Fed minutes suggest new bond-buying plan is likely

The Federal Reserve will probably announce a new bond-buying program in December to try to spur job growth.

The purchases would be intended to lower long-term borrowing rates to encourage spending and strengthen the economy. The hope is that more hiring would follow.

Minutes of the Fed's Oct. 23-24 policy meeting released Wednesday suggest that it will unveil a Treasury-buying plan to replace a program that expires at year's end. Under the existing program, called Operation Twist, the Fed has been selling $45 billion a month in short-term Treasurys and using the proceeds to buy an equal amount of longer-term securities.

When Operation Twist ends, the Fed will run out of short-term investments to sell. The minutes show support among the Fed's policymakers to replace Twist with another program of long-term bond purchases.

A new bond-buying program would come on top of a program the Fed launched in September. It began buying $40 billion a month in mortgage bonds to try to reduce long-term rates and make home-buying more affordable. It was its third round of bond purchases.

The Fed also said in September that it planned to keep its benchmark short-term rate near zero through mid-2015. And it signaled a readiness to take other stimulative steps if hiring didn't pick up.

The Fed reaffirmed that stance at its October policy meeting but took no new action. Officials decided to wait to see whether the aggressive steps they announced in September would boost the economy.

In a statement after the October meeting, the Fed said that although the economy is improving moderately, job growth remained slow and the unemployment rate elevated. The rate is now 7.9%.

Many analysts say the economy has been growing in the October-to-December quarter at a weak annual rate below 2% — too slow to drive down unemployment. In part, that's why the Fed will probably take further action at its final policy meeting of the year, Dec. 11-12.

Operation Twist hasn't expanded the Fed's portfolio of bond holdings. It has instead revamped the portfolio by shrinking the proportion made up of short-term investments and expanding the proportion made up of longer-term investments.

If the Fed launches a new bond-buying program, it would expand the portfolio.

Critics say the Fed's continued pumping of money into the financial system is heightening the risk of high inflation. But Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his allies say the bigger risk would come from doing too little to boost a persistently sluggish economy.

Read More..

Obama reassuring liberal allies, prepping for 'fiscal cliff' talks

WASHINGTON -- President Obama is assuring liberal allies that he will fight for the middle class during upcoming fiscal negotiations with Republicans, and he is urging those supporters not to lay down their weapons just because the election is over.

But the White House is also talking about the inevitability of compromise as the administration and congressional Democrats and Republicans prepare to negotiate an end-of-year fiscal deal that will center on the expiration of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts and a spate of automatic spending cuts.

The preparations are bringing progressive allies and business leaders alike to the White House this week, leading up to the president’s summit on Friday with congressional leaders of both parties -- their first session since his reelection.

PHOTOS: Reactions to Obama's victory

In an hourlong meeting with labor and other progressive leaders on Tuesday, the president promised to stand firm on the tax principles he outlined in the campaign, according to several people who were present.

They departed the West Wing under a bright sky, the victory they helped Obama win fresh in their minds. They were heartened that Obama emphasized the need for "balance" between spending cuts and revenue increases, and for the wealthy to bear a fairer share of the tax burden, said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress.

"He said that this election was about the middle class and fairness," Tanden said. "He’s standing firm on taxes on the wealthiest Americans."

Labor leaders were adamant that the deal protect the middle-class tax cuts, said AFL-CIO chief Rich Trumka. "Do we believe the president is committed to that same thing?" he said after emerging from the West Wing. "Yes, we do."

White House officials are talking about a schedule in which the president would stay on the campaign trail, with the aim of keeping the pressure on House Republicans to renew the expiring tax cuts for the middle class while letting those for the wealthy expire.

PHOTOS: America goes to the polls

As the Tuesday meeting was breaking up, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was just steps away in the briefing room, talking about the realities of negotiation.

The "whole point of compromise," he said, "is that nobody gets to achieve their maximalist position."

The president in the past has demonstrated a willingness, he said, to "give" in an effort to "meet your negotiating partner somewhere in the middle and reach a deal."

As they stake out their stand, business leaders are signaling resistance to the idea of letting the tax cuts expire for any Americans, including the wealthy.

In a letter to the president, several corporate chief executives warned of the economic perils of cutting spending dramatically while simultaneously raising taxes. If the president and Congress can’t agree on how to head off those automatic changes, they’ll both begin to take effect at the end of the year.

