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Cats to Be Given Human COVID Drugs After Outbreak Leaves Thousands Dead
Cats are to be given leftover human COVID-19 drugs in the wake of an outbreak of a feline coronavirus across the southeastern European island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea.
Cyprus government officials announced the move after a recommendation from the agriculture ministry. Several thousand cats have died in recent weeks from feline infectious peritonitis (FIP), caused by a cat-based coronavirus strain not transmittable to humans.
This year’s death toll had been placed at 300,000 cats, based on an estimated 20 to 30% mortality of the island’s 1 million-strong cat population. However, Cyprus’s veterinary association has now put the number around 10,000, according to Agence France-Presse.
To stem the mounting deaths from the outbreak, Cypriot officials have sanctioned the use of leftover anti-COVID-19 drugs to treat the cats.
The genome of the FIP-causing coronavirus being passed around is being tested to investigate whether it has mutated into a newer, more infectious strain.
Focus: U.S. Psychiatrists Prescribe Wegovy to Battle Medication-Induced Weight Gain
U.S. psychiatrists are increasingly prescribing the popular weight-loss drug Wegovy to patients who gain weight from medicines used to treat mental disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, according to Reuters interviews with ten prescribers across the country.
Many antipsychotic drugs and mood stabilizers can cause patients to gain significant weight and contribute to diabetes and heart disease, the leading cause of death among adults with schizophrenia. Complicated by other factors such as inadequate access to healthy food and lower physical activity, over half of patients with bipolar depression and schizophrenia are overweight or obese.
The global market for weight-loss drugs is forecast to reach as much as $100 billion within the decade.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cautioned doctors to monitor patients taking the drug for the development of depression or suicidal thoughts. Regulators in Europe are now investigating several reports of patients who experienced suicidal thoughts after starting Wegovy.
How Big Pharma’s Marketing Machine Is Fueling the ADHD Surge
It’s hard to think of any industry that’s enjoyed more success over the past 20 years or so than Big Pharma. More than 131 million people — that’s two-thirds of all adults in the United States — report that they’re taking at least one prescription drug. That’s a significant increase from the year 2000 when around half of American adults said they were doing so.
The percentage of people taking five or more prescription drugs has nearly doubled since the turn of the century. Spending on prescription drugs in that period has more than tripled. Drugs that supposedly treat psychological issues — like unhappiness, or a lack of self-control — have done especially well. From 1991 to 2018, SSRI prescriptions increased by over 3,000%. Roughly half the country either takes the potentially mind-altering drug Ozempic to lose weight or knows someone taking it.
Given big pharma’s tremendous success, you’d think that by now, they would have solved a lot of the health problems facing Americans, or at least made progress in resolving them. But the opposite is true. Average life expectancy is declining. Suicide rates are up. So are the rates of obesity, drug addiction, and cancer among young adults. How is this possible? How is the pharmaceutical industry succeeding financially, while failing in every area that matters? How can they have so many people on so many medicines, and yet everyone is only getting sicker and less healthy?
Pharmaceutical companies recently began spending more on advertising than research and development. In 2020, the year of the great pandemic, Pfizer spent $12 billion on marketing, compared to just $9 billion on R&D. Companies like AbbVie and Johnson & Johnson and Bayer and many other pharma companies posted similar numbers.
What does all this money buy? If you turn on any cable or network news channel, you know the answer to that question. It buys incessant advertisements that air during every commercial break. And although the networks will never admit it, it also buys positive coverage. After all, if the networks criticize Big Pharma, they stand to lose millions in advertising dollars.
Bavarian Nordic Locks Up $120 Million BARDA Deal to Replenish U.S. Stock of Smallpox, Mpox Vaccine
After coming to the rescue during the mpox outbreak in 2022, vaccine maker Bavarian Nordic has agreed to help replenish U.S. stores of its smallpox/mpox shot.
The U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) is handing Bavarian Nordic a new $120 million contract, primarily to cover the production of new bulk vaccine product, the company said in a press release Thursday.
Bavarian Nordic will also manufacture and supply an additional $3 million worth of liquid-frozen doses in 2023. The rest of the contract will cover “additional services” totaling $21 million, with Bavarian Nordic getting its hands on most of that sum over the next two years.
Throughout 2022 and 2023, Bavarian Nordic says it’s manufactured around 5.5 million smallpox/mpox vaccine doses for the U.S. government. Still, replenishment of bulk inventory is “necessary to fulfill the company’s long-term commitment to deliver a freeze-dried version of the vaccine for U.S. smallpox preparedness,” according to the company.
Blue Blood From Horseshoe Crabs Is Needed for Medicine, but a Declining Bird Relies on Crabs to Eat
A primordial sea animal that lives on the tidal mudflats of the East Coast and serves as a linchpin for the production of vital medicines stands to benefit from new protective standards. But conservationists who have been trying for years to save a declining bird species — the red knot — that depends on horseshoe crabs fear the protections still don’t go far enough.
Drug and medical device makers are dependent on the valuable blue blood of the crabs — helmet-shaped invertebrates that have scuttled in the ocean and tidal pools for more than 400 million years — to test for potentially dangerous impurities. The animals are drained of some of their blood and returned to the environment, but many die from the bleeding.
Recent revisions to guidelines for handling the animals should keep more alive through the process, regulators said. The animals — not really true crabs but rather more closely related to land-dwelling invertebrates such as spiders and scorpions — are declining in some of their East Coast range.
Pfizer Takes More Steps to Manage Medicine Stock at North Carolina Plant
Pfizer Inc (PFE.N) said on Thursday it will begin making some products available only through its emergency ordering process, as part of steps to manage inventory at its North Carolina facility that was struck by a tornado last month.
The drugmaker said it was taking additional steps out of an abundance of caution as it released a list of 12 unique or specific presentations of nine products with high medical need. The company’s Rocky Mount plant is one of the world’s largest factories for sterile injectable medicines. Its products include anesthetics, painkillers and anti-infective medicines for use in hospitals.
Nearly 25% of Pfizer’s sterile injectables used in U.S. hospitals are produced there, according to the company’s website.
Pfizer’s list includes injections of dextrose, sodium chloride and the heart failure medication dobutamine — these can only be ordered via direct shipment from the company or its representatives until further notice.
