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(c) 2010-2026 Jon L Gelman, All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Stryker Corp. Settles FCPA Case, Pays $13 Million

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from blogs.wsj.com

Stryker Corp. settled a long-running U.S. foreign bribery case, agreeing on Thursday to pay $13.3 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to resolve the allegations — without admitting or denying them.
The Kalamazoo, Mich.-based medical device company first disclosed in 2007 that the SEC and the U.S. Justice Department had made inquiries regarding possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars the use of bribes to foreign officials to get or keep business.
An SEC investigation found that Stryker’s subsidiaries in Argentina, Greece, Mexico, Poland and Romania made about $2.2 million in illicit payments, describing them in company books as legitimate expenses such as charitable donations, service contracts, travel expenses and commissions. The company made about $7.5 million in profit as a result of the payments, the SEC said.
“Stryker’s misconduct involved hundreds of improper payments over a number of years during which the company’s internal controls were fatally flawed,” said Andrew Calamari, director of the SEC’s New York office, in a statement.
Joe Cooper, the director of communications for Stryker, said in an email the company has enhanced its company-wide anti-corruption compliance program, and was advised that the Justice Department closed its investigation.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
The SEC issued an administrative order (pdf) against Stryker requiring the company to pay...
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Retailer sandblasting bans have changed little in the garment industry

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.mercurynews.com

Three years ago, when Levi Strauss announced it had banned the use of sandblasting, labor advocates hoped the move by the top-selling jeans maker would help end the deadly practice, which gives denim a fashionable look but is linked to a fatal lung disease.
But even as Target and Gap joined Levi Strauss in proclaiming bans, sandblasting persists in factories that make those retailers' clothes in China, India, Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh, countries responsible for the bulk of the five billion pairs of jeans made each year, research by nonprofits, medical groups and labor organizations shows.
"There clearly is sandblasting going on. I don't know how anyone could really deny it," said Katie Quan, associate chair of the Labor Center at UC Berkeley.
Counterfeit jean production, outsourcing in the supply chain and vast factories that make jeans for dozens of brands under one roof make it difficult to track jeans from production to the shopping mall. But the groups say their research establishes that workers in many of these overseas factories are sandblasting -- spraying sand on denim to make it appear bleached or distressed -- without the necessary protective gear.
Levi Strauss says its suppliers have removed sandblasting equipment from their factories and that it regularly conducts on-site inspections at factories.
"No Levi Strauss & Co. products utilize sandblasting in product development, design, finishing or in any other aspect of garment...
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Study: No helmet brand can save football players from concussion risk

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.latimes.com


Health experts have some bad news for high school football players: There is no particular type or brand of helmet or mouth guard that will keep you relatively safe from a concussion.
The companies that make helmets and mouth guards often claim that their own products can reduce players’ risk of a sports-related concussion or lessen the impact of a concussion that does occur. These manufacturers cite “laboratory research” that purports to show one brand is safer than others, and a group of researchers wanted to see if they could verify such claims, according to a summary of a presentation they made Monday at a national meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The research team, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin, tracked 1,332 high school football players from 36 schools during the 2012 season. Participating players completed a preseason questionnaire about their injury history and demographic information. Then, as the season progressed, athletic trainers from the schools kept tabs on the incidence and severity of any concussions that occurred.
At the start of the study, 171 of the players — or 13% — told the researchers that they had experienced a sports-related concussion in the previous 12 months. During the 2012 football season, an additional 116 concussions were sustained by 115 players — 8.6% of the student athletes in the study.
When the researchers compared...
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Toyota settles acceleration lawsuit after $3-million verdict

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.latimes.com


Toyota Motor Corp.'s first loss in a sudden acceleration case, in an Oklahoma courtroom this week, could embolden attorneys nationwide who are looking to bring hundreds of similar cases.
Worse for the Japanese automaker, the verdict centered on the company's electronics, which have been a focus for plaintiffs seeking to prove safety defects in the company's cars.
Toyota on Friday confirmed that it had reached a confidential settlement in the lawsuit, which involved the fatal 2007 crash of a Camry. The settlement came hours after a jury assessed $3 million in compensatory damages but before the panel could levy a punitive award.
The verdict could provide a road map for attorneys seeking to hold the automaker liable for injuries and deaths.
Toyota has denied any safety defects in its cars, arguing that many incidents of unintended acceleration stemmed from drivers who stepped on the gas instead of the brake. But plaintiffs in the Oklahoma case successfully argued that Toyota's electronic throttle system was flawed, causing the car to speed out of control.
The 2005 Camry crashed into an embankment, severely injuring the driver, 76-year-old Jean Bookout, and killing her passenger, Barbara Schwarz.
By striking a quick settlement, the company likely sought to avoid bad publicity and damage to its reputation, said Jill Wieber Lens, a product liability expert at Baylor University Law School in Waco, Texas.
The Oklahoma defeat could increase pressure on the automaker to come up...
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F.D.A. Shift on Painkillers Was Years in the Making