"Experts agree such immediate changes will most likely reduce economic growth and hinder employment in the United States and globally," said the letter by the CEOs, including some who are invited to the White House on Wednesday. "This would be particularly damaging as economies throughout the world struggle and look to us for leadership."

PHOTOS: President Obama’s past

The meeting is expected to be a little tense as the two sides stake out territory. That’s what the progressive leaders hope for.

Quietly, some of them worry about the inevitable "give" that Carney talked about. As they left the White House grounds on Tuesday, they spoke of nothing but optimism -- even as they spoke in terms of supporting particular principles, not particular leaders.

Asked if he would help the president lobby Congress, Trumka said he was “prepared to stand up to make sure that there is shared sacrifice here, so the rich actually start paying their fair share.”

Follow Politics Now on Twitter and Facebook

christi.parsons@latimes.com

twitter.com/@cparsons

Read More..

Petraeus enlisted for cameo in 'Call of Duty' game

LOS ANGELES (AP) — David Petraeus has landed on his feet with a new gig in "Call of Duty: Black Ops II."

The retired Army general who stepped down as CIA director last week amid a scandal surrounding his extramarital affair pops up in the highly anticipated Activision Blizzard Inc. first-person shooter game released Tuesday.

A character with Petraeus' name and likeness voiced by Jim Meskimen briefly appears as the Secretary of Defense in the year 2025.

The cameo was first reported by the gaming site Kotaku.com.

"Call of Duty" games have often employed virtual renditions of political figures.

"Black Ops II" also features an encounter with Manuel Noriega, a female president resembling current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, an aircraft carrier named the USS Barack Obama and an appearance by retired Lt. Col. Oliver North.

Read More..

‘Half-Match’ Bone Marrow Transplants Cure Sickle Cell in Trial

In her mid-20s, Yetunde Felix-Ukwu wore a Fentanyl patch that delivered enough narcotic to knock most adults out cold. Yet it barely kept her pain, caused by sickle cell disease, tolerable.

Even with the patch, she was hospitalized almost every month for the pain, which she said was “like being hit with a hammer, searing, throbbing, you name it.”

A debilitating genetic disorder, sickle-cell disease causes blood cells to be shaped like sickles, or crescents, and to be rigid, not pliable. Rather than squeezing in and out of capillaries and blood vessels as normal cells do, the sickle cells jam up, depriving tissues throughout the body of blood and oxygen. That can cause severe organ damage, stroke, blindness and unimaginable pain.

“Imagine heart attack pain all over the body,” said Dr. Robert A. Brodsky, director of the division of hematology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Many patients don’t live past 50.

A bone marrow transplant could help. The problem is, most patients, including Ms. Felix-Ukwu, cannot get a bone marrow transplant because they don’t have a perfect genetic match. Like a vast majority of others who have sickle cell disease, Ms. Felix-Ukwu is African-American, and the chance of an African-American finding a donor in bone marrow registries is about 10 percent, compared with a 60 to 70 percent chance for Caucasians, Dr. Brodsky said.

Dr. Brodsky and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins, however, began a bone marrow transplant trial using so-called half-match donors. The trial has found that the procedure can cure sickle cell, replacing defective stem cells that produce sickle-shaped cells with normal stem cells that churn out plump, pliable blood cells.

Since almost everyone with a sibling, a parent or a child has a genetic half match, the procedure could make bone marrow transplants available to more than 90 percent of candidates.

“It opens the opportunity for a cure for thousands of adults with the disease who previously had not had any hope of a cure,” said Dr. Michael DeBaun, director of the Center for Excellence in Sickle Cell Disease at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. DeBaun was not involved with the half-match trial.

Beginning in high school, Ms. Felix-Ukwu, now 30, had undergone regular transfusions to dilute and temporarily replace the sickle cells in her blood, but the transfusions stopped helping. Half-match donors have been used for about a decade in bone marrow transplants for leukemia and lymphoma patients, and the doctors believed it was now safe enough to use in sickle cell patients.

Ms. Felix-Ukwu, who lives in Lanham, Md., enrolled in the Johns Hopkins study, and her younger sister, Woma Felix-Ukwu, became her half-matched bone marrow donor.

Ms. Felix-Ukwu had to undergo a grueling course of chemotherapy, radiation and immunosuppresants before receiving the transplant.

“Those three days of chemo were the hardest days of my life, including all the pain I had been through with sickle cell,” she said. But it worked. Her body started producing normal blood cells. She continued to have some pain for another 18 months or so, for reasons that are not entirely clear, but now, three years after the transplant, Ms. Felix-Ukwu is disease-free and off all of her pain medications.

