What We're Reading: Young Blood Injections; Gilead Accused of Kickbacks; Minor Consent for PrEP

FDA Warns Against Injections of Young Blood

Gilead Accused of Providing Kickbacks to Providers

Consent for HIV Prevention for Minors

The FDA is cautioning older adults against services in several states that are offering to inject them with younger people’s blood plasma to treat dementia, Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, and other conditions. The Wall Street Journal has reported that officials from the agency warned the services have not gone through the rigorous testing the FDA requires and that they are neither safe nor effective.Gilead Sciences is being accused of offering kickbacks to healthcare providers in an attempt to boost sales for its hepatitis and HIV drugs, reported Modern Healthcare. A whistle-blower suit is claiming that the drug maker funneled kickbacks through its Frontline of Communities in the United States program by paying doctors’ salaries, funding patient travel to screenings, paying for upgrades to providers’ medical software, and other incentives.Legislators in Maryland have introduced a bill that would allow minors to consent to preventive treatment for HIV. Senator Clarence Lam, D-Maryland, has argued that minors in the state can give consent for several medical procedures, such as treatment for drug abuse, and the bill would put pre-exposure prophylaxis on par with these other procedures. According to the Associated Press, the bill states that a doctor may still choose to inform the parents of a minor seeking the treatment.