“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
— William Wilberforce
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has provided the University of Maryland with a $3.5 million dollar grant to develop a vaccine for Lyme disease.1 Principal investigators Utal Pal, PhD, professor at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Matthias Schnell, PhD, director […]
On Sept. 8, 2020, nine pharmaceutical companies working on COVID-19 vaccines signed a pledge saying they would not submit their experimental vaccines to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unless they were shown to be both safe and efficacious in the Phase 3 human clinical trials.1 2 3 4 5 The pledge, signed by […]
Story Highlights A shark conservation group is calling for alternatives to using squalene harvested from the liver of sharks as an adjuvant in COVID-19 vaccine candidates. Shark conservation advocates estimate that an additional 500,000 sharks will be killed every year should squalene adjuvanted coronavirus vaccines become licensed for global general use. The group is asking […]
An 11-year-old girl died on Aug. 30, 2020 after receiving an HPV (human papillomavirus infection) vaccine for cervical cancer at her school in Maha Rat, Thailand. It is unclear how much time elapsed between the time the girl was vaccinated and her death. It is also not clear if the death was caused by the […]
In the 2020 Legislative session, the Virginia Legislature passed H.B.1090, a bill that amended a law requiring children attending public and private schools in the state to receive vaccines (§ 32.1-46. Immunization of patients against certain diseases).1 Virginia Delegate Patrick Hope (D-Arlington) was the lead sponsor of H.B. 1090 introduced on Jan. 8, 2020, which […]
Story Highlights GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur are partnering to develop an experimental COVID-19 vaccine. The two global vaccine manufacturers are using existing recombinant DNA vaccine technology and a squalene adjuvant for their COVID-19 vaccine. Clinical trials are scheduled to begin in the second half of 2020 and, if successful, the vaccine will be available in […]
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) told Americans on Apr. 1, 2020 that modeling reports suggested COVID-19 infections could eventually “kill 100,000 to 240,000 Americans,”1 2 3 which was considerably less than the worst case 1.7 million mortality figure the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) […]
China’s National Medical Products Administration has announced that two Chinese pharmaceutical companies, Walvax Biotechnology and Innovax, have been approved to start selling their own version of drugs previously available only through global pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline.1 Cecolin, developed by Innovax, will compete in the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) arena against Merck’s Gardasil and […]
As vaccine-related bills are being introduced into state legislatures this month, a bill (HB1090) has been proposed in the Virginia legislature to require school children to receive every dose of all current and future vaccines added to the recommended childhood vaccine schedule by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) appointed by the U.S. Centers […]
A recent report by Fortune Business Insights projects the value of the world market for vaccines to reach $93.08 billion by 2026, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.7 percent during the forecast period.1 One of the main drivers of the vaccine market is the need for greater supplies of vaccines, given stricter government […]