Free Republic

Dr. John White is the founder & president of White Technical Research, a consulting firm serving the food and beverage industry for nearly 15 years. He has worked with high fructose corn syrup for more than 25 years, and his expertise has been quoted by numerous news outlets. Organizations such as the American Council on Science and Health in Washington, D.C., the Institute of Food Technologists in Atlanta, and most recently the Corn Refiners Association have turned to him and his expertise on the sweetener for answers. Now, QSR talks with him to set the record straight about the similarities...

Morristown, NJ - The manufacturer of Digitek digoxin tablets is recalling the product, saying that it may have accidentally released pills that are double the normal thickness, carrying twice the normal dose [1]. Digoxin is used in the treatment of arrhythmias and heart failure, and a double dose could cause toxicity, most notably in patients with renal failure. According to a press release from Digitek's manufacturer, Actavis, digitalis toxicity "can cause nausea, vomiting, dizziness, low blood pressure, cardiac instability, and bradycardia," and even death. The FDA is alerting doctors and the public to the recall via its MedWatch program. The...

Reuters A U.S. advocacy group is urging the Food and Drug Administration to pull Johnson & Johnson's birth control patch from the market after studies found an increased risk of dangerous blood clots. In a petition filed with the FDA on Thursday, Public Citizen's Health Research Group said the amount of estrogen released from the Ortho-Evra patch varies widely among individual women, and those who absorb too much were at greater risk for blood clots and other painful side effects. "The considerable safety concern of high-dose, variable estrogen exposure tips the balance of risks and benefits against the availability of...

WASHINGTON—In March, inspectors checking Chinese seafood arriving at U.S. ports made some unsettling discoveries: fish infected with salmonella in Baltimore and Seattle, and shrimp with banned veterinary drugs in Florida. Meanwhile, a shipment intercepted in Los Angeles on March 19 and labeled "channel catfish" wasn't catfish at all, though records don't say what it was. "A lot of those products coming in from overseas, you have no clue as to what is in them," said Paul Hitchens, an aquaculture specialist in Southern Illinois, where cut-rate Chinese catfish are threatening the livelihood of fish farmers. China rapidly has become the leading...

A01 Despite more than 100 published studies by government scientists and university laboratories that have raised health concerns about a chemical compound that is central to the multibillion-dollar plastics industry, the Food and Drug Administration has deemed it safe largely because of two studies, both funded by an industry trade group. The agency says it has relied on research backed by the American Plastics Council because it had input on its design, monitored its progress and reviewed the raw data. The compound, bisphenol A (BPA), has been linked to breast and prostate cancer, behavioral disorders and reproductive health problems in...

Drug giant Merck has been caught red-handed in a scheme to deceive the FDA and the public over the integrity of its scientific studies, say top medical authorities. According to reports that were (amazingly!) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and detailed in the Washington Post, Merck waged a "campaign of deception" to disguise its in-house study authors as independent scientists working for universities. This scheme made the studies appear independent and unbiased, allowing them to carry more apparent credibility to FDA officials, doctors and other scientists. This fraud was conducted to boost the apparent scientific credibility...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials warned Baxter International Inc's supplier of the blood thinner heparin for failing to ensure that its manufacturing process can remove impurities, according to a letter released on Monday.

(WASHINGTON) — Democratic lawmakers want to make sure people know where their food and drugs come from and the overseas plants producing them are regularly inspected. Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee proposed Thursday that all produce labels be required to show the country of origin. They also want food manufacturers of all kinds to identify on their corporate Web site where each ingredient in a particular food product originated. Drug labels also would have to identify the source of a medicine's active ingredient and its place of manufacture. Labels for all medical devices would have to show...

Melinda and Kenny Peterson wanted to kick their two-pack-a-day smoking habit. In early January, the Green Bay couple started taking three-month prescriptions of Chantix, a new anti-smoking pill. About six weeks later, they weren't smoking at all. But what the Petersons didn't know was that as they were weaning themselves off cigarettes, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an alert: Some patients taking the powerful drug had experienced serious neuropsychiatric symptoms. And Pfizer, the maker of Chantix, had recently added a warning about these symptoms in a more prominent position in the drug's information packet, at the FDA's urging....

