Clara City train derailment evacuees were allowed to return to their homes around 4:00 p.m. yesterday, 12 hours after a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train ran off the tracks outside of town. Nearly 400 people from the small Minnesota town had been forced to take refuge in a church early yesterday morning after one of the derailed train’s tanker cars ruptured and began leaking hydrochloric acid. Fortunately, good weather and even better luck had kept the Clara City train derailment from becoming a major tragedy.

The Clara City train derailment occurred at 3:30 a.m. as the Burlington Northern Santa Fe train was a half mile outside of town, and evacuations began around 4:30 a.m. The train hit another parked train, sending at least 80 cars from the Burlington Northern train off the tracks. The leaking tanker sent a cloud of hydrochloric acid floating over Clara City. Inhaling hydrochloric acid vapors can cause coughing, choking, inflammation of the nose, throat, and upper respiratory tract, and in severe cases, pulmonary edema, circulatory failure, and death. The vapors from hydrochloric acid can irritate and damage the eyes, and direct contact with the toxin can cause redness, pain, and severe skin burns.

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CellCept, a drug used to prevent organ rejection after a transplant, has been linked to an increased risk of miscarriage and birth defects.  The new findings have prompted the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to add a new boxed warning to the CellCept label, and Roche Holding AG, the drug’s maker, has sent a letter to physicians informing them of the CellCept risk and labeling changes.  The potential for these drug side effects are so great that the FDA is advising women of childbearing age to use two methods of birth control before, during and after their treatment with CellCept.

CellCept, also known by its generic name mycophenolate mofetil, is part of a class of drugs called immunosuppressants.  It was approved in 1995 to prevent rejection of solid organ transplants, including kidney, heart and liver.  When used in combination with cyclosporine and corticosteroids, CellCept can greatly reduce the chance that a patient’s immune system will attack a transplanted organ.  However, like all immunosuppressant drugs, CellCept does carry certain risks, including the development of lymphoma and other malignancies.  Like other drugs in its class, CellCept is also linked to an increased risk of developing opportunistic infections and sepsis.

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The Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat recall is being criticized by consumer advocates for not being a recall at all. That’s because instead allowing people to return the defective infant seat for a refund, the manufacturer of the Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat is only offering consumers a new warning label and instructions for what it says is proper usage of the seat. Some consumer groups are saying that remedy is not enough, especially considering that the Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat has caused serious head injuries to three children, and minor injuries to dozens more.

The Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat, sold by Bumbo International of South Africa, is a soft foam chair that is supposed to allow infants to sit upright without the aid of straps. It is designed with the seat lower than the leg openings so that children will remain secure. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) began investigating the Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat earlier this month, after several media outlets reported on children who were severely injured after falling from the seat. According to the CPSC, three children received skull fractures due to falls from the Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat, and at least twenty five were involved in falls from the defective seat.

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Trasylol will be the subject of yet another Food & Drug Administration (FDA) safety review, after a clinical trial involving the drug was halted because of indications that Trasylol increased patients’ risk of dying. Just last month, an FDA advisory panel had recommended that the clotting drug be allowed to remain on the market, despite the fact that it was linked to serious side effects like kidney failure.

Trasylol, known generically as aprotinin, is marketed by Bayer AG. Trasylol was approved in 1993 and is used during heart bypass surgeries to prevent bleeding. Last year, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that Trasylol increased the risk of death by about 50 percent for some patients. A second 2006 Trasylol study, known as the I3 drug report, suggested that Trasylol increased the risk of a patient dying by 54 percent. That study, which analyzed a database of hospital patients treated with the drug, suggested that Trasylol could also increase the likelihood of serious kidney damage, congestive heart failure and strokes.
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Tobacco lawsuits by the thousands will soon be jamming court dockets in the state of Florida, thanks to a ruling that nullified the class-action status of a decade-old tobacco lawsuit in the state. But while the ensuing flurry of Florida tobacco lawsuits could wreak havoc with Florida’s system of civic justice, many legal experts say that the shear volume of tobacco litigation will be advantageous for the thousands of smoking victims expected to sue big tobacco.

That the tobacco companies must now fight what could be thousands of Florida tobacco lawsuits is a development of their own making. In 1994, thousands of Florida smokers brought a class-action lawsuit against tobacco companies for the injuries they sustained from smoking. In 1999, the jury hearing R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. vs. Engle agreed that cigarette makers had deceived smokers about the safety of their product, and awarded $145 billion in punitive damages to the plaintiffs. But in 2003, a Florida appeals court reversed that decision. Then, in 2006 the Florida Supreme Court refused to reinstate the punitive damages and stripped the lawsuit of its class-action status. But the Florida court did allow individuals who could have won judgments under the original verdict to use findings from the year-long jury trial to bring new cases against the cigarette makers. Then, earlier this month, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the tobacco companies’ appeal of the Florida court’s decision, which was mainly an attempt to prevent Florida smokers from using the 1999 jury findings in their lawsuits.

