Opinions
Opinions
| Date | Opinions | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 7, 2009 |
''The withdrawal of drug-company money'' "In recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has been repeatedly (and rightly) excoriated for its shameless efforts to promote its products: Freebies handed out to doctors as inducements to prescribe particular drugs." |
Conflicts of Interest |
| Oct 22, 2010 |
The U.S. Needs More Weapons in the Fight Against Superbugs Director of Pew Health Group Medical Safety, Allan Coukell, discusses antibiotic resistance and U.S. policy after a Washington Post health piece on resistant superbugs. |
Antibiotic Innovation |
| Mar 6, 2010 |
"Until three months ago, Thomas M. Dukes was a vigorous, healthy executive at a California plastics company." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| 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 |
| Mar 30, 2010 |
"Last week, fire ravaged a warehouse at a Marseilles, Ohio, egg farm. Power was cut off to two of the farms’ 16 chicken barns, and 250,000 chickens either died or had to be euthanized because of the loss of environmental control." |
Food Safety |
| Jun 2, 2011 |
''The High Cost of Cheap Meat'' "The point of factory farming is cheap meat, made possible by confining large numbers of animals in small spaces. Perhaps the greatest hidden cost is its potential effect on human health." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Mar 14, 2010 |
"Congress passed legislation last year intended to protect consumers from the credit card industry’s most deceptive and unfair practices. The main provisions finally went into effect last month. But the Federal Reserve still has to write new rules intended to stop companies from bleeding customers dry with exorbitant fees for late payments, with charges for exceeding the credit limit, or with “any other penalty fee or charge.” |
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| Jun 30, 2010 |
''The Fed and Your Credit Card'' "Congress passed legislation last year banning many of the worst practices of credit card companies and ordered the Federal Reserve to issue new rules to ensure that late charges and all other penalties — a major source of abuse — are 'reasonable and proportional.' That dubious reading is especially troubling given a recent analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Safe Credit Card Project that found that some companies fail to disclose the penalty interest charges in their contracts — a clear violation of banking law." |
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| Jan 6, 2012 |
''The F.D.A.’s Token Gesture'' "After withdrawing its own 34-year-old request/promise to restrict the routine use of penicillin and tetracyclines in farm animal feed, the F.D.A. made it crystal clear that, despite the increasingly common threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in supermarket meat, it would leave the regulating up to industry itself." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Jul 24, 2011 |
''The end of the era of antibiotics'' "For decades, we have lived in blissful ignorance of the infectious diseases that tormented earlier generations. Just take a pill, or get a shot, and they will go away. But the miracle drugs are starting to fail, even for common diseases - and we have ourselves to blame." |
Antibiotics in Food Animal Production |
| Aug 14, 2010 |
''The Drug Safety and Accountability Act is overdue'' "The Drug Safety and Accountability Act, a bill filed today by Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colorado) is long overdue in protecting American citizens from unsafe drugs." |
Drug Manufacturing and Distribution, Drug Safety |
| Aug 24, 2010 |
''The Customer Always Comes Last'' "The credit card industry is working hard to subvert the Credit Card Act of 2009, which banned many of the industry’s most predatory practices. The Federal Reserve Board, which oversees and coddles this industry, needs to ensure that consumers get the protections Congress intended, and Americans so clearly need. The Fed also needs to take a hard look at problems cited last month by the Pew Charitable Trust Safe Credit Cards Project." |
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| May 5, 2009 |
"If you are among the 80 percent of Americans who use credit cards, you probably have your own horror story of interest rates raised without notice or credit lines reduced. A study sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts puts numbers to the anecdotes: Analyzing the practices of more than 400 different credit cards offered by the 12 largest companies, it found that 100 percent of them, every single credit card, has policies that harm consumers." |
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| Oct 11, 2010 |
''The benefit of working together for next farm bill'' "Produce industry leaders call for unity in promoting critical programs for the 2011 farm bill." |
Food Safety |
| Aug 10, 2010 |
"Consumers beware: Credit-card companies already are finding ways around the new law designed to crack down on their tricky fees and hidden charges. The Credit Card Accountability Act of 2009 was intended to stop lenders' unfair practices, such as jacking up a cardholder's interest rate without warning or shortening billing cycles. For the most part, the law is working." |