Narcotic pain killers have been the subject of concern and regulation by employers' and their insurance carriers nationally. The evolution of the FDA proposed action to regulate is revealed in today's post is shared from the NYTimes.com

When Heather Dougherty heard the news last week that the Food and Drug Administration had recommended tightening how doctors prescribed the most commonly used narcotic painkillers, she was overjoyed. Fourteen years earlier, her father, Dr. Ronald J. Dougherty, had filed a formal petition urging federal officials to crack down on the drugs.

Dr. Dougherty told officials in 1999 that more of the patients turning up at his clinic near Syracuse were addicted to legal narcotics like Vicodin and Lortab that contain the drug hydrocodone than to illegal narcotics like heroin.

Since then, narcotic painkillers, or opioids, have become the most frequently prescribed drugs in the United States and have set off a wave of misuse, abuse and addiction. Experts estimate that more than 100,000 people have died in the last decade from overdoses involving the drugs. For his part, Dr. Dougherty, who foresaw the problem, retired in 2007 and is now 81 and living in a nursing home.
“Too many lives have been ruined,” his daughter said.

The story behind the F.D.A.’s turnaround on the pain pills, last Thursday, involved a rare victory by lawmakers from states hard hit by prescription drug abuse over well-financed lobbyists for business and...
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Leaked documents reveal the secret finances of a pro-industry science group

As the judicial system is bombarded with evidential scientific research in order to ascertain the truth, the research process itself is subject to being influenced. Today's post is shared from MotherJones.org and describes what happens when so-called "independent research" becomes tainted.

The American Council on Science and Health bills itself as an independent research and advocacy organization devoted to debunking "junk science." It's a controversial outfit—a "group of scientists…concerned that many important public policies related to health and the environment did not have a sound scientific basis," it says—that often does battle with environmentalists and consumer safety advocates, wading into public health debates to defend fracking, to fight New York City's attempt to ban big sugary sodas, and to dismiss concerns about the potential harms of the chemical bisphenol-A (better known at BPA) and the pesticide atrazine.

The group insists that its conclusions are driven purely by science. It acknowledges that it receives some financial support from corporations and industry groups, but ACSH, which reportedly stopped disclosing its corporate donors two decades ago, maintains that these contributions don't influence its work and agenda.

corporate researchYet internal financial documents (read them here) provided to Mother Jones show that ACSH depends heavily on funding from corporations that have a financial stake in the scientific debates it aims to shape.

The group also directly solicits donations from these industry sources around specific issues. ACSH's financial links to corporations involved in hot-button health and safety controversies have been highlighted in the past, but these documents offer a more extensive...
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Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Securing the Right to a Safe and Healthy Workplace | Center for Effective Government


Workers' Compensation is the remedy when workplaces aren't safe. The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) promulgates safety rule in the workplace. Safer workplaces are needed and OSHA needs to be strengthened. This post is shared from foreffectivegovernment.org .

The Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act), passed in 1970, recognizes that workers play a critical role in ensuring their workplaces are healthy and safe. The OSH Act gives workers the right to report unsafe working conditions and the right to refuse to work under such conditions without reprisal.

The concept is for workers to function as the “eyes and ears” of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and help the agency prioritize its limited resources to focus inspections on the most dangerous work sites.

Workers will only report safety and health hazards in the workplace, however, if they can come forward without fear of reprisal. Thus, the law prohibits employers from taking any adverse action against employees who exercise the rights provided to them under the OSH Act.

Unfortunately, the weak guarantees written into the federal OSH Act leave workers with few protections against retaliation by an employer after reporting dangerous working conditions. Problems with current protections include the fact that the amount of time required to file a retaliation complaint is too short, investigations take too long, the burden of proof is too high, OSHA cannot preliminarily reinstate an employee once it determines that a complaint has merit, and employees cannot pursue a remedy independently, even if OSHA takes no action on their behalf.