“It’s absolutely amazing,” says Dr. Brodsky, who published the study this month in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology. Of the 14 patients in the study who received half-matched transplants, six were cured, meaning that their bone marrow is made up entirely of the donor’s and they are no longer producing sickle cells.

Two additional patients are still taking immunosuppressive drugs, meaning that the donor’s bone marrow took, but they still have some of their own marrow. They still have a chance of being cured.

In a half-match transplant, known medically as haploidentical transplant, only 50 percent of the pertinent genes have to match up. Testing for a bone marrow match entails looking for genes in the human leukocyte antigen, or H.L.A., system, the part of the immune system that recognizes self and not self.

In a full match, 8 to 10 H.L.A. genes need to match between donor and recipient.

“If you have disparities in the H.L.A. system and you transplant stem cells that recognize the patient as foreign, the new immune system will start attacking the patient,” said Dr. Brodsky. In half-match transplants, only half of these H.L.A. genes need to match.

But half-match transplants carry the risk that the donor’s immune cells will attack the host, a potentially deadly complication called graft-versus-host disease.

To reduce this risk, patients receive the chemotherapeutic drug cyclophosphamide after the bone marrow is transplanted. This drug kills the donor’s lymphocytes that would normally attack the recipient, but it spares the donor stem cells, which have an enzyme that makes them immune to it. The stem cells then produce new lymphocytes.

“What happens is that the new cells that are generated become tolerant to the host and will not attack it,” says Dr. Javier Bolaños-Meade, the lead author on the study and associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins.

“The biggest paradigm shift was the post-treatment chemo,” added Dr. Brodsky.

The other shift was the trend toward a gentler pre-treatment. In a traditional bone marrow transplant to treat cancer, patients receive high-dose chemotherapy and radiation before the transplant, not only to suppress the immune system but to kill off every last cancer cell in the body. But in sickle cell, the chemotherapy just has to suppress the immune system, so doctors can use a less intense regimen.

This could potentially open it up to many more adults. Bone marrow transplants have largely been offered to children with sickle cell, not adults, who were often too weak or debilitated to endure the more intense pre-treatments.

The half-match transplant is still experimental, and because of its toxicity, it is recommended only for those with advanced disease. It was successful in only about 50 percent of patients.

“You’re putting people through a lot, and to have half of the transplants not take must be heartbreaking,” said Dr. Jane Little, director of the adult sickle cell program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “It’s exposing patients to risk you can’t take away. But it also really expands the pool of potential recipients.”

The team at Johns Hopkins is tweaking the procedure to improve the success rate without increasing the toxicity, said Dr. Bolaños-Meade. “We are working on transplanting with a higher number of stem cells to help overcome rejection,” he said.

“Clearly it doesn’t cure everyone, but in those patients in which it works, it’s a huge, huge thing,” Dr. Bolaños-Meade said.

This August, Ms. Felix-Ukwu celebrated a year without being in the hospital. She plans to go back to law school next September.

“When I look back, I wonder how I ever made it through all that pain,” she said. “Now I feel like I’m on vacation. I finally have the freedom to be able to live my life.”

Read More..

US stocks fall in uneven trading; Home Depot soars

U.S. stocks closed lower after uneven trading Tuesday as fears about the “fiscal cliff” and Greece tipped major indexes between gains and losses. A surge in Home Depot's stock prevented a steeper drop for the Dow Jones industrial average.

The Dow closed down closed down 58.90 points, or 0.5 percent, at 12,756.18. It would have been lower without support from Home Depot, whose stock jumped 3.6 percent after the big-box retailer beat expectations for its fiscal third-quarter earnings. Home Depot is benefiting from the gradual housing recovery and rebuilding efforts after Superstorm Sandy. Home Depot rose $2.22 to $63.38.

Stocks had opened lower after European leaders postponed the latest aid package for Greece. The Dow turned positive in the first hour of trading and rose solidly through the morning, gaining as much as 83 points. Starting around 2 p.m., the average slid steadily into the red.

Other indexes also closed lower. The Standard & Poor's 500 index lost 5.50 points, or 0.4 percent, to 1,374.53. The Nasdaq composite index fell 20.37 points, or 0.7 percent, to 2,883.89.

