Morning Break: FDA Food Inspections Stopped; Right to Try’s First Patient

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Due to the government shutdown, the FDA has halted routine inspections of domestic food-processing facilities. (Washington Post)

A patient with brain cancer became the first person to access an experimental treatment under the Right to Try law, which was enacted in May 2018. The patient had failed to qualify for the phase II trial of the drug in question. (Endpoints)

Former Insys CEO Michael Babich reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Reuters reported. Other former company executives, including founder John Kapoor, face trial later this month on charges they paid physicians to prescribe Subsys, the firm’s sublingual fentanyl spray.

Coca-Cola and other Western junk food companies have helped shape Chinese anti-obesity policies that emphasize physical fitness over healthy nutrition. (New York Times)

A cellphone app developed to detect early symptoms of opioid overdose proved to be about 90% accurate in initial testing. (Science Translational Medicine)

For patients with esophageal cancer, a less invasive hybrid esophagectomy cut down on complications compared with conventional open surgery. (New England Journal of Medicine)

Toilet stools — the furniture kind — may be a simple solution to constipation, according to Ohio State University.

Child pornography charges were filed against a Florida gastroenterologist and his girlfriend who exchanged texts about taking nude pictures of children — specifically her daughters, who were also the ones who discovered the messages. (Orlando Sentinel)

Two Pennsylvania clinic workers are accused of forging opioid prescriptions. They were arrested along with a patient who got 14 scripts for 2,340 oxycodone doses and allegedly sold them. (Reading Eagle)

In Malaysia, a physician learned the hard way that insulting the recently abdicated king is dangerous. (Malay Mail)

The European Medicines Agency has officially moved from London to Amsterdam because of Brexit. (ABC News)

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