Biotechs find progress in vaccine market
[MHT] When it comes to vaccines, everyone now wants to get in on the action. That’s according to Paul Bogorad, a senior manager at pharmaceutical and biotechnology consultancy Putnam Associates in Burlington. Bogorad and other analysts say that the frenzy over H1N1 has heightened the public’s awareness of the difficulty of making vaccines and has intensified companies’ hunger to do it better.
But it wasn’t always so. In the 1970s and ’80s, companies raced to get out of the vaccine business because of the high manufacturing costs, the high chance of failure, and the threat of lawsuits if patients suffered adverse side effects. But then the federal government passed the Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in 1986, which created a pool of money for patients who experienced adverse effects and shielded companies from lawsuits. Advances in technology have driven manufacturing costs down. “And companies have seen that if a vaccine is on a government program, one doesn’t have to spend money to promote it,” Bogorad said.
U.S. rights group argues against human gene patent
[Reuters] Patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer should be declared invalid because they stifle the free flow of information and hamper research, lawyers told a New York judge on Tuesday.
A lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups last May posed a broad challenge to gene patenting and its outcome could have far reaching effects because one in five human genes are patented.
The specific case argued on Monday at Manhattan federal court concerned a patent on two genes held by Myriad Genetics (MYGN.O). Mutations on those genes are responsible for most cases of hereditary breast and ovarian cancers.
“(Myriad) uncovered a law of nature … and they deserve credit for having done so. But laws of nature are not patentable,” said Chris Hansen, an attorney with the ACLU.
But a lawyer for Myriad dismissed the litigation as a test case to “go after gene patents and the biotech industry as a whole” and said patents have a positive impact on human health because they promote innovation.
“This is not nature’s handiwork… this is the hard work of man,” said Brian Poissant, a lawyer for Myriad.
100 years after Flexner, AMA is still a force in med education
[AmedNews] Over these last seven months, I have received many letters, e-mails and texts from people who identify themselves as physicians and whose messages suggest that the AMA doesn’t do anything for them.
It’s a sad irony that they are unaware that their ability simply to practice medicine acceptable to the public is due to the role the American Medical Association has played for 163 years in medical education standards. It is a role that the AMA continues to play today.
In fact, one of the two driving forces behind the AMA’s creation in 1847 was the need for a common code of medical ethics and standards for medical education across the United States.
GlaxoSmithKline to share malaria research in hope of finding cure
[Timesonline] A database of more than 13,000 chemical compounds identified as having the potential to act against the malaria parasite is to be freely distributed to the world’s scientists to encourage a cure.
In a unusual move in the highly-competitive field of global pharmaceuticals, GlaxoSmithKline has decided to publish all data it has on the compounds to help speed the battle against malaria. It has spent the last year screening more than two million candidate chemicals in its library to pinpoint those with the most potential.
Andrew Witty, the company’s chief executive, will announce this morning at a conference in New York that the data will be freely disseminated to any scientist interested in taking on the challenge. GSK is also to provide “open lab” placements for 60 scientists at one of its main research laboratories in Spain, which has access to the latest hi-tech industrial processes.
A plan for Haiti: Haiti’s government cannot rebuild country. A temporary authority is needed [Economist]
[Economist] MORE than a week after the earth convulsed beneath it, Haiti has still to plumb the depths of suffering and want. The numbers are still only more-or-less informed guesses, but their magnitude is grim: perhaps 200,000 killed, 250,000 more injured and some 3m in desperate need of help. The generosity of the world’s response has also been profound. Barack Obama led the way, dispatching 16,000 American troops and marines, but others, from Europe to Brazil, Cuba, China and Israel, responded too. Immediate promises of aid added up to around nearly $1 billion.
The urgent task is to connect this supply of help with the demand. That is proving extraordinarily hard (see article). Seven days after the earthquake, the United Nations had got food to only 200,000 people. Lessons from other disasters are not always relevant to Haiti. The Asian tsunami, for example, struck a ribbon of remote, mainly rural, areas. The governments of the affected nations could lead the relief effort. But Haiti’s institutions were weak even before the disaster. Because the quake devastated the capital, both the government and the UN, which has been trying to build a state in Haiti since 2004, were decapitated, losing buildings and essential staff. So did many NGOs. The president, René Préval, and his cabinet have been reduced to meeting in a police station.
Into that vacuum stepped the United States. Inevitably the dispatch of marines, Black Hawks and an aircraft-carrier looked to some like an invasion (after all, they have been there before). A brief caricature of great-power prickliness ensued as the Americans took charge of the airport and seemed to some others to give priority to their own flights. But by mid-week the airport was receiving three times as many flights as it did before the earthquake. The American forces are well-equipped for the vital task of setting up a supply chain for aid. That is what they are doing under a sensible division of labour eventually hammered out (the Brazilian-led UN peacekeeping force remains in charge of security, and the UN will co-ordinate the aid effort). Certainly most ordinary Haitians seemed pleased to see the Americans.
They are just desperate for water, food, fuel, medicines and shelter. Contrary to some reports, there were only isolated cases of looting and fighting. But delay and disarray has cost many lives. The longer it lasts, the more likely that desperation turns to violence. The UN called for more peacekeepers. Brazil offered 800; it may take weeks to muster the rest. If ever a situatio
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