ASSOCIATED PRESS MINNEAPOLIS -- At least 23 people in 14 states have been sickened by the same strain of salmonella found in two breakfast cereals recalled by Malt-O-Meal, the federal Food and Drug Administration said Saturday. Officials in Minnesota are investigating whether a case in that state might be linked to the cereals produced by the Minneapolis-based company, the state health department said. Malt-O-Meal voluntarily recalled its unsweetened Puffed Rice and Puffed Wheat cereals April 5 after finding salmonella contamination during routine testing. The affected bags were produced in the past 12 months in Northfield. "The Malt-O-Meal company has been...

(CHANGZHOU, China) -- On a dusty lane in east China, a small factory sitting amid strawberry and vegetable fields processes chemicals from pig guts into heparin, a commonly used blood thinner linked to 62 deaths and hundreds of allergic reactions in the U.S. and Germany. The mysterious problems with heparin from the factory and others like it ? China's deadliest product quality scandal since Chinese cough syrup killed 93 people in Central America a year ago ? dramatically illustrate the perils of shifting drug production offshore. With recalls of heparin products now in six countries, it is an issue that...

(WASHINGTON) -- Expanding the scope of its Heparin recall, the government is sending letters to 82 medical device makers today warning them to withdraw any stents, catheters and other products that might contain the contaminated blood thinner. The move came as the Food and Drug Administration tripled the number of deaths that it said could be linked to the tainted drug. After reviewing more than 1,200 reports of allergic reactions from users, the agency said that 62 deaths since January 2007 may now be related to contaminated Heparin, up from the 19 deaths it previously counted during that period. In...

AP Business Writer Regulators are exploring whether organ transplant drugs made by Roche and Novartis increase the risk of an often-fatal neurological disease. The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it has identified 16 cases of patients developing the rare neurological ailment while taking Roche's drug CellCept, which is used to avoid rejection in organ transplant patients. U.S. regulators approved CellCept in 1995. The Swiss drug maker Roche alerted regulators to the issue last November. FDA said it is looking into similar risks with Myfortic, a drug made by fellow Swiss drugmaker Novartis that includes the same key ingredient as...

62 deaths linked to contaminated batches of the blood thinner, agency says WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday said more than 100 patients have died while taking the blood thinner heparin since early 2007. The agency found that 62 deaths are associated with contaminated batches of the blood thinner, triple the previous estimate. That doesn't mean people are still dying — the latest deaths the FDA knows of occurred in February, the month Baxter International recalled contaminated batches. But dozens of deaths weren't reported to the agency when they happened, only later after the tainted blood thinner...

The FDA’s crackdown on excessive drug labeling needs Supreme Court help.The Supreme Court punted one of the term’s most anticipated commercial cases last month, affirming a lower-court decision in Warner-Lambert v. Kent in a tied vote (Justice Roberts recused himself). The plaintiffs in Warner-Lambert had successfully charged the maker of Rezulin—a diabetes drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration but later withdrawn due to safety concerns—with failing to warn consumers adequately about possible side effects, though the drug was labeled just as the FDA had directed. This fall, the Court will hear arguments in Wyeth v. Levine, another case...

When nurses from Blood Bank of the Redwoods set up their needles, blood machines and cartons of high-fructose juice at Sonoma State University last week, 94 students, faculty and staff members donated blood. Math professor Rick Luttmann was not one of them. He was ineligible, he said, because of a federal Food and Drug Administration ban on blood donations from men who had had sex with men. A ban that he said amounts to unlawful discrimination. Blood drives are the newest battleground for SSU faculty members who, led by Luttmann, are out to purge organizations on the 8,500-student campus they...

(WASHINGTON) -- A recalled blood thinner made with active ingredients from China appears to have been contaminated by a mysterious look-alike substance, now the focus of an investigation into as many as 19 U.S. deaths and nearly 800 serious drug reactions, federal officials said Wednesday. The drug -- heparin -- is a generic medication given to prevent blood clots. The manufacturer, Illinois-based Baxter Healthcare Corp., issued recalls last month after it noticed an unusual increase in reports of severe side effects. The Food and Drug Administration's findings raised questions about whether the medication was deliberately contaminated or whether some problem...

