Sabatini and Associates, LLC

An article in the New York Times outlines how LeRoy Hubley lost his wife and son from an allergic reaction to contaminated heparin.  The FDA believes the contamination was deliberate but they have been prevented from inspecting the Chinese plants that made the drug.So far, 81 deaths have been linked to a contaminant in the blood thinner, Heparin.  Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA said a third of the material in some batches of Heparin was the contaminant.  David Strunce, the CEO of Scientific Protein Laboratories, the company that supplied the Heparin said it was an “insidious act that seems to us an intentional act upstream in the supply chain.”

On August 1, 2008, a package of laws on teenage driving will go into effect.  The new laws will require among other things: 40 hours of mandatory driver’s training (currently the law requires 20 hours); all passengers in a car being driven by a teenager must wear a seat belt; teen driver curfew at 11 p.m. (currently the law sets the curfew at midnight); and doubles the time a teen must wait before a friend can be in the car when the teen is driving.  According to our Governor, these tougher laws will reduce teenage car accidents. 

Based on internal company documents revealed in Vioxx litigation,  JAMA authors uncover how the company, without disclosing it, compensated ghostwriters who aren’t even doctors, to create articles for professional journals that have the potential to influence doctors and popularize drugs prescribed to the public.  In the 250 documents reviewed by the authors, Merck employees either working by themselves or in collaboration with a medical publishing company helped create the study on Vioxx. They would then recruit academics or leaders in the medical field to lend their name as the lead author. For scientific review papers, Merck would outline the plan for the manuscript then ghostwriters were hired from medical publishing companies, which typically pay about $20,000 per submission to the ghostwriter.

The scientist then recruited to be the named author would be offered “honoraria” for their participation.

This review in JAMA finds that among 96 published articles, 92 percent of clinical trials disclosed Merck’s financial support.  But only half disclosed Merck’s involvement in the creation of the publication or whether the author had received compensation. In another JAMA article in the same issue, the documents suggest the company’s control of the data allowed it to downplay the risk of death from Vioxx in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

Vioxx was taken off the market in 2004 but not before it was linked to an increase in heart attack and strokes. The FDA says the drug lead to up to 139,000 heart attacks, 30-40 percent of them fatal.

Litigation followed and ultimately resulted in a $4.85 billion settlement against Merck to settle U.S. cases. The internal company documents were released as part of the settlement.

Less fuel means a lighter plane; a lighter plane means better gas mileage, saving the airline money. Under FAA regulations, pilots have the final say on how much fuel they take on board, but they say that when they question the fuel levels suggested in their flight plans, their judgment is frequently challenged. “Apparently, it is not uncommon for the flight dispatcher to question the captain if he feels it necessary to add fuel,” one pilot reported. Pressure from airlines and dispatchers to conserve fuel made another pilot no longer certain whether “I, as captain, have final authority on what I deem is a minimum safe fuel load for the flight or do I not.” Read more about the pilots’ complaints and the responses they are receiving from their employers - the airline companies.

This stunning article in the Herald Tribune is a must read for anyone who has Allstate Insurance.  Last week Allstate Insurance posted online 150,000 pages of documents that reveal a national strategy on Allstate’s part to force customers to accept lowball settlements or face years of litigation in court.

The documents describe a two-pronged strategy.

“First, the company evaluates claims with a computer program called “Goliath” designed to reduce payouts by as much as 20 percent of what the company once paid for the same injuries.

Second, Allstate pushes policyholders to accept quick settlements without the help of lawyers. Policyholders who try to fight for more money face Allstate attorneys coached to refuse to negotiate and to drag out litigation.

The approach often forces car accident victims to take what Allstate offers right away or spend years in court while their bills go unpaid — a strategy Allstate spelled out in guidelines for claims adjusters that “force the claimant and attorney to think about the obstacles they must overcome …”

Allstate wanted to change the culture of how claims are made.  It knew that most lawyers will take a one-third fee, and that cases that are prolonged in litigation, thus more costly, would ruin the economics of hiring a lawyer.  Conversely, lawyers who know litigating small cases for a long period of time for a small fee is not worth the effort and over time will quit taking those cases.   The result is that people with legitimate claims, who are properly insured, are denied full justice because Allstate has a corporate policy to increase profits.

“The insurance company saw reduced payouts as a way to increase profits. Early on, consultants promised that driving down the “fair market value” of soft-tissue injuries, such as a fractured spine, chronic pain or limited mobility would generate profits “shareholders will notice.” Combined with similar changes to Allstate’s home insurance and collision programs, they predicted, the yearly gain could reach $1.1 billion.”‘

Get this, in a PowerPoint presentation, Allstate executives were advised to convince policy holders that they didn’t need lawyers, and then target those who hired lawyers by delaying the payment of claims or forcing protracted litigation.  According the article, Allstate wanted to “send a message to the market.”  Those who don’t play the new game will get “boxing glove” treatment.