Ana içeriğe atla

Nitelikli

How Corporate Health Care Leaders Maintain Their Impunity: The Case of Purdue Pharma's Funding of the Washington Legal Foundation to Attempt to Weaken the Responsible Corporate Officer Doctrine

The ongoing epidemic of narcotic (opioid) abuse, and the resulting rise in the deaths due to overdoses, has focused attention on pharmaceutical companies' aggressive promotion of these drugs which minimized their substantial risk. A recent article in the Intercept showed how the leadership of one such company tried to insulate itself from responsibility for such actions even while such promotions were continuing. Background: Impunity of Top Leaders of Big Health Care Organizations For years, we have railed against the impunity of top leaders of health care organizations.  We have noted that despite numerous legal settlements made by health care organizations of alllegations like fraud , bribery , and kickbacks , almost never do top leaders who presided over these actions face any negative consequences.  Lack of deterrence caused by such impunity appears to be a major cause of  the epidemic of continuing unethical behavior, crime and corruption on the part of large health car
Yorum Gönder
Devamı
Etiketler

A New Understanding of an Old "Obesity Gene"

As you know if you've been following this blog for a while, obesity risk has a strong genetic component. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) attempt to identify the specific locations of genetic differences (single-nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs) that are associated with a particular trait. In the case of obesity, GWAS studies have had limited success in identifying obesity-associated genes. However, one cluster of SNPs consistently show up at the top of the list in these studies: those that are near the gene FTO.

As with many of the genes in our genome, different people carry different versions of FTO. People with two copies of the "fat" version of the FTO SNPs average about 7 pounds (3 kg) heavier than people with two copies of the "thin" version, and they also tend to eat more calories (1, 2).

Despite being the most consistent hit in these genetic studies, FTO has remained a mystery. As with most obesity-associated genes, it's expressed in the brain and it seems to respond somewhat to nutritional status. Yet its function is difficult to reconcile with a role in weight regulation:
  • It's an enzyme that removes methyl groups from RNA, which doesn't immediately suggest a weight-specific function.
  • It's not primarily expressed in the brain or in body fat, but in all tissues.
  • Most importantly, as far as we know, the different versions of the gene do not result in different tissue levels of FTO, or different activity of the FTO enzyme, so it's hard to understand how they would impact anything at all.
An important thing to keep in mind is that GWAS studies don't usually pinpoint specific genes. Typically, they tell us that obesity risk is associated with variability in a particular region of the genome. If the region corresponds to the location of a single gene, it's a pretty good guess that the gene is the culprit. However, that's not always the case...

Read more »
Etiketler:

Yorumlar

Yorum Gönder

Popüler Yayınlar