Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals who increased the price of the AIDS drug Daraprim 5,000%, is having a bad week. A competing pharmaceutical company has announced that it will start offering a generic version of the drug for $1 per pill.
One half of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine went to Tu Youyou for her discovery of the antimalarial drug artemisinin. Many of us who do research in the biological sciences have felt that this award was long overdue.
The discovery of artemisinin has saved the lives of millions. And so the Nobel is proper recognition for Dr. Tu, for China and for the advancing role of women in science here and around the world.
Are pharmaceuticals fueling mass shootings? One lawmaker thinks the possibility is worth looking into.The post Lawmaker Calls for Study on Links Between Pharmaceuticals and Mass Killers appeared first on The Anti-Media.
Researchers at Purdue University have developed an electronic capsule that can deliver medication directly to the colon. The innovation could be a less expensive, more effective method for treating gastrointestinal diseases.
The authors of a new study are warning that long-term use of antipsychotic drugs, used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and other psychiatric illnesses, may negatively impact brain structure.
The establishment, not so very long ago, had a healthy fear of juveniles. In the 1950s:
Antipsychotic drugs are being prescribed to an ever-increasing number of adolescents and young adults, and many of them are being prescribed for off-label purposes. But these over-prescriptions are putting youngsters at risk, though we’re slow as a society to change our med-heavy ways.
These powerful medications are being prescribed to young people with attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a condition the drugs are not approved to treat.
Nature versus Nurture is still used to broadly categorize the influences on human development, literally, what make us human. It is a question tied with the past (even back to Shakespeare) when the understanding of the genetic blueprint was vague, a gap we’ve filled in with theory. Nature was what you inherited from your parents and nurture was everything else – total environmental influences.
In 1953 at the age of 5, I was positive that I’d grow up to be Superman. When George Reeves paid his weekly visit to the family television set I was ready. With a dish towel cape, hands upon my hips, wearing an invincible expression, I was ready to battle the bad guys with truth, justice, the American way, incredible strength, and an unparalleled flying technique.
When I co-founded the Public Citizen Health Research Group with Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe in 1971, he declared that this was his “last job.” The drug industry might have been advised to quiver. For through his Worst Pills, Best Pills books, newsletters and spectacular outreach via the Phil Donahue show, he has exposed by brand names hundreds of drugs with harmful side effects (worst pills) compared to drugs without such an unfavorable risk-benefit profile (best pills).
