Accutane has millions of victims — people who believed the acne drug would forever cure the nasty pustules scarring their faces. And it did. But thousands ended up with life-changing diseases of the intestines. When Accutane came on the market in 1982, it was hailed as the long-awaited miracle cure for the scourge of acne. Millions clamored for prescriptions from doctors, even those with mild cases of acne. Unknowingly, many were opening the door to a lifetime of pain and disability caused by Crohn’s Disease, ulcerative colitis and inflammatory bowel disease.

During much of Accutane’s 27 years on the market, its maker knew of its potential to cause these devastating diseases of the gut, but kept it a secret. Accutane’s manufacturer made billions at the expense of its victims. One victim, who had to have his colon replaced after taking Accutane, won a $25 million settlement. Other victims have filed suit as well.

Underride guards that are supposed to prevent cars from sliding under large trucks are failing at relatively low speeds, according to a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). The organization is urging the federal government to order stronger guards on the backs of 18 wheelers to protect passengers in cars that rear-end big rigs.

While passenger cars are better designed these days to withstand collisions with other cars, they are not built to hold up when the top of the car hits the back of a truck and slides under it. Typically, the upper part of the car is crushed or sliced off in such a collision. These accidents are frequently fatal for the car’s passengers even at low rates of speed.

According to the IIHS, the fronts of cars can absorb a tremendous amount of “crash energy” these days due to better designs. But that’s only true when a car hits another car. The IIHS says hitting the back of a truck is a “game changer” for a car. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that about 423 people die every year in passenger vehicles that hit trucks with underride guards that break, allowing the car to slide under them.

The IIHS wants tougher standards for underride guards but doesn’t see much hope for a change without a federal mandate. Otherwise, manufacturers will have little incentive to strengthen the guards.

A new AAA study about drunk driving shows that last year nearly 11,000 people were killed by drunk drivers in the United States — nearly one-third of all road deaths in America. Some of the drunks had very high blood alcohol concentrations (.15+). Others were were over the legal limit of .08 and had a prior drunk driving conviction.

According to the AAA study, nine out of 10 Americans want the courts to order anyone convicted of drunk driving more than once to install an alcohol ignition interlock on their car — a device that won’t let it start if they have been drinking. Sixty-nine percent want the courts to order those convicted of drunk driving once to have the same requirement.

If drunk driving is such a deadly crime and so many Americans want “blow devices” installed on the cars of these drivers, why doesn’t the drunk driving death rate drop?

But here’s the shocker in the study: It showed that one in 10 drivers surveyed for its third Annual Traffic Safety Culture Index admitted to driving when they suspected they might have been close to or over the legal limit. One in five of those surveyed said they had done so more than once in the the last year. The AAA survey interviewed 2,000 American drivers nationwide 16 or older by telephone between May 11, 2010 and June 7, 2010.

Watch out for these two antidepressants. Some want Paxil and Zoloft banned for causing the most serious birth defects that newborns can have. Neither drug has received enough publicity to make sure that newly pregnant women, or those thinking of having a baby, are aware of their impacts on developing fetuses. And that can lead to the tragedy of a severe birth defect, or defects, for a newborn and its parents.

The Mayo Clinic’s website says that clinically depressed women who stop taking these drugs during pregnancy may neglect their own health. That could hurt the fetus too. But its website does not endorse the drugs. Rather, the federal government urges extreme caution when it comes to taking these drugs during pregnancy.

In 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) strengthened its warning about Paxil, citing new studies proving that women who took that drug during the first three months of pregnancy were 1.5 to 2 times more likely to have a baby with serious heart defects compared to women who took other anti-depressants or those who took none. In 2009, the FDA issued an even stronger warning citing cases in which newborns died within hours of being born due to serious birth defects of the lungs caused by Paxil.

Zoloft can cause holes in the heart, partially developed hearts, malformation of the heart’s valves, PPHN (a condition in which the lungs do not get enough oxygen), spina bifida (a condition in which the spine does not close), cleft palates and intestines or other organs that stick out of the navel, called omphaceles.

