big pharma
revere | March 5, 2007If the best you can say about the human bird flu vaccine made by Big Pharma's Sanofi Aventis SA is that it is "better than nothing," are you even correct about that?
The Food and Drug Administration is considering a recommendation from an outside panel of expert advisers that it approve the Sanofi vaccine. Those experts endorsed the vaccine's safety and efficacy Feb. 27, but with a caveat: that it's only the first step in developing a way of successfully immunizing humans against the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu.
Sanofi said it recognizes the vaccine is only an interim solution, since…
revere | February 8, 2007I sympathize with the Indonesians up to a point. Their outrage over what they perceive as the plundering by vaccine makers of their natural resources (in this case a lethal virus isolated from Indonesian bird flu cases) is understandable -- barely. Their subsequent actions to stop sharing samples of the virus with WHO and their attempt to justify it by blaming WHO is not understandable. Nor is it intelligent. But then very little in the way of effective and intelligent bird flu policies has come out of Indonesia anyway. This is part of the package, alas.
The complaint of the Indonesian…
revere | January 29, 2007Having taken on the American Chemical Society the other day, why stop there. Let's talk about the American Chemistry Council, the ACC (neé the Manufacturing Chemists' Association, then the Chemical Manufacturers Association and now ACC). And bird flu. Yes, bird flu. The ACC is a trade association of the largest chemical companies and has a division called the Chlorine Chemistry Division which has just launched a website "dedicated to educating the public on flu prevention and recovery." If you believe that I've got a 1995 Volvo with low mileage (for a Volvo) just for you. Only driven at the…
revere | January 8, 2007We have a lap dog. She is bred to be a companion to people and she excels at it. We were going to name her "EPA" after her function (lapdog), but chose a more human name instead. After all, she's a dog. Despite the fact that she doesn't get much exercise, she isn't fat. But obesity is a problem for dogs, too, it seems. So a drug for obesity in dogs is a potential ATM. Nobody sees an ATM like Big Pharma. And their lapdog, the FDA.
A drug specifically designed to treat canine obesity has been approved for the first time by the US Food and Drug Administration.
The drug's developer, New York-…
revere | October 4, 2006A couple of months ago we posted on the great Avastin versus Lucentis competition, two drugs for treating age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD is the major cause of blindness in the elderly. The interesting thing is that there is about a 100-fold difference in cost between the two drugs and both are made by the same company, Genentech.
Avastin is an anti-angiogenesis drug used to treat colon cancer. It works by inhibiting the new blood vessels the tumor needs to grow. New vessel growth (neovascularization) is also the pathologic process behind AMD. Several years ago an ophthalmologist…
revere | July 24, 2006That pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche would have trouble meeting the orders it received for its antiviral Tamiflu was well known and not a surprise. Roche's manufacturing method is said to be laborious, dangerous in spots and have a long production cycle (NB: shorter and cheaper methods have since been discovered but it isn't clear anyone is using them to make Tamiflu at this point; see our post here). So it has surprised and upset many to see the drugmaker marketing Tamiflu to businesses, essentially inviting them to move to the head of the line.
With only a fraction of the doses needed…
revere | July 17, 2006An interesting Commentary on the problem of releasing the flu sequences has been posted on the blog Anthropologique by its proprietor, J. F. Brinkworth. I disagree with it, but he makes some pertinent points.
Brinkworth believes WHO is not at fault for failure to release the Indonesian sequences and he provides some information of which I, and probably most others, are not aware:
Indonesia has very, very stringent nucleic sequence I.P. laws. All genetic material recovered there is their property. Their Convention of Biological Dviersity Law No.5 (1994) and Cultural Practices Law No. 12 (1992…
revere | July 3, 2006The FDA might need a shoulder replacement for patting itself on the back. They celebrated "A Century of Protecting and Promoting Public Health" with a ceremony at the Harvey W. Wiley federal building. Or I assume they did. I wasn't there, but they had a press release by way of a personal invitation. Losts of dignitaries, including Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt. Purpose?
The FDA's centennial celebration, which include conferences and special forums in cities from coast to coast, have the following aims:
Observe FDA's role -- past, present and future -- domestically…
revere | July 2, 2006Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a major cause of blindness and the wet form is the worst version. So it should be good news that the US FDA just announced its approval for a new biological treatment for it. The drug has shown remarkable effectiveness when injected into the eye, monthly. AMD is caused by the new growth of leaky blood vessels beneath the retina. The drug halts this neovascularization and even results in improvement of vision in a substantial fraction of those treated. It not only thus stops the relentless deterioration of vision that leads to blindness but can reverse…