http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/zika-virus-outbreak/what-zika-virus-your-questions-answered-n506126
Tag Archives: Public Health
Soda Taxes: Gaining Steam Or Getting Steamrolled?
Advocates of taxing these drinks say that they contribute to high rates of obesity and diabetes, and that putting a bigger price tag on them can reduce consumption and improve people’s health. Critics argue the taxes are unpopular and that it is discriminatory to single out one item in the grocery cart.
The American Beverage Association, one of the staunchest opponents of soda taxes, has funded successful opposition campaigns throughout the United States, including in California.
Woman-to-Man Zika Infection Reported
The first case of sexual transmission of Zika virus from a woman to a man appears to have occurred in New York City, health officials there reported Friday.
The unnamed woman “engaged in a single event of condomless vaginal intercourse with a male partner the day she returned to NYC from travel to an area with ongoing Zika virus transmission,” according to Alexander Davidson, MPH, and colleagues in the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, during which she had already begun to show symptoms of infection.
A ‘slow catastrophe’ unfolds as the golden age of antibiotics comes to an end
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-antibiotic-resistance-20160711-snap-story.html
In early April, experts at a military lab outside Washington intensified their search for evidence that a dangerous new biological threat had penetrated the nation’s borders.
They didn’t have to hunt long before they found it.
On May 18, a team working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research here had its first look at a sample of the bacterium Escherichia coli, taken from a 49-year-old woman in Pennsylvania. She had a urinary tract infection with a disconcerting knack for surviving the assaults of antibiotic medications. Her sample was one of six from across the country delivered to the lab of microbiologist Patrick McGann.
Within hours, a preliminary analysis deepened concern at the lab. Over the next several days, more sophisticated genetic sleuthing confirmed McGann’s worst fears.
There, in the bacterium’s DNA, was a gene dubbed mcr-1. Its presence made the pathogen impervious to the venerable antibiotic colistin.
Can the government encourage the development of new antibiotics?
It’s been nearly 30 years since scientists have found a new class of antibiotics. But U.S. lawmakers tried to give the drug industry a boost in 2012.
That year, they passed the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act. It included provisions — collectively known as Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now, or GAIN — aimed at streamlining the government approval process for new antibiotics. It also boosted financial paybacks to drug companies that develop them.
Congress Shouldn’t Pass The 21st Century Cures Act In A Summer Rush
On Saturday June 25, six former FDA commissioners from Democratic and Republican administrations suggested at the Aspen Ideas Festival that Congress make the agency independent of the Department of Health and Human Services — similar to the Securities Exchange Commission, for example. With regulatory purview over products that represent a quarter of the U.S. economy, the group said the FDA is harmed by an unstable federal budget process and persistent political meddling. The group said they would issue a white paper on their proposal for the next administration. That’s another reason why Congress should postpone consideration of these bills until 2017.
PREPARING FOR PANDEMICS
During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, as many as 100 million people died — up to 5 percent of the world’s population. If a similar outbreak were to happen today, the death toll could reach 360 million, despite the availability of vaccines as well as modern antiviral and antibacterial drugs. The economic impact would also be devastating, resulting in a $3 trillion economic loss, or nearly 5 percent of global GDP.
Opponents sue to stop California’s vaccination law
Bill Gates Calls U.S. Drug Pricing System ‘Better Than Most’
Billionaire Bill Gates, whose foundation seeks to spread modern medicine through the developing world and wipe out diseases of the poor such as malaria, said he supports the U.S. drug pricing system even as politicians have intensified their criticism of high costs.
“The current system is better than most other systems one can imagine,” Gates said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “The drug companies are turning out miracles, and we need their R&D budgets to stay strong. They need to see the opportunity.”
The Rise of Private Equity and It’s Impact on the US Public Healthcare System
The private equity takeover of the U.S. economy has gone largely unnoticed. Since the 2008 financial crisis, private equity firms have gone from managing $1 trillion to managing $4.3 trillion — more than the value of Germany’s gross domestic product. And private equity is now in every corner of the economy: Blackstone is America’s largest landlord of rental houses. Fortress Investment Group is the nation’s largest bill collector. And private equity now runs all sorts of services that used to be under public control – including emergency services we all depend on.
But private equity isn’t accountable – not to the public, not even to public shareholders. It’s run by a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people who are getting richer and more powerful all the time. Today’s New York Times provides an important look.
HENRY KOTULA 