Category Archives: healthcare

Garbage Human Martin Shkreli Once Again Plans To Massively Raise Cost Of Lifesaving Drug: SFist

Much reviled pharma guy Martin Shkreli has yet again revealed himself to be operating from a place of questionable morality. The 70 percent owner of South San Francisco-based KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc. has announced plans to increase the two-month treatment price of a lifesaving drug from $100 to an estimated $80,000.Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals was in the news earlier this year, when the founder announced he would raise the price of a drug used by AIDS patients to treat parasitic infections from $13.50 to $750 per pill.Tech Times notes that the more recently proposed price increase, announced in an investor conference call last week, would target a drug used to treat Chagas disease, a particular parasitic infection that can be fatal.The two-month course of the drug, benznidazole, is currently available at the cost of $50 to $100 in Latin America, notes the Times, but at present is only available in the United States directly from the Centers for Disease Control (the CDC makes the drug available for free).Shkreli’s move, suggests the New York Times, is part of a larger scheme to acquire a FDA voucher for expediting the review process of another drug. By bringing benznidazole to the US commercial market, albeit at an exorbitant rate, Shkreli would be eligible for a voucher originally intended as a reward to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for neglected diseases. His company could then sell this voucher (vouchers have sold for as much as $350 million, notes the New York Times) to another pharmaceutical company.“It’s caused a lot of angst in the Chagas community,” says Dr. Sheba Meymandi, the director of a Chagas treatment center. “Everyone’s in an uproar.”It is estimated that 300,000 people in the United States suffer the disease.

Source: Garbage Human Martin Shkreli Once Again Plans To Massively Raise Cost Of Lifesaving Drug: SFist

Find a Clinic | Travelers’ Health | CDC

Visit a health care provider (such as a doctor, nurse, or pharmacist) to get any vaccines, medicines, and advice you need before your trip. Going at least 4–6 weeks before you travel is best, so that any vaccines you need have time to take effect. (For more information, visit See a Doctor Before You Travel.) The resources below can help you find pre-travel care.

Source: Find a Clinic | Travelers’ Health | CDC

Zika Virus in Central America – Watch – Level 1, Practice Usual Precautions – Travel Health Notices | Travelers’ Health | CDC

What is the current situation?

In November 2015, the first local transmission of Zika virus infection in Central America was reported in El Salvador. Local transmission means that mosquitoes in the area have been infected with Zika virus and are spreading it to people. Zika virus is now being reported in other countries in Central America.As of December 10, 2015, the following Central American countries have reported cases of Zika virus:

  • El Salvador
  • Guatemala
  • Panama

CDC recommends that travelers to Central America protect themselves from mosquito bites. The Ministry of Health of Brazil is concerned about a possible association between the Zika virus outbreak and increased numbers of babies born with birth defects. For this reason, pregnant women should take extra precautions to avoid mosquito bites.

Source: Zika Virus in Central America – Watch – Level 1, Practice Usual Precautions – Travel Health Notices | Travelers’ Health | CDC

Exposure to toxic chemicals correlates with limited vaccine response | Vaccine News – Big Oops! C#@p!

Scientists from the University of Rochester (UR) Environmental Health Sciences Center recently conducted a study that suggests having toxic chemical exposure in early life can inhibit a baby’s vaccine response.

Source: Exposure to toxic chemicals correlates with limited vaccine response | Vaccine News