Between 2005 and 2012, OSHA received 11,153 complaints of retaliation, 10,380 were reviewed, and 2,542...
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Spinal fusions serve as case study for debate over when certain surgeries are necessary

The necessity of medical treatment is coming under increased questioning as payers want to rein in costs. This article is shared from the washingtonpost.com.

By some measures, Federico C. Vinas was a star surgeon. He performed three or four surgeries on a typical weekday at the Daytona Beach, Fla., hospital that employed him, and a review showed him to be nearly five times as busy as other neurosurgeons. The hospital paid him hundreds of thousands in incentive pay. In all, he earned as much as $1.9 million a year.

Yet given his productivity, some hospital auditors wondered: Was all of the surgery really necessary?

To answer that question, the hospital in early 2010 paid for an independent review of cases in which Vinas and two other neurosurgeons had performed a common procedure known as a spinal fusion. The review was conducted by board-certified neurosurgeons working for AllMed, a company accredited to audit health-care businesses.

Of 10 spinal fusions by Vinas that were selected, nine were deemed not medically necessary, according to a summary of the report.

Vinas is still working at Halifax Health, and a hospital spokesman said that, after the AllMed report, the hospital conducted an internal review that validated his surgeries. Another review conducted this year in response to litigation also validated them, the spokesman said. The hospital would not answer further questions or release details of those reviews.

Vinas “has never and will never perform an unnecessary surgical procedure on any patient,” his attorney, Robert H. Pritchard, said in a statement.

More than 465,000...
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Updates on America's Persistent Air and Water Pollution Challenges


The dirty little secret in the US is that pollution continues of the nation's air and water supply. Today's post is shared from nytimes.com.

Houston cloaked in a haze of pollution on Oct. 23, 2013. Sources range from cars to oil and gas installations and refineries.
Andrew C. RevkinHouston cloaked in a haze of pollution on Oct. 23, 2013. Sources range from cars to oil and gas installations and refineries.
Houston cloaked in a haze of pollution on Oct. 23, 2013. Sources range from cars to oil and gas installations and refineries.Air and water problems mainly make headlines these days when extraordinary pulses of pollution surge in places like Beijing and Shanghai. But there are still enormous, if largely hidden, health and environmental costs in many parts of the United States that have failed to meet the goals set decades ago under the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (e.g., see Muller, Mendelsohn, Nordhaus, 2011). Sometimes the issue is visible. I visited Houston briefly this week and snapped the photo above on the airport approach. Not pretty.
Read on for excerpts from two relevant articles. The first, from the Allegheny Front, explores how lessons learned in trying to cut pollution from natural gas facilities in Houston can be applied in Pennsylvania’s fracking zone. The second, by my Pace University colleague and longtime water analyst John Cronin, digs in on the gap between Environmental Protection Agency statements on water pollution and the results in America’s waterways.
Here’s “Houston Air Pollution: Preview for Pennsylvania?” It’s the second article in a planned four-part series, “The Coming Chemical Boom,” that was in part paid for by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
...
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The Robotic Workforce

Robots are quickly replacing the human workforce in dangerous, risky and hazardous jobs. New jobs are being transferred quickly to a new robotic workplace in all phases of work. In the US Amazon's national warehouse sorting venture has employed them effectively. Even China, with an aging human workforce is moving quickly to replace humans with machines. One thing is for sure, robots have no need for workers' compensation. Today's post is shared from nytimes.com.

On a recent morning Natanel Dukan walked into the Paris offices of the French robot maker Aldebaran and noticed one of the company’s humanoid NAO robots sitting on a chair. Mr. Dukan, an electrical engineer, could not resist. Bending over, he kissed the robot on the cheek. In response the NAO tilted its head, touched his cheek and let out an audible smack.
It is certainly a very French application for a robot, but the intimate gesture by the $16,000, two-foot robot, now being used in academic research labs and robotic soccer leagues, also reflects a significant shift.
Until recently, most robots were carefully separated from humans. They have largely been used in factories to perform repetitive tasks that required speed, precision and force. That generation of robots is dangerous, and they have been caged and fenced for the protection of workers.
But the industrial era of robotics is over. And robots are beginning to move around in the world.
More and more, they are also beginning to imitate — and...
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Fungal Meningitis: One Year After the Outbreak

A year ago the medication induced infections were the focus of the US CDC as The New England Compounding Service drew national attention. Today's post is shared from the CDC.gov.