The national outcry against distracted driving could be drowned out by lobbyists trying to preserve sales of cell phones and cell phone components. Their campaign rolls out this coming September.They say they are coming out fighting in spite of the deadly statistics that show how dangerous it is to talk and text while driving.

Oprah Winfrey and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood are targets of the DRIVE coalition, as it calls itself. The coalition is a group of lobbyists who are courting the likes of Motorola, Nokia, General Motors, Ford, AT&T and Microsoft to line up against Winfrey and LaHood. It is urging the powerful companies to get on board for its campaign rollout in September.

The lobbyists say that last year Winfrey and the federal official mounted a ”full throttle assault on mobile technology,” according to www.fairwarning.org, a non-profit website that exposes the underside of industry profiteering at the expense of the general public.

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Many mothers who took this drug for depression while they were pregnant found out too late that it can cause serious, even life-threatening birth defects.

This is yet another case in which a big pharmaceutical company should have warned the public about the side effects of a drug it was selling, but didn’t. Instead, GlaxoSmithKline hid evidence that Paxil could cause birth defects. In a secret 1997 memo, five years after Paxil went on the market, a Glaxo executive wrote about about the need to “bury” evidence linking Paxil to birth defects.

Contents of the memo were revealed in a 2009 trial by lawyers for parents whose son was born with three serious heart defects. Glaxo lost the case and had to pay the family $2.5 million in compensatory damages. According to Bloomberg News, evidence at the trial showed that Glaxo “purchased….Paxil from a Danish company that had done animal studies showing that young rats died after taking low doses of the drug.”

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This domestic war could be tough.
But it has an important mission for Americans. to save lives, prevent injuries and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes.

To win that war, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is targeting a deadly enemy: distracted driving. Wiping it out won’t be easy. Americans love to talk and text behind the wheel and do other things that take their attention off the road while driving.  Studies show distracted drivers are four times more likely to cause a traffic accident than drivers who are paying attention behind the wheel. So far, Americans don’t seem to take this seriously. NHTSA believes making them understand the danger is the key to winning the war. Read the rest of this entry

America’s teachers, many others, exposed to deadly asbestos-caused cancer

Mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos, is incurable. It takes 20, 30, 40 or even 50 years to develop once its victims have inhaled the asbestos fibers that cause the deadly disease and other asbestos related diseases. By the time symptoms appear, the diseases are in an advanced stage and victims often don’t have long to live.  Many teachers came into contact with asbestos in schools where they taught in the 1940s, ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. It was everywhere — in pipes and insulation, behind blackboards, and in lab tables and ceiling and floor tiles.

Workers who manufactured the more than 3,000 products containing asbestos during those years, or worked installing them, were equally at risk. Asbestos-related products were used by 24 types of workers, from auto mechanics and carpenters to dry wall installers, plumbers, roofers and iron workers, to name just a few. In fact, 13 work environments were notorious for making products with asbestos or having workers install them. Read the rest of this entry

Why won’t carmakers put bells in cars to alert parents they are forgetting children in car seats in the back seat? Automakers say it’s not that easy. Watchdog groups disagree. They cite bells that sound when doors are ajar, lights are left on or seat belts are unbuckled. So why, safety advocates wonder, can’t carmakers build cars with bells that go off when parents forget kids in the back seat?
So far this year, at least 41 children have baked to death in cars when parents forgot them strapped into car seats designed to protect them. There is a device that could have warned them. It was invented in 2001. It alerts drivers a minute after a child is locked in the car. So far, no automakers have plans to install it in their cars. Meanwhile, most are going full speed ahead in the drive to put touch screen computers in dashboards and provide email in cars in response to consumers’ demands. A spokesman for GM says it is trying to find a solution to the hot car deaths. But it says it has yet to come up with anything that works. Some safety groups like Consumer Federation of America and Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety are pushing for federal legislation that would mandate the alarms.

AAA Foundation for Safety has a new screening device to assess key physical, mental and visual skills. It takes less than 30 minutes and recommends ways to help seniors keep driving safely so they can keep driving longer.  It’s called Roadwise Review.