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Family files lawsuit over alleged fights

March 27, 2009

A woman who says her mentally disabled son was forced to fight in bouts staged by staff at the Corpus Christi State School has filed a civil lawsuit against the state.

 

Inez Hernandez says her son, Armando Hernandez Jr., 21, was injured physically and emotionally after being forced to fight when he lived at the state school in 2007 and 2008. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in district court against the state Department of Aging and Disability Services, which oversees the schools that are large residential facilities for the mentally disabled.

 

Criminal charges were recently filed against six former or current employees of the Corpus Christi campus alleging that residents were forced to fight for the staff’s entertainment.

 

State officials have said they’re investigating those cases and the agency is committed to giving residents proper care. But Laura Albrecht, the Aging and Disability Services’ spokeswoman, said Thursday she can’t comment on Hernandez’s suit because they had not yet been served.

 

Read Article: Houston Chronicle

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

Report calls for new food safety oversight

Adding to the chorus seeking an overhaul of the nation’s food safety system, a report issued Wednesday called on the Obama administration to put someone in charge of safeguarding the food supply and to create a Food Safety Administration.

The food safety system is “plagued with problems,” said Jeffrey Levi, executive director of Trust for America’s Health, which released the report in conjunction with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

 

Calls for reform of the Food and Drug Administration have only become louder since the salmonella outbreak linked to peanut products late last year. Voluntary product recalls are still being announced; the outbreak has sickened nearly 700 people in 46 states and possibly caused nine deaths.

“We are way overdue for a makeover,” said Michelle Larkin, director of the foundation’s Public Health Team. “It costs us around $44 billion annually in medical care and lost productivity, so the stakes are really high.”

 

Read Article: Los Angeles Times

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

C8 exposure linked to birth defects, preeclampsia

A three-person science committee has found evidence that could connect the toxic chemical C8 to human birth defects and high blood pressure in pregnant women, according to the latest reports made public Thursday.

 

Babies whose mothers had high levels of C8 in their blood were 70 percent more likely to have birth defects, according to the study by the C8 Science Panel. Woman with greater than average levels of C8 in their blood were 30 percent more likely to have preeclampsia, or high blood pressure during pregnancy, according to the panel’s analysis.

Members of the three-scientist panel downplayed both findings, calling them “weak relationships,” but also saying the results support the need for continuing to study C8′s health impacts.

 

“The numbers are what they are, and then there’s the question of what to make of them,” said David Savitz, a Science Panel member from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “There are a lot of reasons to be cautious about drawing those kinds of conclusions.”

 

Read Article: Charleston Gazette

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

Study: Few US hospitals use digital records

U.S. hospitals have a long way to go to join the digital age. Fewer than 2 percent have abandoned paper medical charts and completely switched to electronic health records, a new national survey found.

Another 8 to 11 percent of hospitals have basic electronic systems in place where at least one department has converted to digital.

The sobering findings come as the Obama administration plans to spend $19 billion to help modernize medical-record keeping systems.

“We are at a very early stage in adoption, a very low stage compared to other countries,” said Dr. David Blumenthal, head of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital.

 

Read Article: Washington Post

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

Federal judge says he favors pretrial secrecy of 9/11 documents over families’ quest to know

A judge said Wednesday he favors keeping Sept. 11-related documents and interviews secret until the trials for several families of victims suing the airline industry, an opinion that upset several victims’ family members.

Donald Migliori, a lawyer for families of three people who died on hijacked planes in the 2001 attacks, asked U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein to make nearly a million pages of evidence and 200 depositions public, saying there was no reason for secrecy.

Hellerstein did not rule, but he said he favored not publically disclosing evidence that had been gathered and shared with lawyers for the victims under a confidentiality agreement until a trial occurs. No trial has yet been scheduled.

 

Read Article: Newsday

 

Posted By: Phoenix DUI Attorney

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