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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Accutane, and generic drugs like it that fight acne, can cause IBD. That fact is not in dispute. By February 2010, victims of Accutane had filed more than 1,000 lawsuits against Roche Pharmaceuticals, Accutane’s Swiss manufacturer. The company has been losing such lawsuits on the grounds that it failed to warn doctors and patients adequately about the risks of IBD after taking Accutane.

Last year, a New Jersey jury awarded $25 million to a 38-year-old Alabama man who took Accutane in his 20s. He had five surgeries to repair damage to his colon. Finally, doctors were forced to remove it.

Accutane and its generics can cause Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. These incurable and debilitating IBDs can permanently damage the intestines. Many victims will never lead normal lives.

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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

Warning for pregnant moms: Avoid anti-depressant Paxil at all costs

Depression, not joy, often arrives with pregnancy. Doctors point to fluctuating hormones as the cause. But beware of using Paxil for the “new mommy” blues. This prescription drug can cause serious life threatening birth defects of the heart, lungs and other vital organs.

The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Paxil in 1992. The government came back six years ago with a serious warning about it that said: “…The early results of two studies showed that women who took Paxil during the first three months of pregnancy were about two and a half times as likely to have a baby with a heart defect as women who received other antidepressants or women in the general population.”

Thousands of prescriptions for Paxil were written in the 13 years that it was on the market before the public knew it could cause potentially fatal birth defects. In 2009, a family won $2.5 million from a jury after their baby was born with three heart defects. Their lawsuit revealed that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) knew as early as 1980 — from animal studies it conducted — that Paxil could cause birth defects. Since then, hundreds of lawsuits have been filed against Paxil’s manufacturer.

Given the company’s record of putting profits before safety, women who took Paxil while they were pregnant and had a child with serious heart and lung defects should contact a personal injury lawyer for assistance. Read the rest of this entry

Drivers are likely to see a large truck almost any time f the year- on a trip to the grocery store, traveling on the interstate or anywhere in between.  Use special caution. Passenger cars are at a terrible disadvantage in a collision with a big truck. Its large mass absorbs the energy generated during a crash infinitely better than a car.

When a car and a truck have an accident, 86 percent of the fatalities occur outside the truck. That means the people in the car are the ones most likely to die, according to the Office of Motor Carrier Research and Standards, a federal agency that analyzes data about about traffic and driving conditions on U. S. road ways.

According to the agency, drivers of passenger cars don’t know that trucks aren’t like cars. Trucks can’t stop or accelerate fast, make speedy lane changes or see vehicles behind or beside them. These are the most dangerous things that car drivers can do around a big rig:

• Drive while drowsy, reading, talking on the cell phone or texting
• Merge into traffic right in front of a truck
• Run a red light or a stop sign
• Drive too fast in a construction zone
• Follow a truck too closely
• Approach the back of a truck too fast
• Change lanes abruptly in front of a truck
• Fail to slow down in bad weather
• Drive near a truck’s left rear quarter, right front quarter or directly behind it
• Pass with insufficient headway

Car drivers aren’t the only ones who need to change to make roads safer. For years, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has tried to make sure that trucking companies don’t use unqualified truck drivers or trucks with known mechanical problems.

The NTSB says that Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) rules governing the fitness of drivers and trucks are too lax. It wants drivers and trucks found   deficient in any way to be taken off the road even if they have satisfactory ratings in all other categories. If the problem is not corrected in a matter of days, the NTSB wants the trucking company’s license yanked.

It also wants tighter control over the hours that truckers can drive without resting.  According to the federal agency, fatigue is a major factor in 30 to 40 percent of all truck accidents. It cites research that shows accident rates rise sharply after eight hours behind the wheel.

Under current regulations, truckers can drive for 11 hours before they have to take a 10 hour break. But many cheat about the hours they have driven when they fill out logs by hand. (Truckers call the logs “comic books.”)

To stop truckers from hiding how long they’ve been behind the wheel, the NTSB wants tamper-proof electronic recording devices installed on all trucks.