Home > News

Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by editors of HealthDay:

Doc's Proposal to Not Treat Lawyers Draws Outrage

Colleagues expressed outrage over a doctor's proposal that the American Medical Association (AMA) endorse withholding care from lawyers involved in medical malpractice cases.

Dr. J. Chris Hawk, a South Carolina surgeon, put forward the proposal Sunday at the annual meeting of the AMA, the nation's largest physicians group, the Associated Press reported.

Hawk said he put forward the resolution in order to draw attention to increasing medical malpractice costs. He proposed that the AMA inform doctors that, unless it's an emergency, it would not be unethical to refuse to give medical care to lawyers (and their spouses) representing people suing doctors for malpractice.

After his resolution was roundly denounced, Hawk asked that it be withdrawn.

-----

Experimental Cocaine Vaccine Shows Promise

An experimental vaccine to fight cocaine addiction showed promise in trials done in the United States.

The trials found that half of the cocaine addicts who received the vaccine, called TA-CD, were able to stay off the drug for six months, BBC News Online reports.

The vaccine, developed by the British pharmaceutical company Xenova, does not stop a person's craving for cocaine. Instead, the vaccine blocks the high a person experiences when using cocaine.

It does this by preventing cocaine from moving from the bloodstream into the brain.

-----

New In Vitro Guidelines To Reduce Chance of Twins

New guidelines aimed at reducing the number of twins born using in vitro fertilization are expected to be released soon by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies.

The guidelines will request in vitro clinics to implant fewer embryos in the womb, the Baltimore Sun reported.

It will be recommend that clinics implant one and, at most, two embryos in women younger than age 35. The limit will be higher for older women.

While many parents using in vitro welcome the prospect of twins, such multiple births increase the risk of a premature birth and possible mental or physical disabilities.

"The vast majority of twins are healthy, but the risk of bad outcomes is roughly fourfold higher in twins than in singletons," Dr. Owen Davis, society president and associate director of in vitro fertilization at Cornell University's Weill Medical College, told the Sun.

-----

Large U.S. Employers to Bargain for Drug Prices

Fifty of the largest employers in the United States are creating a buyers' club to bargain directly with drugmakers on behalf of 5 million active and retired employees and their families.

According to a report in The New York Times, the move is a major departure from the current industry practice of employers paying middlemen -- known as pharmacy benefit management companies -- to provide drug coverage at discounted rates for their insured workers.

By shrinking the role of middlemen, the employers hope to seize control of a system that they say has fueled one of their fastest-growing costs, the newspaper reported. The 50 employers in the buyers' group spent roughly $4 billion for prescription drugs last year. Overall, the nation's employers spend more than $70 billion through pharmacy benefit managers, and their drug bills rose 9.1 percent in 2003, on top of eight years of double-digit increases.

The group has started discussing drug pricing for next year's health plans with drugmakers and pharmacy benefit management companies. And it plans to negotiate on the 50 drugs that its members spend the most on, including: the cholesterol treatments Lipitor and Zocor; Prevacid and Nexium for heartburn; the painkillers Celebrex and Vioxx; Zoloft, Paxil, and Effexor for depression; and Allegra, an allergy drug.

The employers are working through the Human Resources Policy Association, a Washington trade group of senior executives for 220 large companies, and through Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm.

-----

China OKs Rapid SARS Test

China has given the green light for a new and simple test for SARS to go on sale, the official Xinhua news agency reports.

A state Food and Drug Administration official has told the agency that the test can detect the severe acute respiratory syndrome in patients between one and 10 days after they become ill, according to Agence France Presse .

Until now, it has taken health authorities weeks to confirm if a person has contracted SARS, the pneumonia-like illness that claimed more than 800 lives and sickened more than 8,000 people in 32 countries last year.

Tests that detect SARS by establishing the presence of antibodies or the virus' nucleic acid are already on sale in China. The new test is relatively cheap and simple to use.

China, excluding Hong Kong and Taiwan, was the worst hit country last year, with 349 deaths.

-----

Free Formula Program Drives Up Price for Others, USDA Says

A federal program that provides free formula to poor infants drives up formula prices for shoppers who are not participants, new government research finds.

But the finding is not a reason to change the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, which is known as WIC, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The program lets low-income pregnant women, new mothers, and children younger than 5 years get specific foods each month to help with proper nutrition. In 2002, about 1.9 million infants were in it, the Associated Press reported.

The study by the USDA's Economic Research Service found that the program tended to "modestly increase" the supermarket price of infant formula for people outside the program. The average increase in the retail price when a formula manufacturer gained a WIC contract was about 2.5 cents for all types of formula, researchers said.

The report was based on retail scanner information for 2000 from a sample of 11,300 supermarkets tracked by Information Resources Inc., a market research company.

Copyright © 2004 ScoutNews LLC. All rights reserved.