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An ancient concoction for eye infections seems to really work. The potion, which contains cattle bile, kills the "superbug" methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, researchers at Britain's University of Nottingham report. In fact, it worked better than the current gold standard for MRSA infections of the flesh, the antibiotic vancomycin, an expert at Texas Tech University found. Now researchers are working to see just what's in the salve that kills germs so effectively. It started with a joint project by two wildly different departments at the University of Nottingham. Dr. Christina Lee, an Anglo-Saxon expert in the School of English,...

FULL TITLE: FDA Approves Merck's HPV Vaccine, GARDASIL®9, to Prevent Cancers and Other Diseases Caused by Nine HPV types – Including Types that Cause About 90% of Cervical Cancer Cases KENILWORTH, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Merck (NYSE:MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved GARDASIL®9 (Human Papillomavirus 9-valent Vaccine, Recombinant), Merck’s 9-valent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, for use in girls and young women 9 to 26 years of age for the prevention of cervical, vulvar, vaginal, and anal cancers caused by HPV types 16, 18, 31, 33, 45, 52 and...

Does the FDA have its own independent laboratories or does it farm out the lab testing of drugs to the pharmaceutical companies themselves? I have been unable to find out this information. In other words, does the FDA approval process rely upon completely independent governmentally operated labs? Or does the FDA depend upon test results provided by the pharmaceutical companies themselves? SANDY KRAMER, Ph.D.

Andy Stern wasn’t kidding when he publicly stated the most famous rallying cry of Communism:[1] Stern professed, “Workers of the World Unite? It’s not just a slogan anymore.” Snip SIGA Technologies, Inc. is a company specializing in the development of pharmaceutical agents to combat bio-warfare pathogens and it was announced on June 21, 2010 that Andy Stern is joining SIGA’s Board of Directors. But wait, it gets even better… SIGA is also a Federal contractor for the government. For a list of SIGA’s contracts with the Federal government, go to: http://www.usaspending.gov/search?query=&searchtype=JTdFZnElM0Q…. SNIP Without question, Andy Stern’s new position at SIGA...

The Obama administration has failed us. With that in mind, potential treatments/vaccines for Ebola are being worked on and tested as we speak, and despite the lack of ability to pay for any potential vaccine on the part of almost all western Africans, pharmaceutical companies should develop said vaccine(s) (if at all possible) and distribute them free of cost to those who cannot afford them. While I do support huge profits to be made by pharmaceutical companies, I believe that there are exceptions to the rule, and I do believe that this is the time and instance for this very...

Pharmaceutical companies say the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) new social media rules would have a "chilling" effect on the industry and leave consumers in the dark.The FDA in June released draft guidelines for how drug firms should use social networks like Facebook and Twitter. But pharmaceutical companies are concerned the FDA would hold them responsible for misinformation about their products posted online by third parties that the companies have little to no control over. They say the rules would discourage them from interacting on social networks, leaving consumers without useful information about their products."Given the extraordinary growth of the...

NORRISTOWN, Pa. (CBS) — A major pharmaceutical company is planning another round of layoffs that again will hit Montgomery County hard. On the heels of more than 650 job cuts at its West Point manufacturing and research plant in late 2013 and earlier this year, Merck plans to let go another 600 employees by the end of August. The company has already filed notices with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor which says the jobs are being cut in North Wales and Lansdale. County Commissioner Josh Shapiro is disappointed with the news, but says they’re working to help those affected.

It’s called the “little pink pill,” a tiny tablet that could have a huge impact on treating female sexual dysfunction. If it’s approved, it would become the first drug of its kind on the market. But that’s a big IF. The drug Flibanserin is locked in a heated battle for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, raising controversial questions about why there are so many sexual enhancement drugs available for men and zero for women. Cindy Whitehead, the founder and COO of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, a Raleigh, North Carolina-based company focused on producing only Flibanserin, has been fighting for...

Given the huge costs of bringing a drug to market, and the ticking clock of a drug’s patent protection, it is easy to understand Big Pharma’s current fascination with mergers. A case in point is the recently abandoned deal between Pfizer and UK-based AstraZeneca. Among other things, Pfizer was interested in the considerable tax savings of reincorporating in Britain; gaining access to cash “parked” overseas; and the many drugs in AstraZeneca’s developmental pipeline. However, it was no secret that Pfizer would have cut R&D budgets, as well as employment. Indeed, on May 13, Ian Read, Pfizer’s chairman and CEO told...

Anti-Capitalism: You'd think that after ObamaCare's chaotic launch, premium rate shocks, subsidy foul-ups and costly ad hoc changes, the insurance industry would attack the law. Instead, it's slamming the drug industry. "Drugmakers have no straight-face explanation to justify the increasingly astronomical prices they have been charging for their medications," complains one of numerous public relations communications sent recently by the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. The group has called drug prices "unsustainable" and accused the industry of "price gouging." The focus of the industry's fury at the moment is Sovaldi, a breakthrough treatment that can cure Hepatitis C,...

