CBS News
Philips settles suits over its DreamStation sleep apnea machines for $1.1 billion
Dutch medical device maker Philips said Monday it had reached a $1.1 billion deal in the United States to settle lawsuits over faulty sleep machines in a case that’s rocked the company.
Since 2021, Philips has been battling a series of crises over its DreamStation machines for sleep apnea, a disorder in which breathing stops and starts during sleep.
Earlier this year, the company said it would halt new sales of the machines in the United States following a series of recalls of the devices made by subsidiary Philips Respironics.
Philips said in a statement Monday that it had reached an agreement with the plaintiffs “to resolve the personal injury litigation and the medical monitoring class action to end the uncertainty associated with litigation in the U.S.”
It added that it didn’t “admit any fault or liability, or that any injuries were caused by Respironics’ devices.”
The settlement addresses claims filed in U.S. courts and other potential cases, it said.
“The related payments are expected in 2025 and will be funded from Philips’ cash flow generation,” the statement said, adding that the company had booked a provision of $1.05 billion in in the first quarter to cover the settlement.
Philips said it also concluded an agreement with insurers to pay Philips $578 million to cover Respironics recall-related claims.
Philips posted losses of $501 million over the full year in 2023.
The company has had to cut thousand of jobs.
Reuters reports the settlement amount was smaller than analysts expected and Philips shares shot up when the deal was announced.
“This settlement is significantly lower than expectations of $2-4 billion and worst case of $10 billion,” Reuters quotes Barclays analysts as saying. “It comes a lot earlier than anticipated and removes an overhang many have worried would linger for years.”
CBS News
A study to devise nutritional guidance just for you
It’s been said the best meals come from the heart, not from a recipe book. But at this USDA kitchen, there’s no pinch of this, dash of that, no dollops or smidgens of anything. Here, nutritionists in white coats painstakingly measure every single ingredient, down to the tenth of a gram.
Sheryn Stover is expected to eat every crumb of her pizza; any tiny morsels she does miss go back to the kitchen, where they’re scrutinized like evidence of some dietary crime.
Stover (or participant #8180, as she’s known) is one of some 10,000 volunteers enrolled in a $170 million nutrition study run by the National Institutes of Health. “At 78, not many people get to do studies that are going to affect a great amount of people, and I thought this was a great opportunity to do that,” she said.
It’s called the Nutrition for Precision Health Study. “When I tell people about the study, the reaction usually is, ‘Oh, that’s so cool, can I do it?'” said coordinator Holly Nicastro.
She explained just what “precise” precisely means: “Precision nutrition means tailoring nutrition or dietary guidance to the individual.”
The government has long offered guidelines to help us eat better. In the 1940s we had the “Basic 7.” In the ’50s, the “Basic 4.” We’ve had the “Food Wheel,” the “Food Pyramid,” and currently, “My Plate.”
They’re all well-intentioned, except they’re all based on averages – what works best for most people, most of the time. But according to Nicastro, there is no one best way to eat. “We know from virtually every nutrition study ever conducted, we have inner individual variability,” she said. “That means we have some people that are going to respond, and some people that aren’t. There’s no one-size-fits-all.”
The study’s participants, like Stover, are all being drawn from another NIH study program called All Of Us, a massive undertaking to create a database of at least a million people who are volunteering everything from their electronic health records to their DNA. It was from that All of Us research that Stover discovered she has the gene that makes some foods taste bitter, which could explain why she ate more of one kind of food than another.
Professor Sai Das, who oversees the study at Tufts University, says the goal of precision nutrition is to drill down even deeper into those individual differences. “We’re moving away from just saying everybody go do this, to being able to say, ‘Okay, if you have X, Y and Z characteristics, then you’re more likely to respond to a diet, and somebody else that has A, B and C characteristics will be responding to the diet differently,'” Das said.
It’s a big commitment for Stover, who is one of 150 people being paid to live at a handful of test sites around the country for six weeks – two weeks at a time. It’s so precise she can’t even go for a walk without a dietary chaperone. “Well, you could stop and buy candy … God forbid, you can’t do that!” she laughed.
While she’s here, everything from her resting metabolic rate, her body fat percentage, her bone mineral content, even the microbes in her gut (digested by a machine that essentially is a smart toilet paper reading device) are being analyzed for how hers may differ from someone else’s.
Nicastro said, “We really think that what’s going on in your poop is going to tell us a lot of information about your health and how you respond to food.”
Stover says she doesn’t mind, except for the odd sounds the machine makes. While she is a live-in participant, thousands of others are participating from their homes, where electronic wearables track all kinds of health data, including special glasses that record everything they eat, activated when someone starts chewing. Artificial intelligence can then be used to determine not only which foods the person is eating, but how many calories are consumed.
This study is expected to be wrapped up by 2027, and because of it, we may indeed know not only to eat more fruits and vegetables, but what combination of foods is really best for us. The question that even Holly Nicastro can’t answer is, will we listen? “You can lead a horse to water; you can’t make them drink,” she said. “We can tailor the interventions all day. But one hypothesis I have is that if the guidance is tailored to the individual, it’s going to make that individual more likely to follow it, because this is for me, this was designed for me.”
For more info:
Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Editor: Ed Givnish.
“Sunday Morning” 2024 “Food Issue” recipe index
Delicious menu suggestions from top chefs, cookbook authors, food writers, restaurateurs, and the editors of Food & Wine magazine.
CBS News
A new generation of shopping cart, with GPS and AI
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.
CBS News
“All hands on deck” for Idaho’s annual potato harvest
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.