Pic-Cell, a Seattle-based company offering cell phone services to students studying abroad, is accused of violating the Washington State Consumer Protection Act. A suit filed on behalf of six students claims the company added a 3 percent premium and charged unfairly high roaming fees, resulting in monthly bills as high as $1,700.

China’s melamine-tainted milk scandal is increasingly global in its impact, as Cadbury PLC became the latest company to announce a recall amid concerns that chocolate from its Chinese plant may be contaminated with melamine. Cadbury recalled all products made in its Beijing plant, which were distributed throughout mainland China, Australia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Although government tests did not detect the chemical in their milk products, the company said they took this precautionary step because of questionable results of additional testing.

After the 2006 E. coli contamination of spinach cost growers and processors $86 million, the industry wrote their own standards which are enforced by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The Food and Drug Administration agreed that if U.S. farmers followed those same guidelines, the nation’s fresh produce supply would be safer. Action by Congress is needed to give the FDA that authority.

When it comes to flu vaccination, there are always doubters, but once again, many will line up for the shot.

Flu shots: Do they help? Some…

Among medical researchers and health professionals, however, confidence in those benefits has turned in the opposite direction. After six decades of steadily expanded use among the elderly, flu vaccination for seniors has come under critical scrutiny in several studies. Collectively, they suggest that for those over 65, flu vaccination may confer fewer benefits than have been widely advertised.

Researchers that the new skepticism is overdue. The medical profession’s wariness should have been piqued by a simple but glaring disconnect: Flu vaccination rates among American seniors have risen more than fourfold over 25 years — to 65% in 2007. During the same period, however, hospitalization for, and death due to, flu and pneumonia appear to have declined only marginally in the nation’s 65-and-over population. It just doesn’t add up.

Studies on the effectiveness of flu vaccine in older populations have had a wide range of methodological problems. But although their weaknesses are varied, their effect is almost invariably skewed in one direction.”

Since the late 1950s, when flu vaccine became widely available to Americans, a belief in the vaccine’s lifesaving benefits for older people has been the cornerstone of the nation’s immunization policy, a perennial conclusion of published medical studies and an article of popular faith. Not surprisingly, then, the studies that cast doubt on those benefits have been met with concern and hostility.

For some seniors, the flu vaccine does not appear to provide the kind of robust protection it does for others.

Flawed fatality count?

The centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that flu kills about 36,000 Americans annually. But while that shocking figure seems straightforward enough, calculating the totals of death by flu is anything but. For most of those counted as flu fatalities, pneumonia — a frequent complication of flu — is listed as the cause of death.

For those 65 and older, the lesson is clear: A dose of pneumococcal vaccine is a good way to bolster protection among those at risk of suffering complications of flu. A single dose, says the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, can protect against 23 types of Streptococcus pneumonia bacteria thought responsible for causing more than 90% of pneumonia cases.

The latest of the critical studies, published in the Aug. 2 issue of the Lancet, followed the cases of 3,519 patients over age 65 — all admitted to the hospital with pneumonia either during or just before the flu seasons of 2000-2002. After separating those who had been vaccinated against flu from those who had not, and accounting for other health factors, the study found that the group that had been immunized against flu appeared no less likely to develop pneumonia requiring hospitalization than those who had not.

On the heels of that study came a second, conducted by Canadian researchers, that looked at the death rates of elderly hospitalized patients with pneumonia. About 8% of the patients vaccinated for flu died, compared with 15% of the nonvaccinated patients.

But when researchers paired patients of similar age and health status and then looked at their comparative likelihood of dying, they found that age and frailty — not flu vaccination — seemed to account for which patients were most likely to die of pneumonia during flu season. At the same time, they noted, seniors who were younger, more active and generally in better health were more likely to be vaccinated.

Shots recommended

The current dispute among experts should not sway seniors inclined to get the shot from doing so. With a vaccine that is safe and easy to get — this year at least — some protection against flu is better than none at all. (Many people don’t seem to know that a dose of pneumococcal would benefit them as well.)

Several studies have pointed to the need for community groups, hospitals and nursing homes to step up their efforts to vaccinate frail and elderly patients at highest risk of dying if they contract the flu.

An Oklahoma jury has ordered Farmers Insurance Co. to pay $80 million to a class of policyholders who claimed that the insurer underpaid claims. In the lawsuit, policyholders alleged that Farmers engaged in bad faith and fraud by failing to pay for general contractors. The award includes $50 million in compensatory damages and $30 million in punitive damages.

A 61-year-old Kentucky man filed a lawsuit last week accusing a doctor of amputating his penis without his consent. In the lawsuit, Phillip Seaton claims that the doctor was only authorized to perform a circumcision. However, the doctor maintains that upon finding cancer during the operation, the amputation became medically necessary. The suit asks that a jury award punitive damages.

Kelly Brewomgtpm, woriting in the Baltimose Sun on 9/24/08 notes: “Some popular brands of energy drinks should carry warning labels for possible health risks, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. In an article, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, researchers warn that high levels of caffeine contained in the drinks can cause insomnia, rapid heartbeat, tremors and caffeine intoxication, which can, in rare cases, lead to death. A spokesperson suggested that warning labels for energy drinks would create a slippery slope of regulation.”

California regulators have quckly begun steps to ban the use of cell phones by rail workers after it was revealed that the engineer of a Metrolink train that crashed last week had been sending text message while on duty. According to an atricle in the LA Times, the California Public Utilities Commission plan calls for an immediate ban on wireless devices by on-duty rail engineers, conductors and brakemen, except during emergencies. Separate railway crashes and incidents in Texas and California have been linked to cell phone use.

According to a story printed in the Rapid City (South Dakota) Jornal on 9/19/200; The South Dakota Supreme Court has ruled that a driver who rear-ends another vehicle is not necessarily negligent in the crash. In the ruling the court found that juries may decide negligence when the trailing driver disputes whether they were following too closely. The decision upholds a jury verdict clearing a driver of negligence in a 2004 crash.

Attorneys in Florida have filed a lawsuit on behalf of parents who are supposed to be compensated by a state program for children with birth injuries.

According to the recently certified class-action suit, the Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Association, known as NICA, has failed to properly pay participating parents and has misinformed them about their rights under the program.

NICA was created in 1988 to curb malpractice litigation related to birth injuries.