The numbers are appalling. The FDA has admitted that it has received more than 11,000 complaints about metal-on-metal artificial hip replacements in the first nine months of 2011. That’s more than the last 3 years combined. The New England Journal of Medicine has reported that these types of hip replacements have a failure rate that is 3 times that of other types of hip replacements.
So, the real question is-why have the medical device companies marketed these new supposedly better hips when the old hips were working just fine? If you ask officials at the medical device companies, they’ll tell you that the metal-on-metal hips were designed for more active lifestyles and were supposed to last longer than the older ceramic hips. However, none of those claims were ever shown to be accurate. In fact, just the opposite is now closer to the truth.
So, what’s behind the marketing of these metal-on-metal failures? I suspect it comes down to marketing dollars and cents (notice, I didn’t say sense since there’s no sense to be made of this decision). In order to increase their market share, medical device companies who sell artificial hips have to grow their market share in order to increase their profit margins. They are always looking for what’s better, newer, more marketable. The interests of the patient aren’t part of that equation.
The medical device industry has to be forced to changed. There is just too much money to be gained and lost. The device companies won’t change unless they are forced to do it.

Bishop Robert Finn, Catholic bishop of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph has been indicted by a grand jury on criminal counts of failing to report child abuse. The Bishop’s indictment marks the first time in the United States that a current bishop has been charged criminally for his failure to report his knowledge of the sexual abuse of a minor.
The indictment should not be altogether surprising given the manner in which Bishop Finn flaunted the civil law in a sexual abuse case involving one of his own priests, Fr. Shawn Ratigan who remains in jail on criminal charges relating to computer child pornography. The Catholic Diocese has also been named as a defendant in civil sex abuse lawsuits concerning Ratigan’s alleged involvement with minors in his parish in the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph.
According to multiple media reports, Finn was warned a year prior to Ratigan’s arrest by a Catholic nun who became concerned with Ratigan’s behavior and his attention to children. She sent a letter to the Bishop who said he never read the letter. Finn didn’t bother to inform his own Diocesan Review Board concerning allegations about Ratigan. Finally, when the police arrested him this past May, Finn’s lack of action came to the forefront.