Reuters – Pharmaceutical firms need incentives, including lucrative patents, to keep creating drugs and vaccines against emergent threats such as the H1N1 influenza pandemic, the World Health Organization’s head said on Tuesday.
AFP – World Health Organisation chief Margaret Chan on Tuesday warned that poverty will prevent some countries from gaining access to swine flu vaccines, as she criticised a bias in favour of richer nations.
AP – The U.S. Surgeon General has been described as “the nation’s doctor,” a “national nanny” and the person who puts warning labels on cigarette packs. But lately, the position has been mostly called something else: invisible.
AFP – Australia has scrambled to immunise its entire population against swine flu if necessary as Asia-Pacific’s worst-hit nation responded to what one health official called an “unstoppable” pandemic.
Reuters – Saying the new H1N1 virus is “unstoppable”, the World Health Organization gave drug makers a full go-ahead to manufacture vaccines against the pandemic influenza strain on Monday and said healthcare workers should be the first to get one.
Reuters – New tests assessing brain changes and body chemistry are showing promise at diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease in its earliest stages, aiding the search for new drugs, researchers said on Tuesday.
AP – British doctors designed a radical solution to save a girl with major heart problems in 1995: they implanted a donor heart directly onto her own failing heart.
Reuters – Biotechnology medicines would be protected from cheaper rivals for 12 years under a plan that cleared a U.S. Senate committee on Monday.
HealthDay – SUNDAY, July 12 (HealthDay News) — Two trials that looked at whether
the omega-3 fatty acid DHA might treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease have
produced mixed results.
HealthDay – SUNDAY, July 12 (HealthDay News) — A gene that may offer a highly
accurate prediction of the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and the
age at which people will begin to show symptoms has been identified by
U.S. researchers.