Last week, a pharmaceutical company made a novel and potentially groundbreaking decision: GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), announced that it would release the data from all of its clinical trials to researchers, who could use the information from GSK’s successes and failures in drug development to independently make new medical and pharmaceutical discoveries. This is the first time a […]
A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that as many as one in ten cases of tuberculosis in China is multi-drug-resistant, with eight percent of those cases being extensively drug-resistant (XDR). One in four cases is resistant to at least one drug. Although China has a relatively low prevalence rate (108 […]
Last week, I discussed the breaking news of an emerging strain of “totally drug resistant” tuberculosis (TDR-TB)* in Mumbai. This week, the Indian government denied the findings, arguing that the twelve cases were in fact extensively drug resistant (XDR, not “extremely,” as I wrote previously). The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare stated that nine […]
I can’t believe a new year has come upon us so quickly. Unsurprisingly, there are already global health issues cropping up. In perhaps the most troubling news, India has reported that there are at least 12 cases of totally drug resistant tuberculosis in the country. President Obama signed a ban on US government funding for […]
I recently published a piece for PlusNews about the Tuberculosis epidemic that has long been endemic in Haiti and could worsen with the living situations of over a million Haitians still living in tents ten months after the January 12 earthquake. As with most issues in post-quake Haiti, the earthquake merely brought to light and […]
I went to an interesting talk last night by Dr. Anthony Fauci. He is the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Foreign Policy Association initiated a new series with his talk: the Dame Jillian Sackler Distinguished Lecture. (She was married to Arthur Sackler, the research psychiatrist and art patron.) Dr. […]