Investors are trading against the backdrop of the “fiscal cliff,” a set of U.S. government spending cuts and tax increases that will take effect automatically at the beginning of next year unless U.S. leaders reach a compromise before then.

Worries about the fiscal cliff pushed U.S. stocks to one of their worst weekly losses of the year last week after voters re-elected President Barack Obama and a deeply divided Congress. Obama met Tuesday with labor leaders and others who advocate higher taxes on the wealthy and want to protect health benefits for seniors and other government programs. Obama will meet with business leaders Wednesday.

“The longer we sit and do nothing” about the nation's fiscal issues, “the more this market is going to oscillate between positive 40 and negative 60, until we know what's going to happen next with all this uncertainty,” said Craig Johnson, senior technical research strategist with Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis.

Johnson expects the S&P 500 will reach 1,550 in the next six months as investors get over their lingering wooziness from the Great Recession and companies understand better how government policy on taxes, health care and spending will affect them.

European stocks had been lower but rose after trading opened in New York. Benchmark indexes in France, Britain and Germany closed modestly higher.

Traders in Europe are concerned because finance ministers postponed $40 billion in desperately needed aid for Greece. The news surprised investors. A day earlier, there was word that leaders had prepared a “positive” report on Greece, making it appear likely that the aid would be released.

“It's a little bit like Groundhog Day,” said Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, referring to the classic Bill Murray movie whose protagonist must relive the same day over and over. Until there is decisive news from Washington or Brussels, neither of which appears imminent, markets will remain vulnerable to short-term swings caused by headlines, Colas said.

The next major catalysts for a market move, Colas said, will be gauges of spending by consumers on Black Friday, the traditional shopping rush on the day after Thanksgiving.

Greece's neighbors decided to give the country two more years to meet its economic targets. They still disagree with the International Monetary Fund, another key lender, over how to manage the country's debt over the long term. Until lenders reach an accord, they can't release the billions that Greece needs to make upcoming payments.

IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said Greece should reduce its debt burden down to 120 percent of its economic output by 2020, the original target of 2020. But Jean-Claude Juncker, leader of the euro zone's finance ministers, said that the deadline would likely be changed to 2022. The lenders will meet again on Nov. 20.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note slid to 1.59 percent from 1.64 percent late Friday as demand increased for ultra-safe investments. The U.S. bond market was closed on Monday in observance of the Veterans Day holiday.

Among stocks making big moves:

Microsoft plunged 3 percent after it announced the departure of Steven Sinofsky, who ran its Windows division. The unexpected move comes just weeks after Microsoft launched Windows 8, its first major overhaul in years of the operating system used on most of the world's computers. Microsoft fell 90 cents to $27.09.

Weatherford International dropped 15.9 percent after the oilfield services company reported revenue that was lower than analysts had been expecting. The company did not report full results because of accounting problems that have led it to revise its results from numerous periods. The stock fell $1.73 to $9.15.

Apparel chain operator TJX Cos., the parent of TJ Maxx and Marshalls, rose 2.7 percent after raising its full-year earnings forecast and reporting third-quarter revenue that exceeded analysts' expectations. The stock added $1.09 to $42.06.

Read More..

Newton: Jan Perry's path to power

An essential element of a successful political campaign, whether for U.S. president or mayor of Los Angeles, is that it identifies a path to victory. Candidates have to differentiate themselves from competitors and appeal to constituencies sympathetic to their message.

At this point in the Los Angeles mayor's race, Councilwoman Jan Perry lags behind front-runners Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti in terms of money and name recognition, but in recent weeks she has found a potentially viable path.

Perry's approach reflects an important feature of the field for this campaign: Controller Greuel and Councilman Garcetti, the leading candidates at this early stage, bring to the campaign virtually identical politics and similar temperaments. Both are personable, smart liberals with strong ties to organized labor. Greuel draws support from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the union that represents employees of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, while Garcetti is close to the Service Employees International Union, which represents some city and county workers and others in service industries.

Those relationships are likely to supply Garcetti and Greuel with volunteers and financial support, both vital to winning. But they also present Perry with an opportunity to set herself apart. Now that County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and businessmen Austin Beutner and Rick Caruso have opted out of the campaign, Perry finds herself with a surprisingly open shot at becoming the favored candidate of business. As one longtime observer of this region's politics remarked to me last week, "It's the only way for her to go."

