Health News Stories

Excerpts of Key Health News Stories in Major Media

Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on health from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.

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Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

More than 50 years after DuPont started producing Teflon ... federal officials are accusing the company of hiding information suggesting that [the chemical] might cause cancer, birth defects and other ailments. Environmental regulators are particularly alarmed because scientists are finding perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, in the blood of people worldwide and it takes years for the chemical to leave the body. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported last week that exposure even to low levels of PFOA could be harmful. With virtually no government oversight, PFOA has been used since the early 1950s. Questions about potential effects on human health and the environment often aren't raised until years after a chemical is introduced to the marketplace. The long and mostly secret history of PFOA began to unravel down the road from DuPont's Teflon plant...where a Parkersburg family began asking questions in the late 1990s about a mysterious wasting disease killing their cattle. Their lawsuit ended with a monetary settlement ... but the legal battle uncovered a trove of industry documents about PFOA. One document detailed how DuPont scientists started warning company executives to avoid human contact with PFOA as early as 1961. Industry tests later determined the chemical accumulates in the body [and] doesn't break down in the environment. Tests on lab animals have found links to illnesses including liver and testicular cancer, reduced weight of newborns and immune-system suppression. The findings concern EPA officials because rats flush the chemical out of their bodies within days, while PFOA stays in human blood for at least four years.

Note: As this article is no longer available on the Chicago Tribune website, to read it in full, click here.

Over a period of 30 years, highly qualified Perth-based surgeon Dr John Holt has had some startling successes with a radio-wave therapy treatment for cancer patients. Dr Holt's controversial treatment works, in layperson's terms, by giving the patient an injection of a glucose-blocking agent. He then shines "radio waves" into the body at a specific frequency. Dr Holt doesn't guarantee it will cure every cancer, but it's not expensive and there's no quackery about it. Born in Bristol 80 years ago and a member of the Royal Colleges, Dr Holt has 26 medical letters after his name. For more than a decade he was in charge of Western Australia's main cancer institute, until the late '70s, when he was blacklisted by his medical colleagues and politicians. The polarisation of the medical and scientific community in Perth over Dr Holt's treatment has been evident since the mid-'70s. While the medical community continues to argue the merits of Dr Holt's unorthodox measures, the families of his successes feel they owe everything to this gentle man. After two brain tumours and a tumour on her spine, Sophia Rosa was sent by pre-eminent brain surgeon Dr Charlie Teo for the radical treatment. Two years later, the only sign Sophia had cancer are the side-effects from the massive doses of chemotherapy given in Sydney.

Note: If the above link fails, click here. For more on Dr. Holt's work, click here. For the story of Royal Rife, another famed scientist who suffered dearly for finding a cure for cancer, click here.

The NHS is seeking at least Ł100m compensation from two drug companies who it alleges "fixed" the price of an ulcer drug in the late 1990s. The allegations relate to the sale and supply of ranitidine between 1997 and 2000. The NHS's Counter Fraud Service [CFS]...is currently investigating similar concerns in regard to around 30 other drugs. As in any case where a drug comes off patent, the NHS expected its price to fall, but this did not happen with ranitidine. The investigation into why this failed to happen has led to the High Court action against Generics, a subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical company Merck, and the British arm of the Indian company Ranbaxy. The CFS estimates that the NHS could have lost out on at least Ł100m, and possibly as much as Ł110m. It has already said it will sue seven companies over the sale of common medicines including warfarin and penicillin-based drugs.

A division of the pharmaceutical company Bayer sold millions of dollars of blood-clotting medicine for hemophiliacs -- medicine that carried a high risk of transmitting AIDS -- to Asia and Latin America in the mid-1980's while selling a new, safer product in the West. The Bayer unit, Cutter Biological, introduced its safer medicine in late February 1984 as evidence mounted that the earlier version was infecting hemophiliacs with H.I.V. Yet for over a year, the company continued to sell the old medicine overseas. Cutter officials were trying to avoid being stuck with large stores of a product. Yet even after it began selling the new product, the company kept making the old medicine for several months more. In Hong Kong and Taiwan alone, more than 100 hemophiliacs got H.I.V. after using Cutter's old medicine. Many have since died. Cutter also continued to sell the older product after February 1984 in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Argentina. While admitting no wrongdoing, Bayer and three other companies that made the concentrate have paid hemophiliacs about $600 million to settle more than 15 years of lawsuits accusing them of making a dangerous product. Federal regulators helped keep the overseas sales out of the public eye. The Food and Drug Administration's regulator of blood products, Dr. Harry M. Meyer Jr....asked that the issue be "quietly solved without alerting the Congress, the medical community and the public."

It's been a mystery in Washington for weeks. Just before President Bush signed the homeland security bill into law an unknown member of Congress inserted a provision into the legislation that blocks lawsuits against the maker of a controversial vaccine preservative called "thimerosal," used in vaccines that are given to children. Drug giant Eli Lilly and Company makes thimerosal. It's the mercury in the preservative that many parents say causes autism in thousands of children. But nobody in Congress would admit to adding the provision, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Acosta – until now. House Majority Leader Dick Armey tells CBS News he did it to keep vaccine-makers from going out of business under the weight of mounting lawsuits. "I did it and I'm proud of it," says Armey, R-Texas. "It's a matter of national security," Armey says. Because Armey is retiring at the end of the year, some say the outgoing majority leader is the perfect fall guy to take the heat and shield the White House from embarrassment.

Note: A Reuters article reports that the former head of the US's CDC was later named president of Merck's vaccine division with accompanying high salary. Could this be payoff for her support in suppressing studies that cast doubt on vaccines?

Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.