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By Category: Agents & Toxins

Virus-Hunting In Africa

(Wall Street Journal) Global health is big business nowadays. The sums can be enormous, but the health problems in the developing world are even larger, often seeming intractable. Health care everywhere involves stark economic and political choices, but in the developing world these may involve such basic questions as whether to build a hospital or Read More »

June 6, 2012
| Filed under Africa, North America, Agents & Toxins, Countermeasures, International, Policy & Initiatives, Public Health, and Research
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Hong Kong H5 infection raises alert level

(CIDRAP News) Hong Kong health officials raised the pandemic influenza response level from alert to serious today after one of the local hospitals confirmed an H5 infection in a boy from China’s Guandong province. In a statement, Hong Kong’s Center for Health Protection (CHP) said the 2-year-old boy came down with a fever and runny Read More »

June 4, 2012
| Filed under Asia/Pacific, Agents & Toxins, and Public Health
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Anthrax vaccine – To the victor, the spoils

(Scientific American) In my last post, we began to play “Follow the Money” to better understand the history of the anthrax vaccine and the current proposal to test the vaccine on children. Conflicts of Interest-Case Study: Major issues with the anthrax vaccine include safety, conflicts of interest and the lobbying power of the drug developer. Read More »

May 31, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Countermeasures, Policy & Initiatives, and Public Health
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Senators ask downgrade of brucellosis pathogen

(Billings Gazette) Montana’s senators have stepped into the Yellowstone bison fray by requesting that two federal agencies downgrade the pathogen that causes brucellosis to ease research into a vaccine. The disease, carried by the park’s bison and now prevalent in some western Montana elk, can cause cattle to abort.

May 30, 2012
| Filed under North America, Agents & Toxins, Policy & Initiatives, and Research
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New study shows why swine flu virus develops drug resistance

(University of Bristol) Professor Adrian Mulholland and Dr Christopher Woods from Bristol’s School of Chemistry, together with colleagues in Thailand, used graphics processing units (GPUs) to simulate the molecular processes that take place when these drugs are used to treat the H1N1-2009 strain of influenza – commonly known as ‘swine flu’. Their results, published today Read More »