Category: health

Data protection laws limit how pharmacy data is used — but Walmart is apparently running market research with ‘anonymized’ details. Last week, Walmart made headlines with a claim that new weight loss drugs might be making people buy less food. Walmart US CEO John Furner told Bloomberg that people taking Wegovy, Ozempic, and similar drugs showed a “slight change” in their purchasing habits: “just less units, slightly less calories.” How does Walmart know this? Because, Bloomberg indicates, it can compare…

Major international governments have signed multibillion-dollar legal contracts with drug companies in order to secure access to covid-19 vaccines. But the drug companies and governments have refused to divulge details, saying the information is “commercial in confidence.” In 2021, we got our first peek at contracts between Pfizer and various international countries after they were leaked to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and US consumer group Public Citizen. “The contracts offer a rare glimpse into the power one pharmaceutical corporation has gained to silence…

On 20 July, a tornado tore through a Pfizer plant in Rocky Mount, US, destroying part of a large facility in that makes sterile injectable drugs. The twister caused extensive damage to warehouses storing critical hospital supplies such as dopamine, potassium acetate and vitamin K1 for babies. The facility manufactures a quarter of Pfizer’s sterile injectables for US hospitals, comprising around 8% of total US consumption. While production facilities remained largely unscathed, they had to be stopped. ‘In this highly…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, September 7, 2023 A jury in Miami convicted two defendants on Sept. 5 in a scheme involving the falsification and fabrication of clinical trial data. On Sept. 5, Miguel Angel Montalvo Villa, 53, and Ivette Maria Portela Martinez, 53, both of Miami, were each convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of wire fraud. Montalvo also was convicted of making a false statement to a regulatory investigator with the Food…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The generic drug maker Teva Pharmaceuticals agreed Monday to pay $225 million to settle price-fixing charges related to sales of a major cholesterol-lowering drug. The U.S. Department of Justice said the agreement also requires Teva to divest its business making and selling the drug, pravastatin, a generic version of the brand-name medicine Pravachol. Another generic drug maker, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, agreed to pay a $30 million criminal penalty and to divest its pravastatin business as well. In a…

  The title of US Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book, The Wuhan Cover Up, does not really represent the scope and nature of this seminal work.  This book is the most comprehensive historic summary and indictment of the history of the United States’ biowarfare/biodefense program ever written. Summarizing an amazing sweep of untold censored history, it begins with ancient Mediterranean and European examples of both chemical and biological warfare, proceeds to an open discussion of the shocking truths…

Shares of Sage Therapeutics fell more than 50% Monday after the Food and Drug Administration approved the biotech company’s oral drug zuranolone for postpartum depression, but not for major depressive disorder, a bigger potential market. Shares of Biogen, which jointly developed the treatment with Sage, were up modestly. Who is Sage Therapeutics? Biogen Inc owns more than 10% of Sage Therapeutics, while FMR LLC owns almost 10%. Fidelity Management & Research Co. LLC  owns almost 12% and Wellington Management Co….

On July 28, 2023, Weekend Australian Magazine published a bombshell report based on an exclusive interview with Dr. Robert (Bob) Kadlec, the HHS Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) who served under Donald Trump. To many readers this may seem like just more Washington, DC Kabuki theater with a side order of limited hangout (much like the prior Vanity Fair article in which Kadlec provided a generous scoop of spin with a topping of CYA). Personally, I find this whole “inside…

The Air Force has detected unsafe levels of a likely carcinogen at underground launch control centers at a Montana nuclear missile base where a striking number of men and women have reported cancer diagnoses. A new cleanup effort has been ordered. The discovery “is the first from an extensive sampling of active U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile bases to address specific cancer concerns raised by missile community members,” Air Force Global Strike Command said in a release Monday. In those samples, two…

On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all infants under 8 months old receive an injection of nirsevimab, a newly approved monoclonal antibody, as they enter their first RSV season (usually fall through spring). A subset of children up to 19 months at heightened risk of serious RSV disease – including those with chronic lung disease, and American Indian and Alaska Native children – can get a shot in their second RSV season. “RSV is the…

Over the past few years, two immigrants in their mid-fifties became my friends. These guys are among the gentlest spirits that I’ve known, though one tells me he was a boxer back in the day and he works like a beast with a pick and shovel. The other man speaks five languages and knows far more about Botany than I do. While both men are delightful to interact with, each binge drinks every so often. One drinks until he passes…

After a weekend of broiling heat waves in the Southwest and South Florida, more extreme heat is forecast to build throughout the week. Forecasters say residents of both regions should stay out of the sun as much as possible. Across the country, heat waves are getting hotter, lasting longer and becoming more unpredictable. Jeff Goodell, the author of The Heat Will Kill You First, called it a dire consequence of climate change. “We know that as we continue to burn…

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean opposition lawmakers sharply criticized the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog for its approval of Japanese plans to release treated wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant during a tense meeting in Seoul on Sunday, with protesters screaming outside the door. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, arrived in South Korea over the weekend to engage with government officials and critics and help reduce public concerns about…

  PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Prandy Tavarez and his wife were expecting a baby when they bought a four-bedroom house in a well-kept neighborhood of century-old homes here. They got to work making it theirs, ripping off wallpaper, upgrading the electrical and replacing windows coated in paint that contained lead, a potent neurotoxin that can damage brain development in children. That wasn’t the only lead. The pipe carrying water to their home was made of it, too. Providence’s tap water…

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has approved a plan to use phosphogypsum, a radioactive waste material, in “demonstration projects.” Here, signs block a roadway in Boca Raton during a construction project in 2021. Florida is another step closer to paving its roads with phosphogypsum — a radioactive waste material from the fertilizer industry — after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a controversial bill into law Thursday. Conservation groups had urged DeSantis to veto the bill, saying phosphogypsum would hurt water quality and…

The U.S. government has given Chinese and Russian entities at least $1.3 billion for various research programs over the past five years, according to an analysis released Wednesday by Republican Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst and watchdog group Open the Books. The analysis revealed that millions of taxpayer dollars have been given to, among others, a Chinese software developer for military tech support, a Russian health insurance provider that has since been sanctioned and Chinese agriculture companies. And it showed the federal government…