When it comes to understanding, preventing and treating chronic diseases, multiple sclerosis ranks among the most challenging. The word “multiple” is apt in more ways than one. Various suggested causes include early-life exposure to certain viruses or toxic agents, geographic and dietary influences, inherent immunological defects and underlying genetic susceptibilities. MS is highly unpredictable. Rarely are any two patients alike in the presentation, duration and progression of symptoms; even the underlying cause of disability in MS is being reconsidered. And rarely do any two patients respond in the same way to a given therapy, be it medically established or alternative....

March 6, 2008 Drug Tied to China Had Contaminant, F.D.A. Says By GARDINER HARRIS and WALT BOGDANICH WASHINGTON — Federal drug regulators said Wednesday that a critical blood thinner that had been linked to at least 19 deaths and whose raw components were produced in China contained a possibly counterfeit ingredient that mimicked the real drug. Routine tests failed to distinguish the contaminant from the drug, heparin. Only sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging tests uncovered that as much as 20 percent of the product’s active ingredient was a heparin mimic blended in with the real thing. Federal officials said they did...

A financial bubble is a market aberration manufactured by government, finance, and industry, a shared speculative hallucination and then a crash, followed by depression. Bubbles were once very rare—one every hundred years or so was enough to motivate politicians, bearing the post-bubble ire of their newly destitute citizenry, to enact legislation that would prevent subsequent occurrences... Nowadays we barely pause between such bouts of insanity. The dot-com crash of the early 2000s should have been followed by decades of soul-searching; instead, even before the old bubble had fully deflated, a new mania began to take hold on the foundation of...

(WASHINGTON) -- Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said the Bush administration supports legislation giving the Food and Drug Administration explicit authority over unsafe food or drugs made overseas with the intent of shipping them to the U.S. The FDA has been hobbled in its enforcement of imports even as the number of products entering the U.S. has skyrocketed. The agency, for example, had trouble at first getting its investigators into Chinese factories involved in last year's pet-food recall. And recently, some have questioned how the FDA failed to inspect a Chinese plant that supplies much of the active...

The consultancy conducted an online survey amongst 1,000 consumers aged 16 years and over. Eighty-four percent of respondents said they now look at recycling details. For 84 per cent this is just as important as fat content. For 80 per cent it is more important than salt info, for 79 per cent more important than sugar info, and for 70 per cent more important than calorie content. The findings are pertinent at the present time as the nutrient content of food is a hot topic across Europe, since the European Commission published its proposal for new labelling legislation at the...

At a time when Chinese products from toys to food face increased scrutiny over safety, a top U.S. regulatory official now says that the Chinese government does not inspect production plants that make drugs solely for export to the U.S. and other markets.

The Chinese facility that supplies the active ingredient of the widely used blood thinner heparin was never inspected by the Food and Drug Administration because the agency confused its name with another just like it, agency officials said yesterday. The FDA said that a team of inspectors is headed now to China to inspect the plant as part of an effort to determine what may have caused a sudden spike in serious problems with the drug, which has been on the market since the 1930s. More than 350 adverse reactions to the drug have been reported to the FDA since...

WASHINGTON - U.S. health officials evaluated the wrong factory when assessing the safety of a Chinese-made drug ingredient that may be a source of problems with a blood thinner, the Food and Drug Administration said Monday. ADVERTISEMENT Baxter International's heparin has been linked to four deaths and hundreds of reports of allergic reactions. An investigation will take FDA inspectors to China this week. The Chinese manufacturer was not inspected because it was confused with another company in the agency's database with a similar name, said Joseph Famulare, deputy director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research's compliance department. The...