A year ago this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention activated its Emergency Operations Center as part of the response to the tragic outbreak of fungal meningitis linked to three contaminated lots of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate (MPA) produced by the New England Compounding Center (NECC). As of October 23, 2013, there have been 751 cases of fungal meningitis and other infections associated with this outbreak; 64 of these patients have died. Since July 2013, one new case has been diagnosed.
This week, CDC has two papers in the New England Journal of Medicine, one describing the clinical aspects of the infections associated with this outbreak and the other summarizing the epidemiologic investigation. The clinical paper, focusing on the early stages of the outbreak, describes patients who experienced a wide variety of illnesses, including meningitis, stroke, arachnoiditis (inflammation of one of the membranes around the brain and spinal cord), and epidural or paraspinal infections which ranged in severity from very mild to life-threatening. The epidemiology paper finalizes the original preliminary report published by the New England Journal of Medicine and details the efforts undertaken by public health agencies to identify and stop the outbreak.
This...
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Ohio: Local governments, schools to get workers’-comp break

Today's post shared from dispatch.com

Nearly 4,000 Ohio cities, townships, school districts and other public entities will get an average reduction of 1.6 percent in workers’-compensation premiums for 2014 that will save them $3.9 million.
The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation approved the reduction on Friday. The premium charge for each public entity will vary based on several factors.
The cut is on top of reductions in 2012 and 2013 that have reduced premiums for public entities by $68.3 million from 2011 rates.
The state credits the reductions to lower claims, among other things.
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Monday, October 28, 2013

A Day In The Life Of Ted the Tea-Partier

Today's guest post is by Jay Causey of the Washington Bar.


     Ted gets up at 6 A.M. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee.  The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for government-enforced minimum water-quality standards. 
     With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to have the government insure their safety and that they work as advertised.  All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Ted gets it too.
     He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs.  Ted’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat-packing industry
     In the morning shower, Ted reaches for his shampoo.  His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
     Ted dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath.  The air he breathes is far less polluted than decades ago because some wacko liberal environmentalist fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
     Ted begins his workday. He has a good job with decent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.  Ted’s employer pays these standards because Ted’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.  If Ted is hurt on the job or is laid off, he’ll get workers’ compensation or unemployment because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
     It’s noontime, and Ted needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Ted’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Ted’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression and nearly collapsed the banking system again in 2008, saved only by a tax-payer bailout.
     Ted is home from work, and drives to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country.  His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought to have the government enact car safety standards.
     He arrives at his boyhood home.  His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.  The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.
     He is happy to see his father, who is now retired.  His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Ted wouldn’t have to. Ted gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show.  The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and hate their country.  He doesn’t mention that his radical, anti-government Republicans  have, over many decades, fought against each and every one of these protections and benefits Ted enjoys throughout his day.
     Ted agrees:  “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives!  They’re taking away our freedoms!  After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”
- See more at: http://workersadvisor.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-ted-the-tea-partier#sthash.PiWVQFET.dpuf

NTSB says Texas Spirit Air flight had "uncontained" failure

Today's post was shared by WCBlog and comes from www.cbsnews.com

A Spirit Airlines plane at Dallas-Forth Worth Airport on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013.
A Spirit Airlines plane at Dallas-Forth Worth Airport on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013.
A National Transportation Safety Board official says a Spirit Airlines jet bound for Atlanta sustained an engine failure before safely returning to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Plane engine explodes, smoke forces plane to turn back

The official says it was an "uncontained" failure. That means broken pieces and parts of the engine escaped the outer engine housing, an unusual and especially serious occurrence.
The official spoke Wednesday on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly.
Aircraft engines are designed to contain any broken pieces within the engine during a failure.
Passengers aboard the Airbus A319 on Tuesday say they heard an explosion and saw flames come up the side of the plane, lighting up the interior. They reported that smoke filled the cabin.
Passenger Casey Rogers described his experience in a phone call with CBS station KTVT in Dallas: "I saw the engine blow up on the outside of the plane, fire and all that. I'm thinking to myself, I see this on the movies. I'm usually on my couch eating popcorn. This never happened to me. And here I am 25,000 feet above the ground and this is happening to me."
Rogers said the crew was professional and handled the situation well.
Spirit spokeswoman Misty Pinson says no one on Flight 165 was injured.
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