Last week, Perry demonstrated that she's gotten that message. Speaking to a small but welcoming audience at the Japanese American National Museum, Perry staked out her territory. She said she would oppose increases in sales and documentary transfer taxes — proposals that may appear on the same ballot as the mayoral contest's first round in March. She argued for offloading some city assets, such as the Convention Center and zoo. And she insisted that the city's budget problems — it faces a shortfall of more than $200 million this year, and the prognosis gets worse looking ahead — need to be addressed by asking city employees to contribute more to their medical coverage and pensions. That's just what business wants to hear.

"I am a lifelong Democrat who is a business-friendly Democrat," she said. By contrast, she said, her chief opponents will find it difficult to challenge City Hall's status quo in areas such as rate increases and pension reform. "I think they both will have obligations that they will have to meet, one to IBEW, the other to SEIU."

There is a fourth candidate who could plant his flag in this same area. Lawyer and radio personality Kevin James is campaigning at the race's only true outsider. The same calculations that have raised Perry's possibilities have increased his as well, but she has experience and credentials that will make it hard for him to head her off.

Perry is likable, with a refreshing candor. Last week, she slipped off her shoes as she delivered her speech and took questions from reporters until they had no more. And she didn't exaggerate what is achievable: Asked whether she thought the city could rebound over the next four years, she said, basically, no.

But she has liabilities too. In 2007, she joined council colleagues — including Greuel and Garcetti — in voting for a salary increase that gave city workers more than 25% over five years. The deal was rendered insupportable when the economy tanked the next year, but it doesn't take a Nobel laureate to see that not many workers in 2007 were getting deals that promised them annual salary increases of 5%. When I asked her if she regretted that vote, Perry laughed. "Yes," she said. "Of course."

Perry does have her share of enemies. She is famously stubborn — one joke kicking around the campaign is that she might have dropped out of this race and instead run for controller if only so many people hadn't asked her to. And the demographic dynamics of her base are complicated. She's African American and enjoys strong support from that important but relatively small community. She's also, unbeknownst to many voters, Jewish, which supplies her either with a way to extend her base or to confuse it.

The business elites that supported Richard Riordan in the 1990s had hoped Beutner would run, and they have yet to fall in behind Perry. But they're without a standard-bearer at the moment, and that could leave Perry with a powerful constituency, a coherent message — and a path.

Jim Newton’s column appears Mondays. His latest book is "Eisenhower: The White House Years." Reach him at jim.newton@latimes.com or follow him on Twitter: @newton_jim.

Read More..

'Skyfall' brings record Bond debut of $88.4M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Bond is cashing in at the box office.

"Skyfall," the 23rd film featuring the British super-spy, pulled in a franchise-record $88.4 million in its U.S. debut, bringing its worldwide total to more than $500 million since it began rolling out overseas in late October.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "Skyfall," Sony, $88,364,714, 3,505 locations, $25,211 average, $90,564,714, one week.

2. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $33,012,796, 3,752 locations, $8,799 average, $93,647,405, two weeks.

3. "Flight," Paramount, $14,785,097, 2,047 locations, $7,223 average, $47,455,396, two weeks.

4. "Argo," Warner Bros., $6,617,229, 2,763 locations, $2,395 average, $85,583,187, five weeks.

5. "Taken 2," Fox, $4,012,829, 2,487 locations, $1,614 average, $131,300,000, six weeks.

6. "Cloud Atlas," Warner Bros., $2,658,250, 2,023 locations, $1,314 average, $22,844,956, three weeks.

7. "The Man With the Iron Fists," Universal, $2,592,705, 1,872 locations, $1,385 average, $12,821,030, two weeks.

8. "Pitch Perfect," Universal, $2,573,350, 1,391 locations, $1,850 average, $59,099,993, seven weeks.

9. "Here Comes the Boom," Sony, $2,522,790, 2,044 locations, $1,234 average, $39,033,885, five weeks.

10. "Hotel Transylvania," Sony, $2,400,226, 2,566 locations, $935 average, $140,954,208, seven weeks.

11. "Paranormal Activity 4," Paramount, $1,980,033, 2,348 locations, $843 average, $52,600,612, four weeks.

12. "Sinister," Summit, $1,524,448, 1,554 locations, $981 average, $46,578,686, five weeks.

13. "Silent Hill: Revelation," Open Road Films, $1,300,137, 1,902 locations, $684 average, $16,383,406, three weeks.

14. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," Summit, $1,132,924, 607 locations, $1,866 average, $14,614,770, eight weeks.