WASHINGTON - GlaxoSmithKline Plc's rotavirus vaccine is associated with increased pneumonia-related deaths and other adverse reactions, U.S. regulatory staff said in documents posted on Friday. The review comes ahead of a Food and Drug Administration advisory meeting next Wednesday to consider approval of the oral vaccine to prevent the most common cause of severe diarrhea and dehydration among infants and young children in the world. FDA staff said its analysis of 11 studies revealed that in the largest trial, there was a statistically significant increase in deaths related to pneumonia compared with placebo, documents posted on the FDA's Web site...

AN expression of true love or raw hatred, of purest faith or mortal sin, of courageous loyalty or selfish cowardice: The act of suicide has meant many things to many people through history, from the fifth-century Christian martyrs to the Samurais’ hara-kiri to more recent literary divas, Hemingway, Plath, Sexton. But now the shadow of suicide has slipped into the corridors of modern medicine as a potential drug side effect, where it is creating a scientific debate as divisive and confounding as any religious clash. And the shadow is likely to deepen. After a years-long debate about whether antidepressant drugs...

FDA never inspected China maker of Baxter's heparin Wed Feb 13, 7:38 PM ET U.S. regulators have never inspected the Chinese plant that makes Baxter International's heparin, regulators disclosed a day after Baxter halted sales of some versions after four patients died and hundreds became ill. "Preparations are being made to perform an inspection as soon as possible," Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Karen Riley said in an email. On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration reported that it received about 350 reports of health problems associated with Baxter's injectable heparin, a blood thinner, since the end of 2007. Baxter,...

A Chinese facility that hasn't been inspected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made the active ingredient in much of the widely used Baxter International Inc. blood-thinner that is under investigation after reports of hundreds of allergic reactions and four deaths among the drug's users, the agency said yesterday. The disclosure is likely to add to broad concerns about the safety and quality of products imported from China and elsewhere in the developing world. A tide of tainted goods ranging from pet food to children's toys has prompted recalls and increased scrutiny of Chinese-made wares around the world. Although...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a consumer warning and recall of possibly contaminated Grassy Meadows Dairy Co. cheeses. Routine surveillance by the Indiana Board of Animal Health's Dairy Division revealed high levels of staphylococcus aureus in several raw milk cheeses manufactured by the Howe, Ind., dairy. Because of the facility's location, the FDA said consumers in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana should also check their refrigerators for the recalled items. Products of concern include, but are not limited to, Colby (lot no. 210317 and 19177), Jalapeno natural cheese (lot no. 2617, 21017 and 11017), "Homemade" cheese (lot no....

Media Inquiries: Sandy Walsh, 301-827-6242 Consumer Inquiries: 888-INFO-FDA FDA Alerts Health Care Providers to Risk of Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior with Antiepileptic Medications The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today issued new information to health care professionals to alert them about an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (suicidality) in patients who take drugs called antiepileptics to treat epilepsy, bipolar disorder, migraine headaches, and other conditions. An FDA analysis of suicidality reports from placebo-controlled studies of 11 antiepileptic drugs shows that patients taking these drugs have about twice the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors (0.43 percent), compared with...

BEIJING — A huge state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company that exports to dozens of countries, including the United States, is at the center of a nationwide drug scandal after nearly 200 Chinese cancer patients were paralyzed or otherwise harmed last summer by contaminated leukemia drugs. Chinese drug regulators have accused the manufacturer of the tainted drugs of a cover-up and have closed the factory that produced them. In December, China’s Food and Drug Administration said that the Shanghai police had begun a criminal investigation and that two officials, including the head of the plant, had been detained. The drug maker, Shanghai...

(WASHINGTON) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has targeted five regions around the world where it would like to establish a greater presence to monitor the safety of exported food, drugs and other goods, the top FDA official said on Thursday. FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach told reporters at a briefing on food safety that it would like to establish offices in Asia, especially in China and India, Europe, Central and South America and the Middle East. "There are a variety of things that I envision could come from this that will be a multiplier of our ability to...

WASHINGTON —  A House investigation is casting a wider net into whether artificial-heart pioneer Robert Jarvik improperly endorsed a cholesterol-reducing medication in a number of advertisements. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and committee member Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., sent a letter Tuesday to FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach demanding to see records housed in the FDA's Division of Drug Marketing, Advertising and Communications office regarding recent advertisements for the cholesterol-decreasing drug Lipitor. Dingell and Stupak asked for all records relating to print, radio, TV or Internet advertisements for Lipitor featuring Jarvik, setting a Feb. 5 deadline. The...

