The makers of an epilepsy drug that was later marketed as a treatment for schizophrenia as well as dementia-related agitation must pay $1.5 billion to settle a mass of lawsuits. The claims allege that Abbott Laboratories, producers of Depakote, pushed for sales of the drug to treat schizophrenia and dementia-related agitation, even though the drug was not approved for such treatment, nor was there any scientific evidence to support use of the drug for those conditions.

I have never been afraid of going to the dentist, but I know this is a fear many people have. A Kentucky woman says her dentist dropped a small instrument down her throat during a routine visit and that she later had to have it surgically removed. She has filed a lawsuit against the dentist.

Do you ever ask yourself why milk is pasteurized? It isn’t some government plot; it’s because unpasteurized milk can contain E. coli 0157 bacteria. Cows naturally carry this bacteria in their intestinal tracts. Unfortunately, it can be fatal to humans.

There are people who choose to drink raw milk, though, despite the possible dangers. The sale of raw milk is prohibited in twenty states. In Oregon, retail outlets can’t sell it, but farms can sell raw milk directly to consumers if they follow some guidelines, such as having no more than two cows that produce milk.

There is no real happy ending for anyone involved in this case. Deborah and Ariel Levy sued Legacy Health System for “wrongful birth,” and today a jury sided with the couple, awarding them almost $3 million. When Deborah Levy was pregnant with a third child, she underwent prenatal tests to make sure there were no issues. The Levys were assured by medical personnel that everything was fine, but after their daughter was born, it was discovered she had Down syndrome. The Levys claim they would have terminated the pregnancy if they had known the baby would be born with Down, and thus they sued Legacy.

A young mother from Brooklyn, New York, woke up from a medical nightmare that resulted in the loss of her feet and hands from an infection. She just settled for $17.9 million in a lawsuit against the Brooklyn Hospital Center and the city.

Tabitha Mullings visited the emergency room at Brooklyn Hospital Center in the fall of 2008 with severe pain. They told her she had a kidney stone and sent her home with some painkillers. That didn’t work, so the following day she called 911 on two occasions but for whatever reason responders chose not to take her to the hospital. Mullings’ pain did not improve, so the next day her fiancé took her to the hospital.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that it is never a good idea to leave anything in an unattended vehicle, especially not anything of value, and especially not something of value to hundreds of thousands of people. Well, that is just what happened in 2006 when an employee of Providence Health Services drove a hospital van home and left it there overnight. Someone broke into the vehicle and stole the medical records, including social security numbers, for some 365,000 patients.

How many of you carefully check the labels on your prescription medication bottles when you get them from the pharmacy? Would you have noticed if you got Hydroxyzine instead of Hydralazine, and would you have known which one you actually needed?

An elderly woman in Louisville, Kentucky, may have died because she received the wrong medication at her Walgreens. She suffered from high blood pressure, congestive heart failure, and kidney failure. She was filling her prescription for a high blood pressure medication, Hydralazine, but the pharmacy made an error and gave her an antihistamine called Hydroxyzine. She allegedly did not receive any counseling from the pharmacist.

We’ve posted several times about the anesthesiologist in The Dalles who sexually abused a number of his female patients. Dr. Frederick Field was accused of raping one female and sexually abusing nearly a dozen others. He worked at Mid-Columbia Medical Center in The Dalles, and the hospital claimed it took all the complaints seriously. It was also believed the abuse was first reported to the hospital in May 2011 and that the hospital contacted police right away. Now, though, reports of earlier sexual misconduct have surfaced.

This is a sad story, one in which the truth may never be revealed. A Minnesota woman who entered the Castlewood Treatment Center in 2007 to treat her eating disorder is now suing the center, alleging that she was hypnotized into believing she had been a victim of sexual abuse, had been involved in satanic cult activity, and suffered from multiple personalities.

The patient, Lisa Nasseff, was in the treatment center for 15 months and believes her psychologist was involved in the hypnosis. She also believes the motive for the hypnosis may have been partly financial, a ploy to keep her in treatment to extract medical insurance reimbursements for as long as possible. Nasseff also says the center used psychotropic drugs in addition to hypnosis to “treat” her anorexia.

You would think that having automated defibrillators everywhere would really help save lives, but the latest research seems to indicate this is not the case, at least in hospitals. Yes, that’s right–the old-school, low-tech defibrillators seem to have saved more lives than the fancy, supposedly easy-to-use, automated external defibrillators (AEDs).

In 2000 a committee with the American Heart Association made a blanket recommendation that hospitals should equip themselves with AEDs. It turns out this wasn’t really based on any actual evidence or research but just a general belief that, well, OF COURSE lives will be saved if new defibrillators that more people can operate are on hand. one estimate suggests, though, that nearly a thousand patients die each year because of the equipment.