WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration called on drug companies Wednesday to help limit the use of antibiotics given to farm animals, a decades-old practice that scientists say has contributed to a surge in dangerous, drug-resistant bacteria.

Antibiotics are mixed with animal feed to help livestock, pigs and
chickens put on weight and stay healthy in crowded barns. Scientists
have warned that this routine use leads to the growth of
antibiotic-resistant germs that can be passed to humans.

The US Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday warned consumers not to take a product called “Japan Rapid Weight Loss Diet Pills” because they contain a suspected cancer-causing agent.

The pills, advertised as promoting weight loss, are distributed by a company called Xiushentang and sold on popular web sites including Amazon.com, said the FDA.

Consumers are advised to stop using the pills — which are packaged in three colors: green, yellow and blue — and discard them. They should also see a doctor if they have experienced any side effects, the agency said.

In a move that highlights dilemmas plaguing the U.S. drug supply, federal regulators warned a major manufacturer about problems including bugs in vials of sterile drugs — insects, literally — the same day that health officials allowed the firm to ramp up scarce medications for kids with cancer.

Food and Drug Administration officials on Tuesday posted a warning letter sent to APP Pharmaceuticals LLC of Schaumberg, Ill., citing violations at a New York plant that included insects found in clean rooms and in vials of distributed drugs and failure to report defects such as vials contaminated with foreign matter and glass.

The firm also had problems with documenting sterile technique and was marketing unapproved drugs, according to the warning.

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers are investigating three shadowy pharmacies in Maryland and North Carolina for diverting critical but scarce drugs from patients to wholesalers, who are then able to resell the medicine at sometimes big markups.

Elijah Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform, began a probe in October to discover
why certain companies were selling cancer drugs at more than a hundred
times their normal cost.

Shortages of hundreds of drugs including cisplatin, a highly
effective treatment for testicular cancer, and fluorouracil for colon
and other cancers have helped create a lucrative shadow market.

(CNN) — The moment 18-year-old Army Pvt. Tim Josephs arrived at Edgewood Arsenal in 1968, he knew there was something different about the place.

“It just did not look like a military base, more like a hospital,” recalled Josephs, a Pittsburgh native. Josephs had volunteered for a two-month assignment at Edgewood, in Maryland, lured by three-day weekends closer to home.

“It was like a plum assignment,” Josephs said. “The idea was they would test new Army field jackets, clothing, weapons and things of that nature, but no mention of drugs or chemicals.”

U.S. health regulators will add warnings to the labels of widely used cholesterol lowering drugs, such as Lipitor, to indicate that they may raise levels of blood sugar and could cause memory loss.

The Food and Drug administration announced the changes to the safety
information on the labels of statins such as Pfizer Inc’s Lipitor,
AstraZeneca’s Crestor and Merck & Co’s Zocor.

Statins have been shown to significantly reduce the risk of heart
attack and heart disease, and the FDA said the new information should
not scare people into stopping taking the drugs.

“The value of statins in preventing heart disease has been clearly
established,” Amy Egan, deputy director for safety in FDA’s Division of
Metabolism and Endocrinology Products, said in a statement. “Their
benefit is indisputable, but they need to be taken with care and
knowledge of their side effects.”

An Ohio drugmaker began releasing limited supplies of a crucial medication to treat childhood leukemia Thursday, sending hospital pharmacists facing life-threatening shortages scrambling for their share.

Jerrod Milton, chief of pharmacy at Children’s Hospital of Colorado, was among those first in line as Ben Venue Laboratories began accepting new orders for the drug methotrexate, three weeks before the hospital would have run out completely.

“I had a tip that it was going to be available,” he said. “I put my pharmacy team on notice.”

Ben Venue officials said product would be allocated starting now and continuing over the next several weeks to oncology clinics, hospitals and pediatric facilities, easing the shortage crisis. No information was available about which sites would get the scarce drugs first, or in what order.

How can a drug company run out of medicine because of quality concerns? They must have people checking everything that goes on in the company. Do you think it is like everything else it boils down to money. Cut back here cut back there and work the employees as much as you can and don’t  appreciate what they do,and then they just don’t care. This is to important not to find out what is going on and fast. Two weeks supply is to close for these child that need this drug. Someone needs to get their self in gear and do something. I know the company voluntarily suspended it  there  self but came on this does not need to happen.

A crucial medicine to treat childhood leukemia is in such short supply that hospitals across the country may exhaust their stores within the next two weeks, leaving hundreds and perhaps thousands of children at risk of dying from a largely curable disease, federal officials and cancer doctors say.

“This is dire,” said Valerie Jensen, associate director of the Food
and Drug Administration’s drug shortages program. “Supplies are just not
meeting demand.”

The drug is methotrexate, and the cancer it treats is known as acute
lymphoblastic leukemia, or A.L.L., which most often strikes children
ages 2 to 5.

It is an unusually virulent cancer of white blood cells that are
overproduced in bone marrow and invade other parts of the body.

FORT WAYNE, INDIANA – A frustrated mom has given her wayward teenage son the ultimate punishment: public humiliation.

The 14-year-old was forced to stand on a busy street for two hours with a massive sign hanging around his neck, which read, “I lie, I steal, I sell drugs, I don’t follow the law.”

Dynesha Lax, of Fort Wayne, said the punishments handed out to her unruly son weren’t strong enough to get him to stop so she had no choice but to take this drastic action.

“I decided he broke the law and they only gave him a few hours community service so I decided that we were going to wear a sign that says you looking for attention, we’re going to get you attention,” Lax told KLTV.

LOS FRESNOS, Texas — Police wearing berets and bulletproof vests broke down the door of a Guatemala City apartment in February hunting for illegal drugs. Instead, they found a different kind of illicit shipment: 27 immigrants from India packed into two locked rooms.

The Indians, whose hiding space was furnished only with soiled mattresses, claimed to be on vacation. But authorities quickly concluded they were waiting to be smuggled into the United States via an 11,000-mile pipeline of human cargo — the same network that has transported thousands of illegal immigrants from India, through Central America and Mexico and over the sandy banks of the Rio Grande during the past two years.