AI Or Gain-Of-Function Research: Which Is More Dangerous?
AI scientists think AI should be regulated because it might be dangerous. Virologists working to create deadly viruses think they can regulate themselves. Hmm. (Source: Forbes.com Healthcare News)
Source: Forbes.com Healthcare News - May 30, 2023 Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Steven Salzberg, Contributor Tags: Healthcare /healthcare Innovation /innovation standard Source Type: news
The COVID-19 virus mutated to outsmart key antibody treatments. Better ones are coming
In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and other effective drugs were elusive, monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) emerged as a lifesaving treatment. But now, 3 years later, all the approvals for COVID-19–fighting antibodies have been rescinded in the United States, as mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus have left the drugs—which target parts of the original virus—ineffective.
Researchers around the globe are now trying to revive antibody treatments by redesigning them to take aim at targets that are less prone to mutation. “There are new approaches that present a much more challenging task for the virus to evade,”...
Source: ScienceNOW - May 24, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Committee of MPs, former judges to examine firing of 2 National Microbiology Lab scientists
Members from all official parties in the House of Commons and three former judges will sit on a new ad hoc committee to look into the controversial firing of two scientists from Canada's top virology lab in Winnipeg. (Source: CBC | Health)
Source: CBC | Health - May 17, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: News/Politics Source Type: news
Controversial coronavirus research gets new money under Biden
A research grant is back on track after a yearslong political battle that halted a coronavirus study in 2020. During his time in office, former president Donald Trump implied that the virus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China rather than a wet market. China maintains that…#donaldtrump #wuhan #republicans #trump #nih #anthonyfauci #ecohealthalliance #wiv #barackobama #science (Source: Reuters: Health)
Source: Reuters: Health - May 9, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
NIH restarts bat virus grant suspended 3 years ago by Trump
Three years after then-President Donald Trump pressured the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to suspend a research grant to a U.S. group studying bat coronaviruses with partners in China, the agency has restarted the award.
The new 4-year grant is a stripped-down version of the original grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization in New York City, providing $576,000 per year. That 2014 award included funding for controversial experiments that mixed parts of different bat viruses related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the coronavirus that sparked a global outbreak in 2002–04, ...
Source: ScienceNOW - May 8, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Pandemic emergencies grind to a halt
The World Health Organization (WHO) today declared an end to the emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, days ahead of when a similar emergency in the United States is also set to expire. Both moves are likely to usher the world into a new phase of disease monitoring with a scaling back of surveillance and available resources to fight COVID-19.
WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a press conference today in Geneva that WHO’s emergency committee met yesterday and recommended ending the Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), the highest alert level WHO can declare, that ...
Source: ScienceNOW - May 5, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
Covid unlikely to overwhelm hospitals: Experts
"In fact, waste water surveillance in Bengaluru has shown that we went through a silent outbreak. Infections happened, but hospitals didn't fill up," said Virologist Shahid Jameel of the University of Oxford. "This shows vaccines and prior infections protect and the virus is pretty much endemic." (Source: The Economic Times)
Source: The Economic Times - May 3, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
Why It Took So Long to Finally Get an RSV Vaccine
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) can dangerously compromise breathing, especially for infants and the elderly. But there has been no vaccine to prevent it—until today. On May 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first vaccine against RSV, from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), to prevent respiratory disease in people ages 60 and older. The Centers for Disease Control’s vaccine committee will make formal recommendations in June about who should receive the vaccine, but GSK says it currently has enough doses to vaccinate eligible people beginning this fall.
In studies involving 25,000 people that GSK...
Source: TIME: Health - May 3, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Alice Park Tags: Uncategorized Drugs healthscienceclimate Source Type: news
Scientist Revisits Data on Raccoon Dogs and Covid, Stressing the Unknowns
After analyzing genetic data swabbed from a Wuhan market in early 2020, a virologist said it was unclear if animals for sale there had been infected. (Source: NYT Health)
Source: NYT Health - April 29, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Benjamin Mueller Tags: Genetics and Heredity Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Wildlife Trade and Poaching Raccoon Dogs Animals Research your-feed-science Coronavirus Risks and Safety Concerns Source Type: news
Fresh pandemic fears as virologists discover bird flu spreads 'efficiently' in ferrets
Experts called the discovery 'very concerning', claiming it shows the pathogen is one step closer to infecting humans. It is the first study confirming it can spread between mammals. (Source: the Mail online | Health)
Source: the Mail online | Health - April 26, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
[Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR] Roche reports strong sales growth in base business of both divisions in the first quarter; Group sales decline due to expected drop in demand for COVID-19 tests
As expected, significantly lower demand for COVID-19 tests leads to a decrease inGroup sales (-3%1 at constant exchange rates [CER] and -7% in Swiss francs); excluding this effect, Group sales grow 8%Pharmaceuticals Divisionsales up 9%; strong demand for newer medicines; Vabysmo for severe eye diseases is already the strongest growth driverDiagnostics Division base business grows 4%, whiledivisional salesare 28% lower due to exceptionally high demand for COVID-19 tests in the first quarter of 2022Highlights in the first quarter:US approval of Polivy (first-line treatment for an aggressive form of blood cancer)EU approva...
Source: Roche Investor Update - April 26, 2023 Category: Pharmaceuticals Source Type: news
[Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR] Roche reports strong sales growth in base business of both divisions in the first quarter; Group sales decline due to expected drop in demand for COVID-19 tests
Basel, 26 April 2023As expected, significantly lower demand for COVID-19 tests leads to a decrease inGroup sales (-3%1 at constant exchange rates [CER] and -7% in Swiss francs); excluding this effect, Group sales grow 8%Pharmaceuticals Divisionsales up 9%; strong demand for newer medicines; Vabysmo for severe eye diseases is already the strongest growth driverDiagnostics Division base business grows 4%, whiledivisional salesare 28% lower due to exceptionally high demand for COVID-19 tests in the first quarter of 2022Highlights in the first quarter:US approval of Polivy (first-line treatment for an aggressive form of blo...
Source: Roche Media News - April 26, 2023 Category: Pharmaceuticals Source Type: news
Switching to B/F/TAF in Virologically Suppressed HIV Switching to B/F/TAF in Virologically Suppressed HIV
Should a switch to this regimen be considered in virologically suppressed people living with HIV?HIV Medicine (Source: Medscape Today Headlines)
Source: Medscape Today Headlines - April 25, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Tags: HIV/AIDS Journal Article Source Type: news
China SHOULD have had a Covid jab before pandemic struck, expert says
Scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology possessed a bat virus so similar to Covid that they could and should have helped develop an early vaccine before the pandemic, an expert says. (Source: the Mail online | Health)
Source: the Mail online | Health - April 20, 2023 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news
The ‘invented persona’ behind a key pandemic database
When Jeremy Kamil started to sequence samples of the rapidly spreading pandemic coronavirus in the spring of 2020, it was clear where he should deposit the genetic data: in
GISAID
, a long-running database for influenza genomes that had established itself as the go-to repository for SARS-CoV-2 as well.
Kamil, a virologist at Louisiana State University’s (LSU’s) Health Sciences Center Shreveport, says he quickly struck up a friendly relationship with a Steven Meyers, who used a gisaid.org email address. The two often exchanged emails and talked on the phone, sometimes for hours, about the pandemic and da...
Source: ScienceNOW - April 19, 2023 Category: Science Source Type: news
