MASSDEVICE ON CALL — Should Dick Cheney get a new heart? Former vice president Dick Cheney may need a new heart to continue his 33-year battle with coronary heart disease treatment (he suffered the first of his four heart attacks when he was 37). Theheart.org asked several experts to weigh in on the matter, including Dr. Mandeep Mehra of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Mehra said Cheney "would be a very deserving candidate for cardiac transplantation at this point," but Cheney’s advanced age of 70 is an issue. The relatively long life of the politically powerful cardiac patient is also raising concerns about inequities in healthcare.
RepubliCare = expensive. Republican alternatives to “Obamacare” would only cut less than .6 percent from federal healthcare spending, according to a Bloomberg study. “None of these proposals get to the heart of what the issue is, which is to really address cost,” says Ashish Kaura, a health-care analyst with Booz & Co. “They nibble around at the margins.”
Whistleblower James Allen’s eight year Guidant battle continues. Allen doesn’t believe the Dept. of Justice is doing enough in its lawsuit against Guidant Corp. over its alleged sale of faulty defibrillators, which it filed in January. The federal prosecutors charge that the company (now part of Boston Scientific Corp. (NYSE:BSX)) knowingly sold defective devices in 2002 and 2003, but Allen — who filed his own case against Guidant three years before the government — thinks the feds are missing the deapth and breadth of the company’s crimes, writes the Star Tribune.
CDC investigates Alabama over contaminated IVs. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Alabama Department of Public Health are investigating an outbreak of serratia marcescens bacteria among 19 patients who received intravenous treatment in six Yellowhammer State hospitals. The agencies have traced the problem to TPN, or total parenteral nutrition, produced by a single pharmacy, Birmingham-based Meds IV, according to a statement the ADPH, writes Law360.
FDA and EPA monitoring radiation in nation’s water supplies. The Environmental Protection Agency is taking steps to increase the level of nationwide monitoring of milk, precipitation, drinking water and other potential radiation exposure routes for radiation from Japan. EPA conducts radiological monitoring of milk under its RADNET program, while the Food & Drug Administration has jurisdiction over the safety, labeling and identity of milk and milk products in interstate commerce, the agency said.
