Healthcare

Mercurochrome not ‘banned,’ but gone | Curiosity Corners | indexjournal.com

Mercurochrome not ‘banned,’ but gone | Curiosity Corners | indexjournal.com

The Food and Drug Administration has the responsibility of determining whether or not pharmaceuticals and food additives are safe. With a 1938 act of Congress, there were hundreds of unchecked products. Products like Mercurochrome that had been around for years with seemingly no ill effects were given a "generally recognized as safe" status. In 1978, the FDA began a review of mercury-containing, over-the-counter products. In general, FDA approval requires studies to be done to show a product is safe. This had never been done with Mercurochrome.

Even though Mercurochrome had just a small amount of mercury, mercury poisoning was a consideration. (You may recall the recent FDA advisory that warned pregnant women and young children not to eat certain fish because of high mercury levels.) To affect testing, the FDA pulled the GRAS status and classified mercurochrome as a "new drug" in 1998, which meant that anyone wanting to sell it nationwide had to put it through the rigorous and costly approval process. No one did, and the FDA forbade the sale of Mercurochrome across state lines, which effectively killed the product.

Mercurochrome will probably never be tested because there are more effective antiseptics, such as Merthiolate and metaphen. Whether or not you agree, it was one of those better-safe-than-sorry decisions. Mercury poisoning can harm various body organs and fetuses.

The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Americans From Top Cancer Research – Bloomberg

The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Americans From Top Cancer Research – Bloomberg

The dossier on cancer researcher Xifeng Wu was thick with intrigue, if hardly the stuff of a spy thriller. It contained findings that she’d improperly shared confidential information and accepted a half-dozen advisory roles at medical institutions in China. She might have weathered those allegations, but for a larger aspersion that was far more problematic: She was branded an oncological double agent.

The U.S. Leads the World in Health-Care Spending – The Atlantic

The U.S. Leads the World in Health-Care Spending – The Atlantic

It was in his self-neglect, rather than his hostility, that my father found common cause with the tens of millions of American patients who collectively hobble our health-care system.

For years, the United States’ high health-care costs and poor outcomes have provoked hand-wringing, and rightly so: Every other high-income country in the world spends less than America does as a share of GDP, and surpasses us in most key health outcomes. Recriminations tend to focus on how Americans pay for health care, and on our hospitals and physicians. Surely if we could just import Singapore’s or Switzerland’s health-care system to our nation, the logic goes, we’d get those countries’ lower costs and better results. Surely, some might add, a program like Medicare for All would help by discouraging high-cost, ineffective treatments.

But lost in these discussions is, well, us. We ought to consider the possibility that if we exported Americans to those other countries, their systems might end up with our costs and outcomes. That although Americans (rightly, in my opinion) love the idea of Medicare for All, they would rebel at its reality. In other words, we need to ask: Could the problem with the American health-care system lie not only with the American system but with American patients?

Shots – Health News : NPR

Congress Weighs Measures To Reign In Surprise Medical Bills : Shots – Health News : NPR

Surprise medical bills — those unexpected and often pricey bills patients face when they get care from a doctor or hospital that isn't in their insurance network — are the health care problem du jour in Washington, with President Trump and congressional lawmakers from both sides of the aisle calling for action.

These policymakers agree on the need to take patients out of the middle of the fight over charges, but crafting a legislative solution will not be easy.