Antidepressants Under Scrutiny Over Efficacy Sweeping Overview Suggests Suppression of Negative Data Has Distorted View of Drugs By DAVID ARMSTRONG and KEITH J. WINSTEIN January 17, 2008; Page D1 The effectiveness of a dozen popular antidepressants has been exaggerated by selective publication of favorable results, according to a review of unpublished data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration. ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE As a result, doctors and patients are getting a distorted view of how well blockbuster antidepressants like Wyeth's Effexor and Pfizer Inc.'s Zoloft really work, researchers asserted in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. Since the overwhelming...

FDA confirms milk, meat from clones safe to eat Moratorium on clones in food supply to continue as market adjusts By Heidi Clausen Regional Editor The Food and Drug Administration on Jan. 15 issued its final risk assessment on clones, confirming its earlier findings that milk and meat from cloned livestock is safe for human consumption. Several years of studies have concluded that food from clones does not differ from from food from conventionally bred animals. However, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's moratorium on milk and meat from cloned animals in the food supply will continue for an unspecified period...

Correction Appended For decades, the theory that lowering cholesterol is always beneficial has been a core principle of cardiology. It has been accepted by doctors and used by drug makers to win quick approval for new medicines to reduce cholesterol. But now some prominent cardiologists say the results of two recent clinical trials have raised serious questions about that theory — and the value of two widely used cholesterol-lowering medicines, Zetia and its sister drug, Vytorin. Other new cholesterol-fighting drugs, including one that Merck hopes to begin selling this year, may also require closer scrutiny, they say. “The idea that...

(WASHINGTON) - Some U.S. meat and dairy producers are finding new reasons to be nervous about their export prospects after federal regulators gave backing this week to food from cloned animals. The final ruling on Tuesday from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which found that food from cloned animals and their offspring poses no special health risks, capped years of debate over the technology. Proponents say animal cloning, replicating prized livestock that can breed highly productive offspring, is a windfall for consumers. But critics say greater testing is needed and want closer examination of the technology's ethical implications. Even...

One Sunday after church, Rich Miller headed to a local Chi-Chi's restaurant in Beaver, Pa., where he dipped into the house salsa that came with the meal. That simple act in 2003 changed his life forever. What Miller didn't know was that imported Mexican green onions in the salsa carried a deadly passenger: hepatitis A. A few days later, as Miller recalled recently, "I couldn't even get out of bed. It was like the worst case of flu that you could ever imagine." His health quickly deteriorating, the 57-year-old railroad superintendent was diagnosed with rare fulminant hepatitis A disease --...

Numerous unpublished studies submitted to the Food and Drug Administration by pharmaceutical companies have found that many popular antidepressants have little or no effect on patients, according to a new review of the previously hidden findings. A total of 74 studies involving a dozen anti-depressants and 12,564 patients were registered with the FDA from 1987 through 2004. The FDA deemed 38 of the studies to be positive. All but one of those studies was published, the researchers said. The other 36 were found to have negative or questionable results by the FDA. Most of those studies -- 22 out of...

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- A campaign to make it easier for terminally-ill patients to gain access to experimental drugs failed to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its challenge of U.S. Food and Drug Administration policies on Monday. Known as the Abigail Alliance, the group sued in 2003 to force the FDA to alter regulations limiting the use of drugs that are still under federal review but are being tested in clinical trials for effectiveness and safety. The group was founded by the father of Abigail Burroughs, who died of cancer at age 21, and helps and advocates for terminally...

Today the Supreme Court will consider a petition to hear a case raising profound issues regarding the right of individuals to make their own health-care decisions. The case is Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. von Eschenbach. The suit claims that FDA violates the due process rights of terminally-ill patients, who have exhausted all approved options and are unable to enter a clinical trial, by prohibiting access to promising investigational drugs. Consider the plight of such patients. They search for clinical trials of new drugs that might extend their lives. Nearly all are ineligible. Of the few...

