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House Moves to Limit So-Called Gain-of-Function Research
House lawmakers late Tuesday voted to attach a U.S. ban on controversial infectious disease research to legislation that could ultimately fund federal health agencies like the National Institutes of Health.
The bill would bar any federal agencies from funding so-called gain-of-function research, which involves altering a pathogen to study its spread, potentially making it more transmissible or severe in the process.
The spending bill already included a restriction on funding this research in any country determined to be a “foreign adversary,” including China. Scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology studied gain-of-function in some viruses, fueling theories that the COVID-19 pathogen was a lab leak. Those theories have never definitively been proven.
Matt Gaetz Claims ‘Big Pharma’ Prevents Colleagues Investigating Vaccines
Matt Gaetz has claimed congressional committees are declining to investigate injuries caused by the coronavirus vaccines because “they are bought and paid for by Big Pharma,” without providing any supporting evidence.
The House Republican made the comment at a hearing hosted by his colleague, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, which took place at a congressional office building but wasn’t an official House or Senate committee.
Gaetz said Tuesday at Greene’s “injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccines” committee hearing: “A reasonable person watching this hearing might wonder why this is a field hearing being chaired by Congresswoman Greene rather than a hearing held by the House and the Senate with one of our standing committees. I believe that reason is because far too many members of those committees obtain those committee seats because they are bought and paid for by Big Pharma.
“And if you go look at the people who lead these positions in the House and Senate, and you line up the money they get from Big Pharma lobbyists and Big Pharma PACs, it is pretty easy to see why we are here,” he said.
Addressing her committee, Greene said: “As a member of the COVID Select Committee I hope this hearing today will offer a voice to those who have been injured by these vaccines or have lost loved ones to them. While I myself am unvaccinated, I have tremendous compassion for those who trusted the government and took the vaccine.”
GP Surgery Blunder Led to Healthy 28-Year-Old Being Given Fatal AstraZeneca COVID Jab
The Telegraph via Yahoo!News reported:
A “precious and beloved” son died after he was wrongly given the AstraZeneca COVID jab because of a blunder almost 20 years ago that mistakenly classified him as morbidly obese. Alex Reid, who was 28, died from a rare blood clot caused by the vaccine. But an inquest heard he would never have received the vaccine but for an error in his medical records.
His distraught parents said their “happy, healthy, precious and beloved” son’s death was “unacceptable, immoral and fundamentally wrong”, and accused AstraZeneca and the Government of ignoring “the small number” of people who died or were seriously affected as a result of the blood clots in order to quickly roll out the vaccine during the pandemic.
Reid, an operations controller from Leeds, was called in early to have a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed with the University of Oxford because the local GP practice had mistakenly recorded him as having a body mass index of 68.
He received his first dose on March 21. By the time he was due his follow-up dose on May 18, 2021, the Government’s vaccine advisers had recommended — more than a month earlier — that recipients under 30 receive alternatives to AstraZeneca because of the extremely rare risk of blood clots. But in Reid’s case, because he had AstraZeneca as his first jab, he was given a follow-up dose of the same vaccine. He died in Leeds General Infirmary on June 29, 2021, six weeks later.
The coroner recorded the cause of death as vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT), a new condition linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine that is suspected of causing more than 80 deaths in the U.K. and hundreds more serious disabilities.
Report: America’s Trust in Scientists Drops in Wake of COVID Pandemic
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Public trust in scientists fell again in 2023 even as COVID-19 has faded into the background for many Americans, according to a new report.
Survey results from Pew Research Center published on Tuesday found that confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interest fell from 77% in 2022 to 73% as of last month. It’s a far drop from 87% in April 2020, which quickly declined to 84% by November 2020 as the pandemic worsened.
Those with little or little to no confidence in scientists have, perhaps not surprisingly, increased since the pandemic. The report found that 27% of U.S. adults fall into the category, which is up from 12% in April 2020.
How to End the Futile Blame Game Over Failed Long COVID Research
The health outlook for Long COVID sufferers is no better today than it was when the condition was first recognized in early 2020. This has been attributed in large measure to the disappointing results of clinical research, particularly when compared to the magnitude of the problem.
