“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Benjamin Franklin “The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.” Will Rogers The IRS and the U.S. Treasury last month announced plans to squelch the trend for businesses to seek foreign tax shelters through corporate inversions. But why are companies fleeing? Because the current corporate tax rate is oppressive. (See BioWorld Today, Sept. 24, 2014.) It’s time to change the U.S. tax code, starting with the corporate tax rate. In an article from the political website Red...

I was on the phone last week with Rick Andrews, president and CEO of Thrasos, about acute kidney injury (AKI), and how it’s no longer called “acute renal failure,” the latter phrase having been scrapped in recent years. Cynics might claim it’s something the drug companies invented, so they can pump more chemicals into people earlier. But the idea, Andrews said, is to express that kidney trouble appears along a continuum, and pre-shutdown symptoms need to be handled promptly, because they create big woes on their own. Woes that might be lucratively attacked by the likes of Thrasos, with its...