In a second time in the span of a year and a half, Belgian civil law enforcement authorities conducted raids on three Catholic Church headquarters in Antwerp, the eastern city of Hasselt, and Mechelen. The investigators were looking for physical evidence of the cover-up of thousands of sexual abuse allegations made in the last few years against Catholic clergy.
The first such raid occurred in 2010 and was followed by an unprecedented and shocking admission by former bishop of Bruges, Roger Vangheluwe who admitted he had sexually abused two of his nephews.
The Belgian Catholic Church, like those in most of Europe, have been plunged into the scandalous priest sex abuse scandal that has shocked the United States Catholic Church for the last decade.
According to the NY Times, “A spokeswoman for the Federal Prosecution Service, Lieve Pellens, said that the investigation, known as Operation Chalice, was an important phase in which officials were trying to establish whether there were grounds to prosecute priests on charges of negligence and failing to aid abuse victims.
“We have had around 200 statements from victims,” she said, “and based on these, and 87 civil claims, we wanted to look at the individual personal records of priests made by their superiors to see if, in these records that were kept by archbishops or bishops, there is anything useful.”

Actos bladder cancer lawsuits filed in California state court will be consolidated for purposes of pretrial discovery and motion proceedings under Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Carl West. Also, federal Actos bladder cancer lawsuits were similarly consolidated in a multidistrict litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana.
Actos, manufactured by Takeda Pharmaceutical, was approved by the FDA in 1999 to treat Type 2 diabetes. However, since that time, Actos has been linked to an increased risk of bladder cancer, especially those patients who’ve taken Actos for an extended period of time.
In June 2011, the FDA issued an Actos warning about the bladder cancer link and noted, “”results from two, three-year controlled clinical studies of Actos (the PROactive study and a liver safety study) demonstrated a higher percentage of bladder cancer cases in patients receiving Actos versus comparators,” the FDA wrote in its announcement of the safety review.”
According to MedPage, “The FDA is investigating a possible link between pioglitazone (Actos) and bladder cancer, and, as a result, both of the available thiazolidinediones — pioglitazone and rosiglitazone (Avandia) — are undergoing safety reviews.
The FDA said it initiated the pioglitazone review after it received preliminary data from a 10-year epidemiological study sponsored by Takeda.”

Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights President Bill Donohue has once again lashed out against those trying to help the survivors of sexual abuse. Donohue wrote a column published on the League’s website calling them a “pitiful bunch of malcontents” with a caption of a baby crying next to the article.
While these types of verbal attacks are not new from Donohue, it’s high time the bishops stand up and tell him to stop speaking as if he was speaking on their behalf. Anyone who has had the privilege of working with sexual abuse survivors knows full well the psychic damage caused by sexual abuse, especially at the hands of a religious figure such as a priest. It’s completely unwarranted and reprehensible to attack the victims and act as if all of us should just “move on” or “get over it”.
One wonders how Donohue would react if one of his children had been the victim of sexual abuse.

A trial wherein the plaintiff seeks a billion dollars in damages against the manufacturer of the drug Risperdal has opened in Texas. Johnson & Johnson, the beleaguered pharmaceutical giant has already lost more than $600 million over the marketing of its anti-psychotic drug, faces a potentially huge losses in the trial.
Texas is seeking damages of more than $1 billion.
State Attorney General Greg Abbott accused J&J of paying officials to get Risperdal on approved drug lists, marketing it for unapproved uses to children and the elderly, and lying about its effects. The case in state court in Austin was filed by a whistle-blower and joined by the state, which is seeking repayment of Medicaid payments.
Texas is asking for reimbursement of $579 million, said Tom Melsheimer, a lawyer for the whistle-blower. The amount could be tripled by jurors under state law. In addition, jurors will decide the number of violations and set a penalty of up to $10,000 apiece, if the state wins.

David Clohessy, the national director of Survivors of Those Abused by Priests, will have to appear for a deposition concerning a lawsuit brought against the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph regarding sexual abuse allegations lodged against Rev. Michael Tierney.
The unprecedented move by Catholic Church defense lawyers requires the deposition be taken duces tecumwhich means Clohessy must appear with documents relating to abuse matters. The specifics concerning the document production is very broad and asks for items that are tangentially (if at all) related to the particular lawsuit in question.
Advocates for survivors of abuse have criticized the move stating that it’s heavy-handed and designed to intimidate survivors. Marci Hamilton, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law at New York’s Yeshiva University, told the National Catholic Reporter that the subpoena is “one of the uglier moves I’ve seen by any organization in these cases so far.”