The latest bad news concerns one more of the ill-fated thiazolidinediones (TZDs). This class of drugs was introduced in the late 1990s, and includes Avandia, Actos, and Rezulin. TZDs are PPAR-gamma agonists, meaning that they activate peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors, especially the “gamma” receptor. Such activation affects certain metabolic processes, and among other things, insulin resistance is reduced. Rezulin—notoriously fast-tracked by FDA—was withdrawn from the market in 2000, in the wake of scores of liver failures and deaths. Pfizer, the manufacturer, was on the hook for upwards of $750 million in damages. At the time, Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of FDA’s...

Millions of fake pills from China, some with no active ingredients and others with the wrong contents, have been uncovered and confiscated by customs officers in France. ... “Drug research in China has fallen under a cloud since 2006 because 13 of the top 20 global drug makers have set up research and development centers in China. Yes, it’s cheaper to do research there, but, as one auditor said, ‘with cheaper research comes greater risk,’” she wrote. ... There also are whole factories in China with up to 15,000 people employed for the purpose of counterfeiting products.

imee Hardy says her son is in agony. He has battled cancer on and off, and now he's in jeopardy again due to complications from a bone marrow transplant. Doctors believe Brincidofovir could save his life, but the maker of the drug won't provide it. Chimerix is the company that makes Brincidofovir. They're facing a major ethical dilemma because they say there are hundreds if not thousands of people who need it, but if they give it to patients like Josh, it will slow down their efforts to make it widely available. They hope that will happen in 2016 if...

We have a tendency in our society to take our drinking water for granted and assume that water contamination will be taken care of by our local authorities. We need to change the way we think in this regard because budgets for water treatment are drying up and the use of recycled water is now becoming more common. We can no longer just think of water as a gift from Mother Nature that will always be there when we need it, but rather as an industry and commodity which needs investment! Here is one way how the contamination in drinking...

(Reuters) - The U.S. beef industry's dependence on the muscle-building drug Zilmax began unraveling here, on a sweltering summer day, in the dusty cattle pens outside a Tyson Foods Inc slaughterhouse in southeastern Washington state. As cattle trailers that had traveled up to four hours in 95-degree heat began to unload, 15 heifers and steers hobbled down the ramps on August 5, barely able to walk. The reason: The animals had lost their hooves, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture documents reviewed by Reuters. The documents show the 15 animals were destroyed. The next day, the hottest day of the...

Merck & Co (MRK.N), taking a cue from other drugmakers that have slashed research spending to bolster earnings, on Tuesday said it plans to cut annual operating costs by $2.5 billion by the end of 2015 and eliminate 8,500 jobs. By slimming down, Merck aims to narrow its focus to products with the best chance of winning regulatory approval and achieving substantial sales, while jettisoning research products with less likelihood of success. The planned job cuts, representing more than 10 percent of the company's global workforce of 81,000 employees, would be in addition to previously announced cuts of 7,500 positions.

Chinese authorities have launched an investigation against French drugmaker Sanofi following a news report that accused the company of bribing hundreds of Chinese doctors in 2007. An unnamed whistleblower told the Guangzhou-based, state-owned 21st Century Business Herald that the French company had paid 503 doctors a total of $274,000 to prescribe Sanofi products, disguising the payments as grants for research programs. China’s official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday that the Beijing municipal health bureau was teaming up with disciplinary authorities to look into the research programs and determine whether the payments were actually bribes. …

MONTREAL - An infant who's slowly dying of a rare spinal defect has been denied an experimental medical treatment because he's 17 days too old. The cutoff set by the U.S. pharmaceutical firm ISIS has outraged his parents, Yan Defosses and Emanuelle Desbiens. "It's cruel and completely inhuman," Defosses told QMI Agency. Eight-month-old Liam suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disease that attacks the spinal cord, weakening his muscles. His parents realized something was wrong soon after his birth. He was losing muscle tone instead of gaining it. When he was four months old, doctors gave his parents the...

It's never comforting to have one's longstanding fears confirmed. Yet, that's exactly what's happened over the last week as Americans have been presented with a stunning array of facts that diminish faith in our government. Whether it's on foreign policy, taxes, or the health-care system our lives depend on, members of the Obama Administration are making it harder to trust them to perform the most very basic functions of public service. *snip* Next, the Department of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has found that conservative and Tea Party groups, after complaining for years of being unfairly targeted by...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is moving the morning-after pill over the counter but only those 15 and older can buy it - an attempt to find middle ground just days before a court-imposed deadline to lift all age restrictions on the emergency contraceptive.