Decriminalizing Drugs: When Treatment Replaces Prison – The New York Times

With those caveats, here’s what’s happened in Portugal:Overdose deaths — down by 72 percent.Drug-induced deaths dropped from 78 in 2001, to 22 in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available. In 2012 Portugal had three overdose deaths per million people ages 15 to 64, the second-lowest number in Europe after Romania, while the European average was 17.2 per million.   The United States, by contrast, had about 200 overdose deaths per million in 2013, and the number has risen since then.Spread of H.I.V. — down by 94 percent.In 2001, 1,016 new H.I.V. infections were reported in Portugal. In 2012, there were 56. This is one of the largest drops in Europe.Drug crime and imprisonment — down, by definition.In 2000, drug offenders comprised 43 percent (pdf, Vol 1 p 141) of those sentenced to prison. Now drug-related offenders are at 24 percent — and they are the ones you want in jail: dealers and traffickers, not users. Drug-related crime — offenses committed while high, or to get money for drugs — is also down.Drug use — mixedThe number of people who report having used any drug in the past year (overwhelmingly cannabis) rose slightly until 2007, according to a national survey (pdf, page 103) carried out in 2001, 2007 and 2012. Then use dropped — by a total of 27 percent from 2001 to 2012.   Heroin use followed a similar pattern — slightly up, and then sharply down. In this, Portugal is similar to other European countries. Past-year heroin use is now statistically close to zero.

Source: Decriminalizing Drugs: When Treatment Replaces Prison – The New York Times

California water nuked – what about crops, as well as people?

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — In a trailer park tucked among irrigated orchards that help make California’s San Joaquin Valley the richest farm region in the world, 16-year-old Giselle Alvarez, one of the few English-speakers in the community of farmworkers, puzzles over the notices posted on front doors: There’s a danger in their drinking water.Uranium, the notices warn, tests at a level considered unsafe by federal and state standards. The law requires the park’s owners to post the warnings. But they are awkwardly worded and in English, a language few of the park’s dozens of Spanish-speaking families can read.”It says you can drink the water – but if you drink the water over a period of time, you can get cancer,” said Alvarez, whose working-class family has no choice but keep drinking and cooking with the tainted tap water daily, as they have since Alvarez was just learning to walk. “They really don’t explain.”Uranium, the stuff of nuclear fuel for power plants and atom bombs, increasingly is showing in drinking water systems in major farming regions of the U.S. West – a naturally occurring but unexpected byproduct of irrigation, of drought, and of the overpumping of natural underground water reserves.An Associated Press investigation in California’s central farm valleys – along with the U.S. Central Plains, among the areas most affected – found authorities are doing little to inform the public at large of the growing risk.That includes the one out of four families on private wells in this farm valley who, unknowingly, are drinking dangerous amounts of uranium, researchers determined this year and last. Government authorities say long-term exposure to uranium can damage kidneys and raise cancer risks, and scientists say it can have other harmful effects.In this swath of farmland, roughly 250 miles long and encompassing major cities, up to one in 10 public water systems have raw drinking water with uranium levels that exceed federal and state safety standards, the U.S. Geological Survey has found.More broadly, nearly 2 million people in California’s Central Valley and in the U.S. Midwest live within a half-mile of groundwater containing uranium over the safety standards, University of Nebraska researchers said in a study published in September.Everything from state agencies to tiny rural schools are scrambling to deal with hundreds of tainted public wells – more regulated than private wells under safe-drinking-water laws.That includes water wells at the Westport Elementary School, where 450 children from rural families study outside the Central California farm hub of Modesto.At Westport’s playground, schoolchildren take a break from tether ball to sip from fountains marked with Spanish and English placards: “SAFE TO DRINK.”The school, which draws on its own wells for its drinking fountains, sinks and cafeteria, is one of about 10 water systems in the farm region that have installed uranium removal facilities in recent years. Prices range from $65,000 for the smallest system to the millions of dollars.Just off Westport’s playground, a school maintenance chief jangles the keys to the school’s treatment operation, locked in a shed the size of a garage. Inside, a system of tubes, dials and canisters resembling large scuba tanks removes up to a pound a year of uranium from the school’s wells.The uranium gleaned from the school’s well water and other Central California water systems is handled like the nuclear material it is – taken away by workers in masks, gloves and other protective garments, said Ron Dollar, a vice president at Water Remediation Technology, a Colorado-based firm.It is then processed into nuclear fuel for power plants, Dollar said.

