades. Finally, the chemicals were banned by Congress (the only such specific chemical ban ever enacted) in 1976. By then, GE had dumped an estimated 1.3 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River, making areas of the River the country's largest "Superfund" contamination zone, threatening the health and environment for millions of New Yorkers to this day. Millions more Americans are threatened today by other failures to assess and avoid the health problems caused by chemical-dependent technologies.

Patients who have lost their sight due to a rare disorder may be able to regain some vision using a new implantable device that takes the place of damaged cells inside the eye.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System as the first treatment for an inherited disorder that causes the breakdown of cells in the retina, a membrane inside the eye.