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February 29th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments,
compiled by the editors of HealthDay:
Feds Uncover Record-Breaking Medicare
Scam
A Texas doctor allegedly recruited homeless people as fake patients in
a wide-ranging, $375 million Medicare home health-care scam, the largest
ever uncovered, investigators say.
Dr. Jacques Roy, 54, was arrested Wednesday and charged with falsifying
hundreds of Medicare claims and taking millions of dollars for unneeded or
undelivered services. He could be sent to prison for life, ABC News
reported.
“According to the indictment, Dr. Roy and his co-conspirators, for
years, ran a well-oiled fraudulent enterprise in the Dallas area, making
millions by recruiting thousands of patients for unnecessary services, and
billing Medicare for those services,” said Assistant Attorney General
Lanny Breuer.
The indictment alleges that Roy certified more Medicare beneficiaries
for home health services and claimed more patients than any other U.S.
doctor in the years 2006 to 2011, ABC said.
To obtain reimbursement from Medicare, doctors must certify that the
medical services were needed and performed. Roy’s operation, Medistat
Group and Associates, allegedly certified false claims involving nearly
500 home health care companies in Texas. The companies were reimbursed for
the bogus or unnecessary services and provided Roy with a portion of the
“refund.” All told, they billed Medicare for more than $350 million and
Medicaid for more than $24 million, the news report said.
—–
Counterfeit Avastin Lacks Any Real
Drug
Counterfeit vials of Avastin, a commonly used cancer drug, are probably
not harmful, but do not contain the active ingredient in the real drug,
according to Roche, the Swiss drug maker.
Regulators in Europe said traces of salt, starch and acetone, a
solvent found in paint thinner, were found in an analysis of the fake
drug’s contents, the Associated Press reported. Roche said in a
statement that “the counterfeit product is not safe or effective and
should not be used.”
Dr. Miguel Fernandez of the South Texas Poison Center in San Antonio
said a low dose probably would not be toxic. “They’re not great to have in
your system, but depending on the concentration your body can probably
handle them pretty well,” Fernandez said.
The counterfeit Avastin was imported from Europe and apparently
distributed by a U.S. wholesaler to doctors in the United States. Of 41
vials shipped, 36 are still unaccounted for, the AP said.
Doctors infuse Avastin to treat colon, lung, kidney and brain cancer.
According to the news agency, worldwide reports of drug counterfeiting
have increased over the past 10 years.
—–
Artificial Hips a Bigger Problem Than Breast
Implants: Study
Hundreds of thousands of people who received artificial metal-on-metal
hips made by Johnson Johnson, among others, may face serious health
threats, including long-term disability, British health experts report.
The BMJ and BBC researchers said more people are at risk
from the metal artificial hips than are affected by faulty breast implants
made in France, the subject of another recent European medical device
scare.
Their investigation found that toxic cobalt and chromium ions in the
artificial hips can penetrate tissue and enter the bloodstream, spreading
to major organs and killing bone and muscle, according to Bloomberg
News.
Dr. Carl Heneghan, director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for
Evidence-Based Medicine, said in a BMJ statement that a uniform,
international system to assess and monitor implantable medical devices
would help safeguard patients around the globe.
“Creating an independent system for post-marketing analysis for
implantable medical devices that is robust and increasing international
coordination around device alerts and withdrawals should go some way to
sorting out the current mess,” Heneghan said, according to
Bloomberg.
In December, reports that breast implants made by Poly Implants
Protheses SA were leaking industrial silicone led French and German
officials to recommend that thousands of women have the implants removed.
The hips the researchers studied included those made by New
Jersey-based JJ; Zimmer Holdings of Indiana, and a London company,
Smith Nephew Plc (SN).
Because medical devices don’t need the same type of clinical testing in
Europe required of new drugs, the hips were implanted in patients without
adequate safety studies, the researchers said. Potentially risky design
changes made over the past 10 years weren’t flagged by regulators and
brought to the attention of doctors and patients.
Heneghan said procedures for medical device approval in Europe are less
stringent than in the United States. In the United States, tests of
medical devices are government-run under the Food and Drug Administration,
and manufacturers must provide proof of safety and effectiveness. In the
EU, however, manufacturers need only prove the devices are safe, and they
can choose from about 70 private firms, called “notified bodies,” to test
their products, the Bloomberg report stated. Approval from one
firms enables the manufacturer to market the device throughout the 27 EU
nations.
Study co-author Nick Freemantle, professor of clinical epidemiology and
biostatistics at University College London, said the current approval
standards are dated. “The methods of device regulation seem to be more
from the 1950s than the 21st century,” he wrote in the study,
Bloomberg reported.
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