Written on December 15, 2011 by Seth Climpson
Not long ago, I was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, never my favorite stretch of road. This was a particular rough ride because it was raining so hard I could barely see beyond the front of my car. Then I happened to look at the driver in the next lane. She was texting as she negotiated between the sheets of rain!
I wasn’t just annoyed; I was terrified! What could possibly be so urgent that she was willing to risk her own life and those of everyone else on the road?
Scenes like this make me an evangelist on the subject of driving and talking on the phone or texting. This is very, very bad for your health. Don’t do it.
I’m happy to see that the National Transportation Safety Board called today for a national band on using cell phones and text messaging while driving.
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Written on December 13, 2011 by George Moowattin
As the president gears up his re-election campaign, the Obama administration is laboring to soften the impact of the sweeping new health law in a bid to prevent further political backlash. by easing requirements for insurers, employers, doctors and others — is winning cautious praise from some of the toughest critics of the law in the business community. which has marked its approach to other hot-button issues such as smog regulation and emergency contraceptives for young girls — is stoking rising frustration among Obama’s allies.
Many consumer and patient advocates who championed the health law had hoped the administration would use its new powers more aggressively to remake the nation’s health-care system.
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Written on December 11, 2011 by George Moowattin
Dec 9
Former UFC light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida has always been known for possessing a diverse set of skills unlike many, if any, of his peers’. His striking is powerful, precise, and comes from a variety of angles; he’s prepared to grapple and attack/defend on the ground. How
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Written on December 6, 2011 by Mitchell Lyon
Swarms of bees and brains made up of neurons make decisions using strikingly similar mechanisms, says a new study in the Dec. 9 issue of Science.
In previous work, Cornell University biologist Thomas Seeley clarified how scout bees in a honeybee swarm perform “waggle dances” to prompt other scout bees to inspect a promising site that has been found.
In the new study, Seeley, a professor of neurobiology and behavior, reports with five colleagues in the United States and the United Kingdom that scout bees also use inhibitory “stop signals” – a short buzz delivered with a head butt to the dancer – to inhibit the waggle dances produced by scouts advertising competing sites. The
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Written on December 2, 2011 by George Moowattin
In Patients Over Politics Addressing Legislative Failure in the Regulation of Medical Products (forthcoming in the 2011 volume of the Wisconsin Law Review and available on SSRN), Efthimios Parasidis proposes a significant expansion of drug and device companies responsibility to engage in active post-market analysis of drugs and devices, to be coupled with a new rule that only companies that conducted such analysis would benefit from preemption of state tort claims. Professor Parasidis article includes a nuanced and revealing analysis of the historical and other reasons for the Food and Drug Administrations heavy focus on pre-market review of drugs at the expense of post-market surveillance, as well as useful updates on both the caselaw regarding the preemption of claims involving branded drugs, generic drugs, devices, and vaccines and the ongoing efforts to use health information technology to glean information about the safety and efficacy of marketed products. Most notable, though, is the articles thorough explication of Professor Parasidis interesting proposal that preemption laws, which often are enacted pursuant to industry lobbying efforts [be linked to] protocols that further the public health.
In Enforcing Integrity (forthcoming in the 2011 volume of the Indiana Law Journal and available on SSRN), Katrice Bridges Copeland makes a strong case for her conclusion that neither the exclusion of pharmaceutical manufacturers from Medicare and Medicaid a punishment which the government is reluctant to impose because it would spell the end for the company nor the use of corporate integrity agreements coupled with large fines which manufacturers agree to in order to avoid exclusion works to deter illegal marketing activities. As Professor Copeland notes, numerous companies have learned that the punishment for multiple offenses is simply another CIA and another fine. She recommends that the government consider a number of alternative penalties for repeat offenders, including (1) requiring that manufacturers fund clinical trials studying the off-label uses for which they promoted their products, (2) requiring that they license the product or products at issue to other manufacturers, (3) holding high-level individuals criminally liable under the responsible corporate officer doctrine, and (4) amending the Social Security Act to allow for the exclusion of particular drugs (as opposed to entire companies) from Medicare and Medicaid.
Finally, I recommend Seton Hall Laws own Jordan Paradises fascinating article, Claiming Nanotechnology Improving USPTO Efforts at Classification of Emerging Nano-Enabled Pharmaceutical Technologies (forthcoming in the 2011 volume of the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property and available on SSRN), in which she argues that the United States Patent and Trademark Offices system for classifying patents on nanotechnology-related inventions, [w]hile undoubtedly helpful for internal purposes, cedes too much to the courts. Reviewing the facts of the recent case Elan Pharma International v. Abra
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