“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”
— William Wilberforce
Story Highlights Researchers at Texas A&M University and five other academic institutions have begun a phase 4 clinical trial re-purposing a live attenuated tuberculosis vaccine to treat COVID-19. The researchers believe that the TICE® BCG vaccine, which is licensed to prevent and treat bladder cancer, may help mitigate the severity of COVID-19. The research team […]
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) […]
Julie Gerberding, MD, who served as director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 2002 to 2009,1 2 and joined Merck & Co. as president of Merck Vaccines division in January 2010,3 4 recently sold 102,073 shares of her Merck stock for approximately $$9.119 million. This represented just under half of […]
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 […]
Vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) of the United Kingdom has partnered with Viome, a gut microbiome test company in Seattle, Washington to better understand bacteria that live in the digestive tract and the role they play in the body’s immune system response.1 According to Emmanuel Hanon, senior vice president for research and development at GSK Vaccines, […]
Opinion | Bills to either remove or restrict vaccine exemptions have been filed across the U.S. in 2019. One of the most striking was New York’s A2371, which eliminated the religious exemption to vaccination in one day, with no public hearings. Soon after, New York state health officials eliminated the ability of doctors to grant medical […]
Illinois has become the first state to pass a law requiring health insurance companies to cover the cost of medically necessary EpiPen injectors. This is big news in an era when so many families face the daily threat of a potentially deadly allergic reaction. Signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker, the new law will take effect […]
On Aug. 6, 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement saying that Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG submitted a biologics license application (BLA) for the spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) gene therapy Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi) with manipulated data and failed to inform regulators until June 28, 2019—more than a month after the […]