TV News LIES

Allergan Inc., the maker of wrinkle-smoothing Botox, says it will pay $600 million to settle a five-year-long federal investigation into its marketing of the top-selling, botulin-based drug.

The company said Wednesday in a statement it will plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of "misbranding," in which the company's marketing led physicians to use Botox for unapproved uses. Those included the treatment of headache, pain, spasticity and cerebral palsy in children.

Smoking marijuana modestly reduced pain and other symptoms of chronic neuropathic pain, results of a small randomized, placebo-controlled trial showed. The most potent dose used reduced average daily pain scores by 0.7 points on an 11-point scale (5.4 versus 6.1 with placebo, 95% confidence interval for difference 0.02 to 1.4), according to Mark A. Ware, MBBS, of McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues.

Those who smoked weed with 9.4% of the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol THC) also reported sleeping better, the researchers reported online in CMAJ.These results are important in light of the fact that patients who hear about pain relief from ongoing publicity about medical marijuana have had only a "trickle" of evidence to prove it, explained Henry J. McQuay, DM, of Oxford University, in an accompanying editorial.

He suffered the devastating effects after being given the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine when he was 13 months old.

But now, in a judgment which will give hope to hundreds of other parents whose children have been severely affected by routine vaccinations, a medical assessment panel consisting of two doctors and a barrister has concluded that MMR was to blame.

Did you know that the majority of FDA approved drugs have serious potential side effects that were not detected before marketing approval?

That about three quarters of a million people a year are rushed to emergency rooms in the U.S. because of adverse drug reactions, according to the CDC?

That the number of medication-related deaths in the U.S. is estimated at over 200,000 a year, making medications the third or fourth leading cause of death in this country?

Most reports about seasonal influenza cite an average of about 36,000 deaths in a typical season, but that number is both too high and grossly misleading, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

The actual average is a little over 23,000, the agency reported in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. But even that figure is misleading, the report added, because the actual numbers have ranged from as low as 3,300 deaths up to nearly 50,000 over the last 30 years. The period covered in the analysis goes up to 2007 and does not include last year's H1N1 influenza pandemic.

Artificial corneas grown in the laboratory have been transplanted into patient's eyes for the first time in an operation that offers hope to millions of partially sighted people. Scientists hope the breakthrough will also slash the cornea transplant waiting list which every year falls short by more than 500 in Britain alone.

The new technique involves growing human tissue or collagen in the laboratory and then shaping it using a contact lens mould. Damaged and scarred tissue from the front of the eye is then removed and the "biosynthetic" replacement is stitched in its place.