15. "Lincoln," Disney, $944,308, 11 locations, $85,846 average, $904,308, one week.

16. "Alex Cross," Summit, $911,973, 1,090 locations, $837 average, $24,603,042, four weeks.

17. "Fun Size," Paramount, $757,223, 1,301 locations, $582 average, $8,800,336, three weeks.

18. "Looper," Sony, $582,150, 491 locations, $1,186 average, $64,669,383, seven weeks.

19. "The Sessions," Fox, $545,550, 128 locations, $4,262 average, $1,655,222, four weeks.

20. "Seven Psychopaths," CBS Films, $404,812, 356 locations, $1,137 average, $14,098,469, five weeks.

___

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

Read More..

Letters: Flu and the Numbers (1 Letter)

To the Editor:

“Reassessing Flu Shots as the Season Draws Near” (The Consumer, Nov. 6) implies that since the flu vaccine does not as work as well as expected — preventing one case for dozens of patients injected — we should not be as aggressive in promoting it. I disagree.

By that logic, one might conclude that treating blood pressure in diabetics is not a good idea because it prevents just one stroke for every 210 patients. Yes, I am disappointed the vaccine does not perform better, but it does work and the risks and costs are low.

David A. Nardone, , M.D.

Hillsboro, Ore.

Read More..

Stocks close little changed as fiscal cliff looms

Stocks are closing little changed on Wall Street as investors focus again on the looming “fiscal cliff” faced by the U.S. government.

The Dow Jones industrial average ended a quarter point lower than it started Monday, at 12,815. It moved between small gains and losses throughout the day.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index edged up a fraction of a point to 1,380. The Nasdaq composite fell less than a point 2,904.

Trading was light. The government and the U.S. bond market were closed for Veterans Day, and there were no economic reports.

The fiscal cliff refers to government spending cuts and tax increases that are scheduled to kick in at the beginning of the new year, unless Congress and the White House work out a compromise.

Read More..

Times investigation: Legal drugs, deadly outcomes

Terry Smith collapsed face-down in a pool of his own vomit.

Lynn Blunt snored loudly as her lungs slowly filled with fluid.

Summer Ann Burdette was midway through a pear when she stopped breathing.

Larry Carmichael knocked over a lamp as he fell to the floor.

Jennifer Thurber was curled up in bed, pale and still, when her father found her.

Karl Finnila sat down on a curb to rest and never got up.

These six people died of drug overdoses within a span of 18 months.

But according to coroners' records, that was not all they had in common. Bottles of prescription medications found at the scene of each death bore the name of the same doctor: Van H. Vu.

After Finnila died, coroner's investigators called Vu to learn about his patient's medical history and why he had given him prescriptions for powerful medications, including the painkiller hydrocodone.

Investigators left half a dozen messages. Vu never called back, coroner's records state.

Over the next four years, 10 more of his patients died of overdoses, the records show. In nine of those cases, painkillers Vu had prescribed for them were found at the scene.

Vu, a pain specialist in Huntington Beach, described himself as a conscientious, caring physician. He declined to comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality laws, but he said he treats many "very, very difficult patients" whose chronic pain is sometimes complicated by substance abuse and depression, anxiety or other mental illness.

"Every single day, I try to do the best I can for every single patient," he said in an interview. "I can't control what they do once they leave my office."

Prescription drug overdoses now claim more lives than heroin and cocaine combined, fueling a doubling of drug-related deaths in the United States over the last decade.

Health and law enforcement officials seeking to curb the epidemic have focused on how OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and other potent pain and anxiety medications are obtained illegally, such as through pharmacy robberies or when teenagers raid their parents' medicine cabinets. Authorities have failed to recognize how often people overdose on medications prescribed for them by their doctors.

A Los Angeles Times investigation has found that in nearly half of the accidental deaths from prescription drugs in four Southern California counties, the deceased had a doctor's prescription for at least one drug that caused or contributed to the death.

Reporters identified a total of 3,733 deaths from prescription drugs from 2006 through 2011 in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura and San Diego counties.

An examination of coroners' records found that:

In 1,762 of those cases — 47%— drugs for which the deceased had a prescription were the sole cause or a contributing cause of death.

A small cadre of doctors was associated with a disproportionate number of those fatal overdoses. Seventy-one — 0.1% of all practicing doctors in the four counties — wrote prescriptions for drugs that caused or contributed to 298 deaths. That is 17% of the total linked to doctors' prescriptions.

Read More..