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Bird Flu: US Invests $590 Million to Fast-Track Vaccine Development
A new bird flu vaccine could be on the horizon after the U.S. has invested approximately $590 million to accelerate its development, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Friday, a few days before Donald Trump was sworn in as president.
Pharmaceutical company Moderna has been granted the funds to work on developing mRNA-based influenza vaccines, including for the strain causing the bird flu outbreak.
Newsweek has contacted Moderna and the HHS via email outside of regular office hours.
Avian influenza A (H5N1) has caused at least 67 human illnesses, and was associated with one death, amid widespread outbreaks in wild birds, poultry and dairy cows, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC maintains that the risk to public health is low as there has been no evidence that the virus is transmissible between humans; individuals have only gotten sick after exposure to infected animals. But scientists have warned that the more chances the virus has to infect humans, the more likely it is to mutate to be more contagious among us, which raises the risk of a possible pandemic.
DOJ Sues Walgreens, Alleging It ‘Knowingly’ Filled Millions of Prescriptions That Lacked Legit Medical Purposes
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said Friday that it sued pharmacy giant Walgreens over allegedly dispensing millions of unlawful prescriptions. The DOJ said that Walgreens from Aug. 2012 until the present “knowingly” filled those prescriptions, which “lacked a legitimate medical purpose, were not valid, and/or were not issued in the usual course of professional practice.”
“This lawsuit seeks to hold Walgreens accountable for the many years that it failed to meet its obligations when dispensing dangerous opioids and other drugs,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the DOJ’s Civil Division.
Boynton said that Walgreens pharmacists filled millions of prescriptions with “clear red flags that indicated the prescriptions were highly likely to be unlawful.”
Group Involved in Wuhan Virus Studies Debarred by US Health Dept
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, has cut off all funding and formally debarred EcoHealth Alliance Inc. and its former president, Peter Daszak, for five years following scrutiny over its involvement in virus research in Wuhan, China, ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The department made its decision based on evidence uncovered by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform said on its website Friday.
EcoHealth and Daszak had facilitated so-called gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, without proper oversight and violated requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, the committee said.
GLP-1 Agents’ Risks and Benefits Broader Than Previously Thought
An observational study of 175 health outcomes using Veterans Affairs data for nearly two million individuals uncovered new insights about possible risks and benefits of GLP-1 receptor agonists.
Over a median of 3.68 years, adults with type 2 diabetes who added a GLP-1 agent to their treatment plan had significantly decreased risks for 42 diverse outcomes, increased risks for 19 outcomes and no association with 114 outcomes compared with usual care, reported Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, of Washington University in St. Louis, and colleagues.
Despite Biden Pardon, Fauci Still Faces Legal Perils. Here They Are…
President Biden’s pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci may protect the former National Institutes of Health official from immediate criminal prosecution, but some critics say he is not completely out of legal jeopardy and that public sentiment might still condemn the man who became known during the COVID-19 pandemic as “Mr. Science.”
In the days before Biden offered the pardon to Fauci, along with other critics of Donald Trump, some experts who have followed Fauci’s career and handling of the pandemic, as well as members of the Trump transition team, reiterated their assertion that Fauci perjured himself on several occasions during the pandemic — especially regarding his agency’s links to the lab in Wuhan, China, that might have created the virus that causes COVID-19.
The pardon addresses any COVID-related offenses, and is backdated to 2014 — the year a U.S. ban on so-called “gain of function” virus research took effect — research Fauci is accused of outsourcing to China.
Who Defends Global Health, Security Role After Trump Withdrawal
The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday said it “regrets” President Trump’s move to withdraw from the global health authority, saying it hopes the U.S. will reconsider the decision.
President Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term announcing his intent to withdraw from the WHO, citing what he referred to as “the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises.”
This was not the first time Trump has moved to withdraw from the WHO, having previously attempted to do the same in 2020. Former President Biden rejoined the organization before the one-year waiting period for withdrawal concluded. In a statement Tuesday, the WHO said it “regrets the announcement that the United States of America intends to withdraw from the Organization.”
