February 2007 Archives

Parents of teenagers worry about lots of things: drugs, sex, poor choices of friends. But the activity that poses the greatest danger to your child is driving the family car.

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for 16- to 20-year-olds, with about 5,500 teenage drivers or passengers dying each year. In addition, about 450,000 teenagers are injured, 27,000 of them requiring hospitalization, the American Academy of Pediatrics reported in the December issue of its journal, Pediatrics.

In the last two weeks we have experienced four major food recalls - tainted chicken breast strips, foul fresh cantaloupe, bad baby food (taking “organic” a little too far) and that most beloved of lunch-time standards, peanut butter gone bad.

CNN recently released the results of an 18-month investigation into minor-impact soft-tissue injury crashes around the country, reporting what every personal injury lawyer already knows. According to CNN findings, most of the major insurance companies when faced with claims from such cases, have universally adopted a scorched-earth strategy since the 1990’s. The leaders in this strategy are the two largest insurers, Allstate and State Farm.

The American Bar Association, the nation's largest lawyers group, is taking on the National Rifle Association, the biggest gun rights organization. The issue is whether an employer has the right to bar workers from leaving guns in their cars while on the job.

Botched plastic surgeries are not uncommon, nor is it uncommon for one to become the basis for a medical malpractice lawsuit. But one patient took the uncommon step of not only suing her plastic surgeon, but creating a website detailing her experience, www.mysurgerynightmare.com.

In his 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush called on Congress to restrict patient access to the courts, claiming that access to healthcare is threatened because “lawsuits are driving many good doctors out of practice.” But, according to statistics published by the American Medical Association (AMA), the number of practicing physicians is growing faster than the population.

Almost weekly, there is another report of previously unpublicized side effects of a prescription medicine currently being prescribed to American patients. . Most notably, in late 2004, Merck withdrew its arthritis drug, Vioxx, after a study was made public which showed that it doubled the risks of heart attack. About the same time, the Food and Drug Administration announced that antidepressants cause some teenagers to think more about suicide.

According to the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, an Austin-based watchdog group, some 800,000 companies, government agencies and other organizations can tap into personal medical information almost at will. Pharmaceutical information is mined daily, your prescriptions, are an open book to all sorts of companies that don't have to tell you what they're doing with the information.