In the past month, the FDA has issued an import alert detaining ALL milk products, milk derived ingredients and finished food products containing milk from China due to the presence of melamine.

These foods include both human foods (bakery products, cereals, cheese, ice cream, soft drinks, and candy) as well as several types of pet foods (pet cat foods, pet dog foods, pet fish foods, other pet foods, laboratory animal feeds, pet and laboratory animal foods, byproducts for animals, dairy byproducts for animals, and animal waste feed products) imported from China.

According to the FDA, the melamine milk contamination started in infant formula but “these contaminated milk components appear to have been dispersed throughout the Chinese food supply chain…Reports of contamination have come from more than thirteen countries in Asia, Europe, and Australia, in addition to the United States.”

Time magazine has reported that the Chinese government continues to downgrade the severity of the problem. Some believe that the contaminated foods are “one of the most important factors resulting in the soaring number of birth defects in China.”

The people who manufacture a machine touted as a way to increase “inner-connectively to your DNA,” has been ordered to recall the device because it doesn’t do anything it claims to.

The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a Class I recall for the Vibrational Integrated Bio-photonic Energizer (VIBE) Machine Multi-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Generator sold by VIBE Technologies of Colorado.

The FDA says that that the VIBE Machine is not approved, and that the company’s claims that it can be used to treat or cure medical conditions and diseases such as cancer, depression, infection, and pain are unproven.

The company had further claimed that the machine “is a technological breakthrough that enhances the human body by helping it reach its optimum vibrational energy level.”

According to the FDA, it does no such thing.

Class 1 recalls are the most serious type of recall and involve situations in which there is a reasonable probability that use of the product will cause serious injury or death.

According to an Associated Press story, the families of two newborns who died after they were inadvertently given massive doses of heparin have sued an Indianapolis hospital and the Illinois-based company that makes the blood thinner.

The suit filed recently in Marion Superior Court against Methodist Hospital and Deerfield, Ill.-based Baxter Healthcare Corp. doesn’t specify damages.

The suit was filed by an defective drug attorney for the parents of two of the three newborns who died in September 2006 following injections of heparin 1,000 times greater than the recommended dose for infants. Also suing are the parents of two infants who were overdosed but survived.

The error occurred in part because of a mix up over labeling.

A Baxter spokeswoman said the deaths were tragic but preventable, and it is vital that clinicians always read the name and dose of a drug before giving it to a patient. Baxter changed the labeling on its heparin vials in October 2007.

A spokesman for Clarian Health Partners, of which Methodist is part, said the company did not have all the details of the litigation and had no comment.

Actor Dennis Quaid and his wife sued Baxter last year after their newborn twins got massive doses of the blood thinner at a hospital.

These families aren’t the only ones battling drug companies over wrongful deaths due to defective drugs or defective labeling. It is advisable to locate an experienced defective drug attorney in case legal advice is necessary for a heparin lawsuit or settlement .