Opinions
Opinions
| Date | Opinions | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| Jun 28, 2013 |
''Congress Shouldn't Weaken Food Safety Laws'' "Being a Minnesotan, Jeff Almer searched for a polite term to describe how he feels about a congressional push to roll back the new food safety laws his family fought for when his elderly mother died after eating salmonella-laced peanut butter in late 2008." |
Food Safety |
| Jun 26, 2013 |
''Move Forward on Medical Device Tracking'' 'You may not yet depend on a pacemaker, defibrillator, stent, joint implant or any of the other life-changing, potentially lifesaving products made by the medical device industry. But chances are you or a family member will be a patient some day. That’s why it isn’t just the medical device industry that has a stake in the timely rollout of a long-overdue national system to better track the safety and whereabouts of devices once they’re on the market or in use." |
Drugs and Devices at the FDA |
| Jun 10, 2013 |
''For Our Kids' Sake, Food Safety Must Be a Priority'' As a pediatrician, my No. 1 concern is to keep children safe and healthy. Inside the walls of my office, I can provide services and counseling to help do just that, whether by giving an infant her first childhood vaccine, providing a mental health screening to an adolescent patient or counseling parents about how to keep their homes as safe as possible. Unfortunately, there are some threats to children's health that are beyond my control, including the food they consume. |
Food Safety |
| May 7, 2013 |
''The Senate Aims to Clean Up Compounding Pharmacies'' When a doctor sticks a needle in you, you expect that the drugs it carries won’t be tainted. But, possibly owing to a strange gray area in federal law, thousands of patients last October got injections for back pain that contained highly dangerous fungal meningitis, and dozens of them died. Members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are now seeking to fix the government’s oversight of the obscure world of compounding pharmacies. The reforms they want are overdue. |
Drug Manufacturing and Distribution, Drug Safety |
| May 6, 2013 |
''Overused Antibiotics are Becoming Ineffective'' "As a nation, we need to exercise greater care with our use of antibiotics, in both humans and animals, so that these medications remain effective in treating serious bacterial infections." |
Antibiotic Innovation, Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Apr 17, 2013 |
''It is Vital That We Monitor Antibiotic Use in Livestock'' It used to be easy to treat healthy children with common bacterial infections; a regimen of antibiotic pills could usually wipe out the disease. Today, patients might need to go home on intravenous antibiotics because oral therapies will no longer work. Antibiotic resistance is to blame. |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Apr 8, 2013 |
''Pew Report Shows Flaw in Tracing Food-Safety Lapses "Twenty-two weeks. That’s how long it took federal health officials to determine the contaminated food source after the first person was infected in a 2011 outbreak of salmonella that swept across 34 states, sickened 136 people and led to one of the largest national recalls of ground turkey." |
Food Safety |
| Apr 4, 2013 |
''Crackdown Needed on Specialty Pharmacies'' "The deaths and illnesses linked last fall to a New England pharmacy operating in the regulatory shadows as a cut-rate drug manufacturer is one of the biggest pharmaceutical public health disasters in American history." |
Drug Manufacturing and Distribution, Drug Safety |
| Apr 3, 2013 |
''Yes, Antibiotic-Resistant Bugs Can Jump from Animals to Humans'' "For decades, the meat industry has denied any problem with its reliance on routine, everyday antibiotic use for the nation's chickens, cows, and pigs. But it's a bit like a drunk denying an alcohol problem while leaning on a barstool for support. Antibiotic use on livestock farms has surged in recent years — from 20 million pounds annually in 2003 to nearly 30 million pounds in 2011." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Mar 28, 2013 |
''Antibiotics and the Meat We Eat'' "Scientists at the Food and Drug Administration systematically monitor the meat and poultry sold in supermarkets around the country for the presence of disease-causing bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. These food products are bellwethers that tell us how bad the crisis of antibiotic resistance is getting. And they’re telling us it’s getting worse." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |