Category Archives: Personal Injury

A personal injury or accident can alter your life forever. You may be able to get support with expenses from a personal injury settlement by contacting an based personal injury lawyer NOW.

Celebrity Legal News Week Round Up

PROOF in Brief

Sourced From Our Friends
http://proofwithjillstanley.com

Week Ending 10.27.2017

  • Weinstein accusers continue to speak out. Natassia Malthe alleges that in February 2010, Weinstein raped her without a condom at her hotel in London and then masturbated after the attack.  Read More
  • Zelda Perkins a woman who settled a sexual harassment claim against Harvey Weinstein 20 years ago has decided to break her NDA (non disclosure agreement) and speak about the matter. Ms. Perkins seeks to expose a process that silences victims.
  • The first victim lawsuit since the New York Times and the New Yorker blew the lid off Harvey Weinstein’s behavior has been filed. Actress Dominique Huett named the Weinstein Company as defendant in the suit. Huett alleges the Company had knowledge of Harvey’s behavior. Read More
  • Harvey Weinstein suing the company that bears his name. The suit seeks access to various records, documents and email accounts. Weinstein believes he needs this information to fight the lawsuit that is currently filed against him as well as those that will likely be coming.
  • Five women have accused Mark Halperin (The Circus and other news/political shows) of sexual harassment while he had a powerful and prominent role at ABC News. The stories of the women, who currently have chosen to remain anonymous, are all eerily similar.
  • Fox extended Bill O’Reilly’s contract for $25 million despite having knowledge of his $32 million settlement in a sexual harassment matter. Read More
  • To date, more than 200 women have claimed to be victims of harassment and assault by filmmaker James Toback (that’s more than Weinstein!).  Toback’s modus operandi always the same: approach a woman on the street of NY, offer a part in an upcoming film, and then bring on the unwanted sexual comments and behavior, with the interaction often ending in him masturbtaing or dry humping them. Nice.
  • Dozens of sex tapes exist in which Mel B appears may come into evidence at the upcoming trial. Mel B claims that she was drugged in many of the videos and that the sex was nonconsensual.   Read More

FDA Wants To Stop Pharma From ‘Gaming’ Generic Drug System

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration moved on Wednesday to prevent pharmaceutical companies from “gaming” the system to block or delay entry of generic rivals.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a blog post that the agency plans to hold a public meeting on July 18 to identify ways pharmaceutical companies are using FDA rules to place obstacles in the way of generic competition.

“We know that sometimes our regulatory rules might be ‘gamed’ in ways that may delay generic drug approvals beyond the time frame the law intended, in order to reduce competition,” he said in the blog post. “We are actively looking at ways our rules are being used and, in some cases, misused.”

The move comes as President Donald Trump and lawmakers in Congress search for ways to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Trump is preparing to put out an executive order on drug pricing, according to media reports, and last week U.S. Senator Ron Wyden introduced a bill to require companies to explain the reasons for significant price increases.

Full Read – http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-wants-stop-pharma-gaming-generic-drug-system-n775151

Does Drinking Coffee Sober You Up?

No judge or jury are necessary to decide the issue of whether or not drinking coffee can help a drunk person sober up. Scientifically speaking it cannot. According to an article in Men’s Health online quoting scientists and Ph.D.’s, there is no correlation between drinking coffee and becoming sober. The basic problem with drinking coffee while intoxicated in an effort to sober up is that drinking coffee may give a drunk person the false impression that they are sober and able to drive safely. Robert Swift, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Director of Brown University’s Center for Alcohol & Addiction Studies stated in the magazine’s article, “caffeine can trick your brain into thinking that you’re less drunk than you actually are. Caffeine masks alcohol’s sedation, but it doesn’t actually reduce the amount of alcohol in your blood. You’re still drunk.” Dr. Swift points out that not only does drinking coffee when drunk not help sober you up, it can have adverse consequences such as hindering a good night’s rest which can make a hangover worse and also cause dehydration.

Caffeine Overrides the Feelings of Sleepiness From Drinking

One of the reasons that drinking coffee to sober up is dangerous and even deadly is that the effects of caffeine override the drunk person’s natural feelings of sleepiness making one seem sharp but masking the diminished motor skills that result from the alcohol. To make matters worse, coffee is not the only high-caffeine beverage that people drink to stay awake. Theses days young people are replacing coffee with high-energy, high caffeine drinks like Red Bull, Monster, and Mountain Dew as a vehicle to reduce or delay the effects of alcohol and to sober up. Combining Red Bull with alcohol in a mixed drink will cause a temporary “cocaine-like” high for a short period of time. Unfortunately, drinking mixed drinks that include a high-energy drink instead of soda or water will only delay the psychological effects of the caffeine and cause a person to crash much harder later on, perhaps while driving. (2)

How Long Does Alcohol Stay in Your Bloodstream?

Once consumed, alcohol immediately enters the blood stream and can stay there for up to 10 hours. It is difficult to determine in advance how much you can drink because there are so many factors that influence your blood alcohol content (BAC). Those factors include your age, sex, weight, food you just ate, and the type of alcohol you consumed. In addition, any medications you have taken will affect how long alcohol remains in your blood. Your body composition i.e., fat to muscle ratio also plays a role in how long alcohol stays with you. For the average male, drinking one large glass of wine takes your body about 3 hours to process. (1)

Sources:
Why You Shouldn’t Drink Coffee When You’re Drunk
http://www.menshealth.com/health/does-coffee-sober-you-up

https://www.nocuffs.com/dui/

(1) How long does alcohol stay in your blood?
http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/853.aspx?CategoryID=87

(2) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2010-11-alcohol-caffeine-deadly.html

Ohio attorney general sues 5 pharmaceutical companies over opioid epidemic


The Ohio attorney general has filed a lawsuit against five leading prescription opioid manufacturers, alleging that the companies intentionally misled patients regarding the risks and benefits of opioid use with fraudulent marketing.

Attorney General Mike DeWine accused the companies of leading patients to believe that opioids were not addictive, which the lawsuit says fueled the current opioid epidemic in Ohio.

“We believe the evidence will also show that these companies got thousands and thousands of Ohioans — our friends, our family members, our co-workers, our kids — addicted to opioid pain medications, which has all too often led to use of the cheaper alternatives of heroin and synthetic opioids,” DeWine said in a statement. “These drug manufacturers led prescribers to believe that opioids were not addictive, that addiction was an easy thing to overcome, or that addiction could actually be treated by taking even more opioids.”

The five manufacturers listed in the lawsuit, filed in the Ross County Court of Common Pleas, are Purdue Pharma, Endo Health Solutions, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and its subsidiary Cephalon, Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Allergan.

The lawsuit was filed in Ross County since Southern Ohio was the area hit the hardest by the opioid epidemic, the press release states. A record of 3,050 people in Ohio died from drug overdose in 2015, The Associated Press reported. That figure is expected to rise significantly once the 2016 figures have been tallied, according to the AP.

The lawsuit alleges that the drug companies violated the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act and created a “public nuisance by disseminating false and misleading statements about the risks and benefits of opioids.”

Full Read – http://abcnews.go.com/US/ohio-attorney-general-sues-pharmaceutical-companies-opioid-epidemic/story?id=47750198

How celebrities’ ‘golden glow’ shines on public health

Updated 12:20 PM ET, Thu May 18, 2017

(CNN)When celebrities speak, it seems, the world listens — even when it comes to personal and public health.

Just look at what happened after Charlie Sheen’s HIV disclosure two years ago, said John Ayers, a research professor at San Diego State University.

 

Sales of in-home HIV testing kits reached record highs around the same time the actor announced that he had been diagnosed as HIV-positive in 2015, according to a study published in the journal Prevention Science on Thursday. Ayers was a co-author of the study.

 

About the same time, “in record numbers, people were going online, seeking out information on what the signs of HIV are, on how to find and appropriately prevent HIV with devices such as condoms and also how to get tested,'” Ayers said. “We’ve seen this … many times over.”

 

For the new study, Ayers and his co-authors monitored weekly sales of OraQuick, the only FDA-approved at-home oral HIV testing kit available in the United States, from 2014 to 2016.

 

The researchers found that there were 8,225 more sales than they expected the week of Sheen’s HIV status announcement. Elevated sales continued for four weeks after Sheen’s disclosure.
The findings show a correlation, not a direct causation. Yet in a previous study, Ayers and his colleagues also found that Google searches for HIV testing and related topics also spiked after Sheen’s announcement.

 

“The most common reaction is, ‘So what? What does a search really mean?’ Our new study shows not only did Sheen’s disclosure lead people to seek information about HIV prevention, it also corresponded with record levels of at-home rapid HIV testing sales,” Ayers said.

hey are not doctors, many celebrities have had both positive and negative ties to public health in recent years.