Author: Justin Lane

Fresenius medical healthcare group announced yesterday that it has been warned by the FDA that it needs improve procedures at a blood bag manufacturing plant in Puerto Rico, according to Reuters. In question were the company’s labeling and complaint-handling procedures. The company made certain to assure interested parties that it did not foresee the issues with the Puerto Rico plant affecting sales or earnings and added that patients had not been put at risk. This is far from Fresenius’s first brush with the law and the largest issue looming for the Germany-based healthcare giant revolves around safety issues associated...

Below are Ring of Fire’s top stories from the past week. Video Rewind Department of Justice Asks Court to Grant Bush Admins Immunity for Iraq War In a series of documents filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Obama administration’s Department of Justice effectively asked the Court to grant immunity to former President George W. Bush, former Vice-President Richard B. Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz for their actions during...

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority announced yesterday that Morgan Stanley will pay $1 million to settle claims related to Best Execution and Fair Pricing in customer bond transactions. The embattled banking giant has also been ordered to pay $188,000 in restitution. “Wall Street continues to take advantage of its clients with excessive mark-ups in bond transactions,” commented Peter Mougey an attorney with Levin, Papantonio and practices in the area of securities litigation.  “Because of the lack of transparency in bond mark-ups, Wall Street continues to make ridiculously large and unwarranted profits on the backs of investors,” says Mougey. The...

Children taking the drugs Abilify, Seroquel, Risperdal and Zyprexa is making them more susceptible to developing type-2 diabetes, according to research from Vanderbilt University and published yesterday in JAMA Psychiatry. The study followed children on Medicaid between the ages of 6 and 25 in Tennessee. Researchers tracked the health of these children over a 12-year period and found that they were nearly three times as likely to develop type-2 diabetes. What is more unsettling is that the risk was present after children had been on the drugs for only one year and the risk did not go away after...

In a series of documents filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Obama administration’s Department of Justice effectively asked the Court to grant immunity to former President George W. Bush, former Vice-President Richard B. Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz for their actions during the Iraq War. The lawsuit was originally filed by Sundus Shaker Saleh against George W. Bush and members of his administration. Ms. Saleh alleges that those...