(New Delhi/Hyderabad) -- The US health department, along with its drug regulator, wants to depute personnel to India’s proposed pharmaceuticals watchdog, Central Drug Authority, and establish a regional office here, as part of a strategy to help monitor quality beyond their borders and ensure imports of safe products into the world’s largest economy. Acknowledging that an increasing proportion of food products, drugs, vaccines and medical devices consumed by US citizens were manufactured overseas, the US food and drug administration, or FDA, is preparing a plan to set up regional offices, hire independent inspectors and collaborate with their counterparts in different...

Today the Supreme Court will consider a petition to hear a case raising profound issues regarding the right of individuals to make their own health-care decisions. The case is Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs v. von Eschenbach. The suit claims that FDA violates the due process rights of terminally-ill patients, who have exhausted all approved options and are unable to enter a clinical trial, by prohibiting access to promising investigational drugs. Consider the plight of such patients. They search for clinical trials of new drugs that might extend their lives. Nearly all are ineligible. Of the few...

Oatmeal's Health Claims Reaffirmed, Study Suggests ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2008) — A new scientific review of the most current research shows the link between eating oatmeal and cholesterol reduction to be stronger than when the FDA initially approved the health claim's appearance on food labels in 1997. Dr. James W. Anderson, professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, co-authors "The Oatmeal-Cholesterol Connection: 10 Years Later" in the January/February 2008 issue of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. Anderson presents a contemporary analysis to determine if newer studies are consistent with the original conclusion...

Having completed a years-long scientific review, the Food and Drug Administration is set to announce as early as next week that meat and milk from cloned farm animals and their offspring can start making their way toward supermarket shelves, sources in contact with the agency said yesterday. The decision would be a notable act of defiance against Congress, which last month passed appropriations legislation recommending that any such approval be delayed pending further studies. Moreover, the Senate version of the Farm bill, yet to be reconciled with the House version, contains stronger, binding language that would block FDA action on...

Media Inquiries: Peper Long, 301-827-6242 Consumer Inquiries: 888-INFO-FDA Test Identifies MRSA Bacterium in Two Hours The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced it has cleared for marketing the first rapid blood test for the drug-resistant staph bacterium known as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), which can cause potentially deadly infections. Methicillin is an antibiotic that has been used successfully to treat infections from the Staphylococcus aureus bacterium. Over the years, the staph bacterium mutated and spawned MRSA, a strain of staph bacterium that is resistant to methicillin and which has a higher rate of being fatal. The BD GeneOhm...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US drug safety watchdog warned Monday on its website that several Chinese-made 'dietary supplements' contain the active ingredient found in Viagra, and could be harmful to consumers. "The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is advising consumers not to buy or use Super Shangai, Strong Testis, Shangai Ultra, Shangai Ultra X, Lady Shangai, and Shangai Regular, also marketed as Shangai Chaojimengnan, products," the FDA said in a statement. "These products, which originate in China, are being marketed for the treatment of erectile dysfunction and for sexual enhancement," the statement said. None of the product labels mention...

I’ve mentioned the FDA presentation before, but I think of it now because of a major case of illness from milk contamination in Massachusetts—contamination from pasteurized milk. It’s received extensive coverage in today’s Boston Globe, and apparently triggered dozens of calls to state health authorities by concerned consumers. According to the reports, three elderly individuals were sickened by listeriosis, and two of them died. A fourth individual—a pregnant woman in her thirties—had a miscarriage. If you are a raw milk drinker and you have been following some of the cases of alleged listeria contamination of raw milk in New York...

AP Medical Writer WASHINGTON --Improper use of patches that emit the painkiller fentanyl is still killing people, the government said Friday - its second warning in two years about the powerful narcotic. Some of the deaths came after doctors prescribed the patches to the wrong patients, the Food and Drug Administration said. The drug is only for chronic pain in people used to narcotics, such as cancer patients, and can cause trouble breathing in people new to this family of "opioid" painkillers. Yet the FDA found cases where doctors prescribed it for headaches or post-surgical pain. The FDA said patients...