[Boston Globe]- After years of focusing on common diseases afflicting mostly middle-class and affluent patients, drug companies are devoting more resources to rare disorders, illnesses that are prevalent in the developing world, and medical conditions that affect minority populations in rich countries.
The trend, which is slowly gaining momentum, is being driven by several factors, including [...]

[Washington Post]  Federal law protects pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits by parents who claim that vaccines harmed their children, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
The court ruled 6 to 2 that going before a special tribunal set up by Congress is the only way parents can be compensated for the negative side effects that in rare instances [...]

[NYTimes] On Monday, in a Manhattan town house that once belonged to polio’s most famous victim, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bill Gates made an appeal for one more big push to wipe out world polio.
Although that battle began in 1985 and Mr. Gates started making regular donations to it only in 2005, he has emerged in [...]

[BioEdge] There is no human right to assisted suicide, the European Court of Human Rights has declared, in a unanimous verdict.

The background to this important judgement is in Switzerland. A 57-year-old Swiss national, Ernst G. Haas, felt that he could no longer live a dignified life after battling a serious bipolar affective disorder for 20 years. [...]

[AP] China’s plans to vaccinate 100 million children and come a step closer to eradicating measles has set off a popular outcry that highlights widening public distrust of the authoritarian government after repeated health scandals.

Since the Health Ministry announced the World Health Organization-backed measles vaccination plan last week, authorities have been flooded with queries and [...]

[NYTimes] Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline will supply hundreds of millions of doses of their pneumonia vaccines to the world’s poorest countries at heavily discounted prices under a novel agreement announced Tuesday.
But at least one expert maintains that the prices are still too high.
The deal was announced by the GAVI Alliance, a nonprofit organization, which estimated the [...]

A third man has died of pneumonic plague in north-western China where a town of more than 10,000 people has been sealed off, officials say.

 
[BBC] The 64-year-old man was a neighbor of the first two people to die from the plague in Ziketan in Qinghai Province.
Police have set up checkpoints around Ziketan, as medics are [...]

GENEVA, June 11 [Reuters] – The World Health Organisation was poised on Thursday to declare that the new H1N1 virus has caused the first influenza pandemic in more than 40 years, health sources said on Thursday.
The move will trigger heightened health measures in the WHO’s 193 member states as authorities brace for the worldwide spread [...]

When a patient tests HIV-positive, a doctor has to navigate state law and medical ethics. It can be a rocky path. My patient, a 26-year-old native of the Dominican Republic, had been seeing me for only a few months when I determined that he had been infected with HIV. He didn’t seem surprised but was [...]