How Many Physicians Have Opted Out of the Medicare Program?

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peter doshi :: Article Creator New Research Reports On Financial Entanglements Between FDA Chiefs And The Drug Industry An investigation published by The BMJ today raises concerns about financial entanglements between US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chiefs and the drug and medical device companies they are responsible for regulating. Regulations prohibit FDA employees from holding financial interests in any FDA "significantly regulated organization" and the FDA says it takes conflicts of interest seriously, but Peter Doshi, senior editor at The BMJ, finds that financial interests with the drug industry are common among its leaders. Doshi reports that nine of the FDA's past 10 commissioners went on to work for the drug industry or serve on the board of directors of a drug company. That includes Margaret Hamburg, who led FDA between 2009 and 2015, but whose story is less well known. Like her colleagues, Margaret Hamburg h

50 years ago, scientists debated the necessity of a smallpox vaccine - Science News

Vaccine controversy, Science News, January 31, 1970

In the early 1950s, when smallpox was declared officially to have been wiped out in the United States, specialists in infectious diseases began to argue whether the risks of [smallpox] vaccination finally outweighed the benefits…. Today, many specialists hold that vaccination against smallpox is no longer justified in this country.

Update

Routine smallpox vaccinations in the United States ended by 1972 and globally by 1980, when the disease was declared eradicated. But the world isn’t totally safe from smallpox. Russian and U.S. labs keep samples of the disease-causing virus for research, and weaponized versions may exist.

In 2003, the U.S. government pushed to restart vaccinations for health workers and first responders as a precaution against potential bioterrorist attacks. That effort failed, partly because people feared the possibility of health complications from the vaccine. But U.S. officials have stockpiled smallpox vaccines, along with the first smallpox treatment, which was approved for use in 2018 (SN: 5/26/18, p. 10).



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