The report, a joint effort of ProPublica and PBS NewsHour notes that the machines were approved and deemed “safe” by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is solely concerned with security, instead of an agency such as the FDA, which has a focus on medical issues and public health. Because the machines aren’t medical devices, they aren’t subject to the more intense regulation that exist for similar diagnostic machines and devices.

It’s not a small issue: The scanners are expected to be in use in every U.S. airport by 2014.

The investigation by ProPublica and PBS found that radiation experts are still worried about the actual cancer risk travelers would face from repeated scans by the devices. For instance, a radiologist at University of San Francisco said that over the lifetime of a year’s worth of airline passengers, the emissions from the machines would likely cause six cancers.

Given current rates of cancer in the U.S., that’s not a significant risk, but it’s still  a risk taken on with little to no benefit for the traveler. As a rule, medical professionals don’t subject patients to radiation unless there’s a clear medical benefit, such as viewing a potentially cancerous tumor, or targeting treatment. In line at the airport, there is no such benefit, and many experts — and members of the general public — are skeptical that the perceived security benefit is enough to justify even a minimal increase in the risk of developing cancer.

In the wake of the report, TSA Administrator John Pistole initially agreed to a request from the Senate to have a new independent study of the devices’ safety conducted — but he has since told the Senate that he received a new draft report that makes such a study unnecessary.

According to ProPublica, a summary of the draft report focus on the maintenance and monitoring of the back-scatter machines.

The order instructs the FDA to increase reporting of potential shortages, fast-track the review of applications to start or change production of shortage-related drugs and give information about potential price gouging or collusion to the Justice Department.

So far a record number of drugs — nearly 200 of them — have been declared in an official shortage. Prices have skyrocketed and some hospitals have reported instances of drug scalping and being offered goods that appeared to have been stolen and/or dangerously mishandled by third-party vendors.

The company hasn’t made any changes at all to the actual chemical composition of the pill. But if the FDA agrees this is a significant change, generic drug manufacturers would have to postpone their own releases of the drug until they’ve undergone similar makeovers.

Researchers at Stanford University crunched data from a huge FDA side effects database, looking for evidence of diabetes-related drug interactions. They found that two drugs commonly used to treat depression and high cholesterol appear to make a dangerous combination.

According to the report, taking Paxil (paroxetine) and Pravachol (pravastin) can dangerously increase some patients’ blood sugar, sending borderline patients into a diabetic state or making existing cases of the disease harder to control. Researchers estimate more than 700,000 people take both drugs.

The finding was completely unexpected. The researchers said it showed the value of having access to large numbers of electronic health records so they can essentially study large populations in real time.

The study was published in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.

Because there had been no commercial version of the drug, most patients got it made to order from compounding pharmacies. Those companies generally charged about $10 to $20 for each once-a-week dose.

But the FDA has approved a prescription version of the medication, called Makena, made by K-V Pharmaceutical. The company said it plans to charge about $1,500 per dose — but will create a patient assistance plan to ensure that those who need the drug can get it.

K-V will likely be the only provider of the drug. The company has already sent letters to compounding pharmacies warning them of FDA action if they continue to distribute their versions of the drug.

Doctors are roundly condemning the move, claiming that it will drive up insurance costs and bleed more money from already cash-strapped Medicaid programs.

The plants, located in Las Piedras, Puerto Rico, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, are run by McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson.

Under a consent agreement, McNeil has agreed to put the plants under the FDA’s supervision and meet deadlines for bringing the plants back into compliance with federal safety guidelines. The company also has to hire an independent inspector to certify that the plants have corrected all violations and other issues.

If McNeil violates the agreement, the FDA can order manufacturing at the plants to halt, recall products and levy fines up to $15,000 for each day and an additional $15,000 for each violation of the law — up to $10 million annually.

The plants have had a series of quality problems in the recent past, and questions have been raised over how the company has handled the issue.

A new investigation shows that doctors drug companies hire as speakers and advisers aren’t always the best and the brightest in their fields. Some of them are outright criminals. .

