A former farm worker named Enrique Rubio may just be the right “David” to take down “Goliath” chemical company Monsanto. Rubio filed suit against the manufacturer of Roundup® early last week, claiming that the company’s infamous herbicide is the cause of his bone cancer and inability to work.

Roundup’s® safety has been hotly debated for

[By Staff Writer Jay Belle Isle]

In a letter dated July 13, the FDA issued serious warning to C. R. Bard Inc. due to multiple violations. The company has been given fifteen business days to respond to the letter or else it may face “seizure, injunction and civil money penalties.” The warning is based on

U.S. District Judge Cynthia Rufe or the Eastern District of Pennsylvania made the only call she could on Tuesday: the postponement of Daubert hearing in Zoloft birth defects case until September. The multidistrict litigation (MDL) against Pfizer, claiming its popular antidepressant, Zoloft causes birth defects, came to a halt as the plaintiffs’ expert was disqualified

Recently, Reuters reported that “Drug companies generally don’t disclose all the reasons new medicines fail to win U.S. marketing approval, even though regulators often reject treatments over concerns about safety or effectiveness”.

Reporter Lisa Rapaport quotes Dr. Peter Lurie, FDA associate commissioner for public health strategy and analysis, saying “‘Only a minority of the press

In 2012, a team of researchers from the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco published an article that illustrated some serious risks associated with the use of IVC filters.

Inferior vena cava filters are small metal filters inserted into the inferior vena cava vein, used in patients

In recent years, a new anticoagulant drug called Xarelto (rivaroxaban) has been found by the FDA to increase the risk for major bleeding events over other drugs in its class.  And unlike other drugs in its class, the manufacturer does not recommend regular blood testing, a simple procedure which can lower the risk for major bleeding events by 40%.  Here, we discuss one piece of research titled “New oral anticoagulants in the treatment of acute venous thromboembolism – a systematic review with indirect comparisons.” on risks associated with Xarelto by an Austrian research team, published in VASA (2014).

The team studied over 27,000 patients using a variety of anticoagulants and measured the risk for stroke and bleeding events, finding that “Regarding occurrence of the composite bleeding endpoint, apixaban performed better than all other NOACs and dabigatran better than rivaroxaban and edoxaban.”

Continue Reading Doctors urge blood testing with Xarelto, despite Bayer’s claim it’s unnecessary