Patrick Lott, Bernardsville Middle School’s Assistant Principal, faces multiple criminal charges concerning his conduct while a volunteer at the nearby Roman Catholic high School Immaculata in Somerset New Jersey. Lott is facing criminal charges for allegedly videotaping young boys, 9 of whom are under the age of 16, while they were showering in Immaculata’s communal boys locker room. Until his arrest, Lott was a volunteer at Immaculata High School, a diocesan Catholic high school run by the Diocese of Metuchen in New Jersey.
According to one local media report, “According to Somerset County Prosecutor Geoffrey Soriano, search warrants were executed at Lott’s house on Dec. 13 and Dec. 16 through the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit. Detectives with the Computer Crimes Unit, Soriano said, also searched Lott’s computer files and digital recordings.
In the search, Soriano said, detectives found videos of nude boys showering in Immaculata High School’s communal shower area. A total of nine of the teenagers identified in the video are under the age of 16, Soriano said.
Detectives, Soriano said, also found the spot in the school area where a camera had been installed for video recording. Soriano said Lott is affiliated with the high school as a volunteer.
Lott was lodged in the Somerset County Jail, with bail set at $500,000 cash or bond. Soriano said that as a condition of Lott’s bail, he is not to have any contact with any child under age 16, and cannot have contact either with any victims or the staff and faculty at Immaculata High School.”

In a front page New York Times article today, a middle-aged man was featured in a story about the problem with artificial hip failures. The 55-year-old man had nearly $500,000 worth of medical expenses related to revision surgery for his failed artificial hip, a Johnson & Johnson DePuy hip that was recalled earlier in the year. The man has been unable to work while his medical expenses related to the failed hip continue to mount. His attempted revision surgery didn’t work and so he is left helpless and unable to work.
Unfortunately, the plight of this man is not an uncommon story. As a hip implant recall lawyer, I’ve represented hundreds of people whose lives have been unnecessarily worsened by such artificial hip devices as Stryker hips, DePuy Pinnacle hips, Zimmer Durom Cup hips, and DePuy ASR XL hips.
Making matters worse, a recent study by the FDA has shown that these new hip devices aren’t as effective as the older hip devices. Their failure rates are alarmingly high and some result in a dangerous condition known as metallosis wherein the metal fragments from the metal-on-metal hips fall into the bloodstream and poison the blood.
The artificial hip situation in this country is tragic and appalling given the numbers of people affected by it. At some point, the federal government needs to step in and fix it before more are injured.

The FDA has categorized the Riata Defibrillator leads recall a Class I recall due to the potential for severe injuries related to the malfunction of the defibrillator leads. According to the FDA, the defibrillator may malfunction because the leads may penetrate the insulation leading to mechanical failure.
While the St. Jude Riata defibrillators were removed from the market last year, those who’ve had the implanted defibrillators may be at a greater risk of defibrillator malfunction and the FDA is urging consumers who have these defibrillators implanted to check with their physicians about monitoring and follow-up.

It’s what we’ve been saying for years now. The old artificial hip and knee devices were just as reliable and effective (perhaps more so) than the new ones. While slick PR and marketing campaigns employed by medical device companies tried to convince consumers and healthcare professionals otherwise, a new study has found that the older versions were indeed just as reliable, if not more so than the new devices.
According to the NY Times, “The study, which draws on data from Australia’s orthopedic registry, covered implants introduced from 2003 to 2007 and was published this week. The findings are significant for patients in the United States because many of the new designs, like so-called metal-on-metal hips, are widely used here. Those implants, which have both a ball and cup made of metal, are expected to fail prematurely in tens of thousands of patients rather than lasting 15 years or more as artificial joints are supposed to do.
The Australian study showed that not a single new artificial hip or knee introduced over a recent five-year period was any more durable than older ones. In fact, 30 percent of them fared worse.”
Unfortunately, the new hip and artificial hip devices such as the Stryker hips, NexGen knee devices, Zimmer Durom Cup hips, and the DePuy ASR XL and DePuy Pinnacle hips may all be the result of marketing initiatives whose main purpose is profit. In these cases, I suspect good science and quality patient care have been sacrificed in favor of company profits. Medical device companies make higher profits when they are regularly adding new products to the market.

Former Roman Catholic Bishop Raymond Lahey’s criminal sentencing for his conviction regarding possession of computer child pornography resumes today.
Lahey, who has been incarcerated since pleading guilty to the charges in May, resigned as bishop of Antigonish following his computer pornography arrest in 2009. The sentencing phase has been going on since August.
Today’s testimony is scheduled to be filled by psychiatrists. Lahey’s defense lawyers are recommending leniency based upon the belief that the type of pornography Lahey possessed was less graphic than that of others convicted on similar charges.