ProPublica recently created a database of the payments made to doctors by seven major drug companies: AstraZeneca, Cephalon, Eli Lilly & Co., GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson,  Merck & Co. and Pfizer. The database includes just under $258 million in payments made since 2009 to doctors, based on disclosures made by the companies themselves. The payments are generally fees for speaking engagements, as well as advisory and consulting work.

ProPublica then did a review of the highest-paid physicians’ licensing records in their states. While not a complete review of the speakers, it did turn up some disturbing information.

According to ProPublica, more than 250 physician-speakers had professional sanctions against them for infractions including having sex with patients, poor patient care and improperly prescribing medication.

More than 40 had official FDA warnings for research misconduct, had lost hospital privileges and/or been convicted of crimes. Another 20 had two or more malpractice judgments or settlements against them. (Note: Some states don’t make this information publicly available, so the actual numbers of speakers who have such blemishes in their records may be higher.)

Who’s vetting the docs?

Five of the companies admitted to ProPublica that they don’t routinely check state board records for doctors they’ve hired or are considering hiring. They check the federal database and count on doctors to self-report additional information. The two companies that do check: Cephalon and Johnson & Johnson.

These doctors aren’t accused of minor paperwork slip-ups — the ethical violations put their objectivity and expertise in real doubt: In one case,  the FDA ordered a doctor to stop his “false or misleading” promotions of a painkiller, citing him for downplaying its risks and encouraging its use for unapproved treatments. Since then, three pharmaceutical companies have paid him at least a quarter of a million dollars to give speeches to other doctors for their medications.

Another doctor was found by the Ohio medical board to have performed unnecessary nerve tests on 20 patients, including injecting them with chemicals that destroyed nerve tissue. He’s been paid $85k in the past two years as a speaker and adviser to drug companies.

Drugs approved for chronic conditions can have major side effects that aren’t discovered until years or decades after they’re approved. Is there a better way to protect patients?

Two recent incidents involving commonly prescribed drugs have health professionals asking if there’s a better way to monitor complications, side effects and adverse reactions that may not be identifiable until after years of use.

The questions have new relevance after the diabetes drug, Avandia, was found to increase heart risks in patients; and bisphosphonates used to prevent bone fractures in patients with osteoporosis were found to increase the risk of one type of fracture as well as jaw bone degeneration.

Both types of drugs were evaluated and cleared by the FDA with no indication of these problems. Many experts say the problem is that premarket evaluation looks at relatively short-term studies — but our aging population is taking more medications for chronic diseases.

Put simply: There’s no efficient way to test the risks a drug may pose when it’s taken for decades.

A better system?

Health care professionals face a dilemma when it comes to testing drugs that patients may be on for life: Clinical trials typically last only a few years. Extending them would be difficult, costly and would deny patients faster access to drugs they need.

Some experts have recommended continuing clinical trials after a drug gets approved for the market. But that requires prescribing physicians to agree to randomly assign patients to one treatment vs. another. And the length of time required for the study would make it harder to track those patients’ results.

Another option that’s been suggested is creating a national electronic database that would make it easier to track complications from prescriptions.

Unlike other safety-critical industries like aviation and nuclear power insist on having multiple precautions and fail-safes in place to ensure that workers can’t commit a fatal error over a momentary lapse such as hitting the wrong button.

But nurses and other health care providers have no such safety net when it comes to the tangle of tubes that may be hooked up to a typical patient. Rather than use color-coded tubing or incompatible hook-ups, most of the tubes used for blood, medication, food, etc. are identical.

That makes it all too easy for a nurse or other health care provider to accidentally grab the wrong line and push liquid nutrition into a vein or IV fluids into tubes meant to deliver oxygen.

Several hundred such errors are known to have lead to patients’ death (and many more caused severe injuries in patients who survived). Experts believe that due to under-reporting the actual numbers of patients affected are much higher. A 2006 survey found that 16% of all hospitals had experienced at least one feeding-tube-related error.

Why does this problem persist? Most experts blame lax oversight by the FDA and successful efforts by manufacturer organizations to slow efforts to create more stringent standards.

One basic move would be to make feeding tubes incompatible with tubes meant for the skin or veins. The FDA is currently reviewing that plan as well as related suggestions to make the tubing safer for both patients and their caregivers.