Source: News from The Associated Press

The GOP Just Lost the Senate | Dame Magazine

When the election really heats up, you can be sure that this vote on freezing Planned Parenthood funding—as well eliminating parts of Obamacare— will become a major issue. While the Affordable Care Act may not be terribly popular among the general population, hundreds of thousands have received better insurance coverage through the plans, and the biggest criticism is just that the administration didn’t go far enough when it comes to regulating the industry and making healthcare more affordable. As for Planned Parenthood, despite the ongoing criticism and attacks from the right wing, approximately 60 percent of voters still want the organization to continue being funded.The anti-abortion movement is pointing to the Planned Parenthood defunding vote as a sign of changing momentum. Alliance Defending Freedom notes in a press release that in 2011 a defunding vote failed the Senate 42 to 58, a sign of how far the right has progressed that now a defunding bill actually passed the Senate instead. But even their own voting numbers show that the momentum they claim isn’t there. In fact, there more votes against the defunding measure in December than there were in August, when the Senate previously voted against funding but could not get the 60 votes needed for its passage. This is even truer once you take into consideration that Majority Leader McConnell switched his nay vote to a yea since it wasn’t needed as a procedural move this time.American voters support Planned Parenthood, and that support will no doubt continue even as the organization is attacked both politically and physically. Thankfully, the funding will remain intact thanks to President Obama, who will veto the bill. And when November comes around, those right-wing-pandering senators may very well see just how much the mainstream voters disagree—and likely lose their majority in the process.

Source: The GOP Just Lost the Senate | Dame Magazine

Anya Groner: The Public Is Us – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics {Fear and Infectious Diseases}

Fear isn’t useless. It’s essential that we maintain the tension between individual liberties and community health, and expressing fears, particularly competing fears, is one way that’s done. Public skepticism helps ensure decision-makers do enough to minimize disease without abusing power or diminishing civil liberties. Still, it’s vital to keep paranoia in check. The theorist Eve Sedgwick posits that, like typhoid and measles, paranoia is communicable. We pass it along to those we interact with. This happened when the media responded to Dr. Spencer’s Ebola infection and it continues to happen in the ongoing debate about childhood vaccinations and measles. Paranoia distorts decision-making, which is part of the reason that a hundred years after Mary Mallon’s isolation began on North Brother Island, we still struggle to conceptualize the relationship between community and individual health. When it comes to disease, whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re part of the public. The public isn’t an abstraction. It’s us.

Source: Anya Groner: The Public Is Us – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

Former President Jimmy Carter Says He Is Free of Cancer – The New York Times

The disease is often accompanied by a poor prognosis, but experts said Mr. Carter appeared to have benefited from early detection. He began an innovative treatment regimen in August that involved a highly targeted form of radiation therapy and pembrolizumab, which has been shown to help some melanoma patients live months or even years longer than expected.In November, Mr. Carter said he was responding well to the treatment and that the cancer was showing no signs of further growth.His announcement on Sunday was reported in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mr. Carter was said to have told the Sunday school class he was teaching at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown Plains, Ga., according to the newspaper.Jill Stuckey, a close friend of the Carters and a church member, told the newspaper that about 350 people, many of them visitors, were in attendance on Sunday.“The church, everybody here, just erupted in applause,” she said.Mr. Carter is the second-oldest living president, behind George H. W. Bush, the 41st commander-in-chief, who is also 91 but almost three months older than Mr. Carter.

Source: Former President Jimmy Carter Says He Is Free of Cancer – The New York Times

Humans of New York

“He cried a lot as a baby. By the age of two he wasn’t speaking or eating. Our local doctor didn’t know what was wrong, but we found a good doctor in Damascus, and he told us that our son had autism. The doctor recommended a therapist. On the first day of therapy, he was too scared to even enter the office. But after a few months of treatment, he was able to concentrate and even write the alphabet. He went to therapy every week for the next few years. It was really helping him. He was learning so many things. But when the war came, the roads were closed. We couldn’t go to therapy anymore. The bombs affected him very badly. He gets scared easily. He’s even afraid of the dark. But the bombs scared him very much. He hasn’t been to therapy for years. We have no money or insurance here in Turkey. We are very isolated. It seems that all the progress has been undone. He used to want to learn. He used to get his books out of the bag and bring them to us. But now he just throws them away. He can’t sit still. I’m afraid that we’ve lost too much time now. But my husband is optimistic. He thinks that we will find the right doctor in America.”

Source: Humans of New York