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E. coli tainted meat has become a major health problem, as the number of outbreaks and meat recalls blamed on this deadly bacteria have reached record levels in recent months. So far this year, there have been 16 separate recalls of E. coli contaminated meat, double what they where in 2006. Often, the slow action by the US Department of Agriculture and other agencies charged with protecting the US food supply allows E. coli contaminated foods to sicken thousands of people across the country. While Americans simply can’t assume that their food is safe from E. coli, there are some steps that can consumers can take to lessen the threat posed by E. coli bacteria.

E. coli is a bacterium that occurs naturally in the intestines of most animals, including humans. Most types of the bacteria are harmless, but the E. coli 0157:H7 strain can be particularly dangerous to people. The symptoms of E. coli poisoning usually occur within 3 to 9 days after a victim eats contaminated foods. E. coli 0157:H7 causes a disease called hemorrhagic colitis, which is the sudden onset of stomach pain and severe cramps. This is followed by diarrhea that is watery and bloody. Sometimes there is vomiting, but there is no fever. The illness lasts about a week. While most people will recover completely, E. coli poisoning can be very dangerous for children, the elderly and anyone with a weak immune system. In some cases, E. coli 0157:H7 will cause a disorder called hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can be life-threatening. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), E. coli 0157:H7 is responsible for sickening 73,000 people every year, and of those, 60 will die from the disease.

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A train derailment in Clara City, Minnesota, forced the evacuation of hundreds of people this morning after it was discovered that a tanker on the train had ruptured and was leaking hydrochloric acid. Hydrochloric acid is a highly toxic chemical that can cause severe injuries if it comes into contact with skin or eyes, and its vapors can also cause damage to the lungs and respiratory tract.

The Clara City train derailment occurred on the west side of Clara City, a town of 1,350 people about 95 miles from Minneapolis. According to town officials, a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train was passing through Clara City when it struck a parked train at approximately 4:00 a.m. At least 50 cars from the Burlington Northern train came off the tracks, and one tanker that was known to be carrying hydrochloric acid had ruptured and was leaking. Hydrochloric acid is a highly corrosive and toxic liquid that can become a mist if it comes in contact with water. Inhaling hydrochloric acid vapors can cause coughing, choking, inflammation of the nose, throat, and upper respiratory tract, and in severe cases, pulmonary edema, circulatory failure, and death. The vapors from hydrochloric acid can irritate and damage the eyes, and direct contact with the toxin can cause redness, pain, and severe skin burns.

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The Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat marketing campaign used photos that showed babies in seats that had been placed on raised surfaces. Now it seems that those pictures left many parents with a false sense of security. That’s because these photographs of the Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat in action led many consumers to believe that their children could not fall from the infant seat regardless of where it was placed – an assumption that has proven tragically wrong.

The Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat, sold by Bumbo International of South Africa, is a soft foam chair that is supposed to allow infants to sit upright without the aid of straps. It is designed with the seat lower than the leg openings so that children will remain secure. The Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC) began investigating the Bumbo Baby Sitter Seat earlier this month, after several media outlets reported on children who were severely injured after falling from the seat. These reports included two children from Kansas and California who suffered from skull fractures after falling out of a Bumbo Seat.

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Kugel Mesh Hernia Patch lawsuits stemming from Davol, Inc’s 2005 recall of the defective medical device are shining a spotlight on the US District Court in Providence, Rhode Island that will decide many of the Kugel Patch cases. Recently, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation of the United States Courts consolidated all federal cases regarding the defective Kugel Mesh Hernia Patch and transferred them to the District of Rhode Island for all pretrial proceedings and possible settlement. It is the first time that the US District Court in the small state has been given such a task by the Judicial Panel.

The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation of the United States Courts was created in 1968. Since then, it has consolidated hundreds of thousands of lawsuits that involved high numbers of plaintiffs, including litigation over asbestos, breast implants and other matters. According to the Providence Journal, the judicial panel has consolidated and transferred more than 100 Kugel Mesh Hernia Patch lawsuits to the US District Court in Rhode Island, and that number is expected to climb as more than 100,000 people were implanted with the defective Kugel Mesh Hernia Patch. Davol Inc, the maker of the Kugel Mesh Hernia Patch, has its corporate headquarters in Cranston, Rhode Island.

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Bausch & Lomb, Inc., the maker of recalled Renu with MoistureLoc Contact Lens Solution, has been acquired by the private equity firm Warburg Pincus. Earlier today, Warburg Pincus announce that it had completed its $3.67 billion buyout of Bausch & Lomb, something that had been in the works since the spring.

Warburg Pincus has been a leading private equity investor since 1971. The firm currently has approximately $14 billion under management, and invests in a range of industries including information and communication technology, financial services and healthcare. Bausch & Lomb’s board of directors had agreed to the buyout in May, and in September, more than two-thirds of the company’s shareholders voted in favor of the takeover. Earlier this month, the CEO of Bausch & Lomb had voiced his hope that Warburg Pincus would be able to help the company “comeback from the difficulties of last year.”

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