Now with hundreds of published results emerging from federally conducted or sponsored research, outraged experts and patient advocates say that there is little to show for it. The critique is that the pace of the work is slow and opaque and that little has emerged that directly impacts prevention or patient care. The biomedical community has been under steady attack for lack of progress in prevention and treatment underlying a failure to help patients.
There is a lot at stake in getting the U.S.’s Long COVID research strategy right. With a national prevalence of the disease in the range of 5% to 15%, an estimated 10 to 35 million working-age adults have Long COVID, and it may be keeping as many as 4 million people out of work. There is a desperate need for effective treatments to mitigate their devastating frustration, suffering, functional impairment, and disability.
COVID Increased Gender Life Expectancy Gap in U.S.
For more than 100 years, American women have outlived American men, largely due to differences in rates of cardiovascular disease and lung cancer. Now COVID-19 has widened the gendered life expectancy gap, according to a research letter published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The absolute difference in age-adjusted death rates between men and women increased from 252 to 315 per 100,000 from 2010 to 2021, the authors found.
Men experience higher mortality rates from COVID-19 for many reasons, mostly because they carry a higher burden of comorbidities that make them susceptible to severe COVID, the authors note. Men also experience more socioeconomic factors, including incarceration and homelessness, that have been linked to COVID-19 deaths.
“Differentially worsening mortality from diabetes, heart disease, homicide, and suicide suggest that chronic metabolic disease and mental illness may also contribute,” the authors said.
Eating Disorders Skewed Younger During the Pandemic
The demographics of eating disorders are shifting younger, now most commonly affecting teens between 14 and 18 years old, according to a new analysis.
Why it matters: The data, based on a FAIR Health repository of 43 billion private health insurance claims, sheds new light on an uptick in eating disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among teens.
By the numbers: From 2018 to 2022, insurance claims for eating disorder treatment increased 65%, with the largest increase occurring during the pandemic’s first year.
Between the lines: The shift comes amid a youth mental health crisis that experts say has been exacerbated by the pandemic’s isolation and social media.
Pfizer’s Cost-Cutting Campaign Hits Sandwich Site in U.K., Where 500 Workers Will Lose Jobs
Earlier this month, Pfizer’s $3.5 billion cost-cutting campaign crossed overseas to Ireland. Now, just a week later, Pfizer is announcing hundreds more job cuts in the U.K.
Pfizer plans to cut approximately 500 roles and ax its Pharmaceutical Sciences Small Molecule (PSSM) capabilities at its site in Sandwich in Kent in the U.K., a company spokesperson confirmed over email. The spokesperson described the layoffs as a “one of the consequences” of Pfizer’s enterprisewide cost realignment program, which the drugmaker unveiled in mid-October.
Layoffs have been sweeping across Pfizer ever since the company unveiled a plan to shave off $3.5 billion in annual costs by the end of 2024. The move comes as uncertainty plagues future product sales of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine Comirnaty and antiviral Paxlovid.
This latest round of cuts follows a 100-employee reduction at one of Pfizer’s Irish manufacturing plants in Newbridge in Kildare last week. Those staffers worked on the production of the company’s oral COVID med Paxlovid, Pfizer confirmed at the time. Prior to that, Pfizer said it would cut roughly 200 positions at its site in Kalamazoo, Michigan, following a review of demand for its COVID products.
Acuitas Sues CureVac for Credit on COVID Vaccine Patents
Biotech company Acuitas Therapeutics has filed a lawsuit in Virginia federal court against Germany-based CureVac (5CV.DE), accusing it of failing to credit Acuitas scientists on patents related to COVID-19 vaccines.
Acuitas told the court on Monday that CureVac omitted its scientists from patent applications for lipid nanoparticle technology used in messenger RNA-based vaccines after they collaborated to develop the technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Canada-based Acuitas, which also developed related technology used in Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 shots, asked the court to list its scientists as co-inventors on the CureVac patents, which could allow Acuitas to license them independently.
Pfizer and BioNTech have also sued CureVac, asking a judge to block CureVac’s infringement allegations against the companies. Acuitas has separately asked to intervene with its inventorship claims in that case in Virginia.
