Health Glance
The head of the NHS regulator that is meant to ensure fairness when private-sector firms bid for public contracts is also the chairman of a huge company whose Health Service business is worth £80 million a year – and set to increase massively.
As the chairman of the NHS Co-operation and Competition Panel (CCP), Lord Carter of Coles is paid £57,000 for two days’ work each week. But his other role, as chairman of the UK branch of the American healthcare firm McKesson, is more generously rewarded. Last year it paid him £799,000.
"The CIA's use of the cover of humanitarian activity for this purpose casts doubt on the intentions and integrity of all humanitarian actors in Pakistan, thereby undermining the international humanitarian community's efforts to eradicate polio, provide critical health services, and extend life-saving assistance during times of crisis like the floods seen in Pakistan over the last two years," the InterAction coalition wrote to the CIA director, David Petraeus.
Federal law enforcement officials announced charges in the largest healthcare fraud scam in the nation's history, indicting a Dallas-area physician for purportedly bilking Medicare of nearly $375 million after he reportedly sent out "recruiters" to round up patients and get them to sign for treatments he never provided.
The Food and Drug Administration warned that patients taking cholesterol-fighting statins face a small increase in the risk of higher blood-sugar levels and of being diagnosed with diabetes, raising concerns about one of the country's most widely prescribed groups of drugs.
A study published in Human and Experimental Toxicology in May of 2011 concluded that “nations that require more vaccine doses tend to have higher infant mortality rates.
A California research team says it has seen a rising number of deaths caused by the inhaling of compressed air from cans used to clean dust from computers.
A mention on the website of the World Health Organization (WHO) admits that there were suggestions by member or members of the Chemical Aspects Working Group meeting in Tokyo, held in 2002, to omit information on the “adverse health effects” of fluoride to “prevent controversy.” Here is the full quote from the WHO’s website:
