The Vaping-Linked Lung Disease Outbreak Is Getting Serious
The surge in lung disease cases, and at least five deaths, seemingly linked to vaping products is serious enough that some public health officials are cautioning consumers to avoid such products until there’s more information on the root cause.
Newly reported fatalities in Indiana, California, and Minnesota have brought the reported death toll up to five, and more than 400 people have gotten sick.
And there’s the rub. Vaping technology is still, relatively, in its infancy. It will take years, and perhaps even decades, to fully understand its effect on the human body.
Read on for the day’s news, and have a wonderful weekend.
FDA head warns against data manipulation in drug development. Acting Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Ned Sharpless is throwing some shade at drug makers that may feel inclined to manipulate data in order to game the system (and the comments appear to refer to some recent events along these lines). “So it should not be surprising to me now at FDA that if people will lie to get their paper published or get their grant funded, then people will also lie to get a billion dollar medical product approved,” said Sharpless in an address to the Research!America 2019 National Health Research Forum. We simply cannot tolerate deception of any kind. Now, I do not wish to imply this problem is rampant, or even that it is increasing in frequency (in fact we have no evidence of that),” he continued. “But we do see data fraud at FDA, and more than I would have expected prior to coming to the agency.”