fraud

Retractions and Corrections From Scientific Misconduct

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An interesting article appears in the Journal of Medical Ethics, January 2013, vol. 39, pp. 46-50, titled “Scientific retractions and corrections related to misconduct findings,” by David B Resnik and Gregg E Dinse. The authors explored 208 closed cases involving official findings of research misconduct published by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity from 1992 to 2011 in order to determine how often scientists mention in a retraction or correction notice that there was an ethical problem with the article. The issue of fraudulent articles appear in the scientific literature is a problem as many articles and the data within them can be falsified. See for example Industry Bias in Biomedical Science and The Right to Health and Information. The authors mention that typically when a retraction or correction is made to an article they are usually electronically linked to … Read more

Senate Report Calls for Removing Deceptive Corporate Dentistry Entities From Medicaid

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Previously I have written an article titled Fraud and Abuse in Medicaid Clinics where a discussion was made that currently dentists have large amounts of debt when they graduate from school. This leads to them having to face potentially hard and difficult choices to pay their bills as they essentially become indentured servants. Recently Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Max Baucus (D-MT) published a 1517 page report in June 2013, titled “JOINT STAFF REPORT ON THE CORPORATE PRACTICE OF DENTISTRY IN THE MEDICAID PROGRAM.” This report is a very large PDF file (143 MB) and is available for download over at http://www.finance.senate.gov/library/prints/.  Don’t be intimidated by the size of the report though as it really is a bit over 30 pages with the rest of the 1400+ pages serving as an appendix. Hence, it is very readable. The report talks … Read more

Washington Dentist Troubles

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Recently, a few articles appeared on DrBicuspid talking about Washington dentists. One of the dentists is a Washington state dentist, the other is a Washington D.C. dentist. The first article talks about how a now retired Washington state dentist must pay $35 million to 29 former patients. The reason for this is because the court determined that the former dentist had performed numerous unnecessary root canals over a long period of time.   The article discusses how the retired dentist performed over 2,000 root canals on about 500 patients over a five year span several years ago. The dentist who purchased the retired dentists practice said that a lot of failing root canals and railing crowns were being noticed by the patients coming in. The court in this case found that the dentist was negligent, failed to obtain informed consent from … Read more

Preservation of Confidential Health Care for Young Adults

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An interesting article titled “Health Reform and the Preservation of Confidential Health Care for Young Adults” written by Lauren Slive and Ryan Cramer appears in the Summer 2012 issue of the The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics (vol. 40, issue 2, pages 383-390). A discussion is made regarding how sometimes when getting health care services confidential information can be inadvertently disclosed. If a breach of confidentiality can occur then a minor or young adult may not seek the health care services. The authors state “Of primary concern is that young adults, not just minors, who remain on their parents health insurance plans often forgo sensitive services with the concern that explanation of benefits (EOBs) from such services will inform their parents, the policyholders.” In addition, of note and some may not be aware of, with the passage of the Affordable … Read more

The Right to Health and Information

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An interesting article is written by Trudo Lemmens and Candice Telfer titled “Access to Information and the Right to Health: The Human Rights Case for Clinical Trials Transparency,” which appeared in the 2011 issue of the American Journal of Law and Medicine (vol. 38, pages 63-112). In the article the authors argue that information about clinical trials should be recognized as a fundamental component of the right to health. The authors make a mention of two controversies in recent years. The first is of GlaxoSmithKline and its use of the antidepressant Paxil for treatment of depression in the pediatric population. In 2004, the Attorney General of New York prosecuted GSK for allegedly hiding negative data, selective publishing of positive data, and use of skewed publications to promote off-label prescriptions. The second case is the mention of Vioxx in which the … Read more