$24M Medicare kickback scheme; 19 cookware items flagged for dangerous lead levels; monkey see, monkey free – Morning Medical Update

Georgia man sentenced in $24M Medicare kickback scheme

A Georgia man will serve nearly four years in prison for running a multimillion-dollar scheme that pushed unnecessary genetic tests onto Medicare beneficiaries. Prosecutors say 48-year-old Patrick C. Moore Jr. recruited seniors through a network of paid marketers, collected more than $4 million in kickbacks and hid the operation behind sham invoices. Labs tied to the scheme billed Medicare about $24 million and were paid more than $7 million. Moore, who pleaded guilty in May, was ordered to repay that amount as restitution.

19 cookware items flagged for dangerous lead levels

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is telling consumers to check their kitchens after adding nine more pots and pans to a growing list of imported cookware that may leach dangerous levels of lead. Nineteen items — mostly aluminum or brass products from India — have now tested positive, and the agency says they should be thrown out, not donated or repaired. Retailers in six states carried the affected items, though the FDA says more could surface. Medicalxpress has more.

Monkey see, monkey free: FDA moves to cut primate testing

The FDA is moving to sharply limit the use of non-human primates in testing monoclonal antibody therapies, issuing draft guidance that identifies products where six-month toxicity studies can be reduced or eliminated. The agency says advances in human-relevant models — from computational tools to organoids and real-world safety data — now allow more efficient, humane and potentially faster drug development. Primates are among the most costly components of nonclinical programs, with typical studies using more than 100 animals at roughly $50,000 each.