The reason a doctor running a psychiatric hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School left unexpectedly last year was sexual contact he had with a patient, the Boston Globe reports today.The article describes Jack Gorman as a well-liked and energetic psychiatrist who left McLean Hospital in Boston without explanation after serving less than six months as [...]
In the midst of a hostile battle for the U.S. diagnostics company Ventana, Roche CEO Franz Humer pops up in this morning’s FT claiming that hedge funds have bought out leading Ventana shareholders but that Roche’s $3 billion offer will ultimately be accepted.Humer (pictured) added that he had “no intention of increasing the price” from [...]
GlaxoSmithKline said today it’s partnering with Synta Pharmaceuticals on a melanoma drug in a deal that includes an upfront payment of $80 million. Under the most optimistic scenario, payments to Synta from Glaxo could ultimately be worth as much as $1.1 billion.The drug, called STA-4783, takes an interesting approach to tackling cancer. It stresses out [...]
More than two dozen workers at Palisades Medical Center in New Jersey have been suspended without pay for a month for digging into George Clooney’s medical records without permission. The actor and his companion, Sarah Larson, wound up in the hospital last month after a motorcycle accident busted one of Clooney’s ribs and left Larson [...]
Move over Facebook. Some health-care Web sites for the overweight are movinto the social-networking scene, the WSJ reports. Health and nutrition sites like Calorie-Count (owned by the New York Times), DietTV.com, and PEERtrainer offer “weight-loss tools and nutrition information, and let users share tips and advice with one another,” the WSJ says. The sites are [...]
Johnson & Johnson’s migraine and epilepsy drug Topamax may help alcoholics cut back or quit drinking, according to a study published today in JAMA. But the drug, which has a history of being prescribed off label, hasn’t been approved for treating alcohol dependence. And its label carries a warning that combining the drug with alcohol [...]
If you’ve recently returned to work after a heart attack, here’s something to think about in addition to your cholesterol, blood pressure and diet: Your job.Your workplace could be as hazardous to your heart health as smoking, high cholesterol and other more conventional risk factors for cardiovascular disease, a study in this week’s JAMA suggests. [...]
John Mekalanos, a Harvard scientist, came up with a way to make vaccines much more cheaply. But to get his idea moving toward real-world use, he had to fly to China. There he got the ear of Gerald Chan, a venture capitalist who was opening a vaccine factory on a tropical island called Hainan, one [...]
Doctors, regulators and health plans have been butting heads over how, and even whether, plans can rate some doctors as better than others. Now three George Washington University public-health professors and attorneys have put together a legal analysis of the practice. Their conclusion: Get used to the rating game, docs. Nothing in the law prevents [...]
The Berkeley Pit, a former open-pit copper mine in Butte, Mont., is a monument to the ravages of extractive industry. “In terms of contained volume of water and quantity of metal pollutants, the Berkeley Pit is unmatched by any acid-producing mine in the United States and possibly in the world,” says this EPA report. But [...]
