News in a nutshell
| 6 July, 2010 | Adie Chan |
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CDC paper downplays XMRV, chronic fatigue link
XMRV - Image: Whittmore Peterson Institute
In the ongoing debate over the XMRV virus’s role in chronic fatigue syndrome, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has weighed in — and the verdict is that the virus is no more common in people suffering from chronic fatigue than in healthy people. The CDC team, lead by William Switzer, studied blood samples from 56 healthy people and 51 people with chronic fatigue syndrome and failed to find the XMRV virus in any of the samples. Switzer and his colleagues published their paper in the journal Retrovirology, and you can peruse the results for yourself here. According to Science, publication of this paper was initially delayed because the results contradicted those of another set of government researchers at the US Food and Drug Administration and at the National Institutes of Health, who plan to publish their findings in PNAS.
Princeton prof becomes new ASM head
Princeton university molecular biologist Bonnie Bassler officially took the reins at the American Society for Microbiology last week. Bassler, who we profiled in 2006, studies intercellular communication in bacteria. She was elected last year and has served as ASM president-elect for the past 12 months.
Top ten Pharma heists
Our friends over at FiercePharma Manufacturing portrayed a Big Pharma crime wave by listing the ten most expensive pharmaceutical company thefts ever. The biggest was the brazen heist at an Eli Lilly distribution center in Connecticut earlier this year, in which the thieves made off with more than $75 million worth of Prozac, Zyprexa, and cancer drugs Gemzar and Alimta, among others. Most of the robberies involved lifting whole semi trucks filled with pharmaceuticals, with the pilfered drugs going either overseas or to shady online pharmacies.
Oil spills: Not just in the Gulf
An anthropologist at Washington University in St Louis reminded us last week that the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is only one of several recent calamities that plague the petroleum industry. And there are likely more spills to come, Bret Gustafson said in a statement from the university. An oil rig sank off the coast of Venezuela in May, a rig gushed oil into the Timor Sea for two months last autumn, and pipelines in the Niger Delta leak almost constantly. “BP and other oil companies have tried to portray this spill as an accident or an aberration, but in fact there are spills on off-shore and on-shore sites around the world, increasingly,” Gustafson said. “Oil has always been destructive, but it is worsening because the days of easy oil are over.”
Penn State prof exonerated of “Climategate” suspicion
An investigative committee at Pennsylvania State University has cleared climatologist Michael Mann of charges that he purposefully manipulated temperature data involving ancient tree rings and rock core samples to fit the conclusion that global warming was occurring. Mann came under fire after emails he had written to colleagues in which he called his treatment of such data a “trick” became public. The Penn State panel, releasing the second part of a two-part investigation, wrote that Mann, “did not engage in, nor did he participate in, directly or indirectly, any actions that seriously deviated from accepted practices within the academic community for proposing, conducting, or reporting research, or other scholarly activities.”
“I am pleased that the last phase of Penn State’s investigation has now been concluded, and that it has cleared me of any wrongdoing,” Mann responded in a statement. “These latest findings should finally put to rest the baseless allegations against me and my research.”
Hat tip to ScienceInsider.
Sharks off Northeast US prompt Coast Guard warning
Image: TANAKA Juuyoh
As Fourth of July revelers hit the beach and headed out on pleasure cruises this holiday weekend in the US, the Coast Guard issued a warning for boaters and swimmers to watch out for large sharks in waters off the Northeast, an area they’ve frequented more in recent years. Warmer water temperatures and exploding seal populations have made the waters inviting to sharks, such as the 7-foot Great White that was landed by a tuna fisherman 20 miles off of Gloucester, Massachusetts two weeks ago. While no shark attacks were reported over the sweltering weekend (not surprising as the last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts occurred more than 70 years ago) , a Massachusetts man fishing 30 miles offshore hauled in a 325-pound thresher shark yesterday (5th July).
Related stories:
- How a shark’s nose knows
- Viral cause for chronic fatigue?
- How bacteria talk
[10th June 2010]
[8th October 2009]
[June 2006]
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“the pilfered drugs going either overseas or to shady online pharmacies.”
I seriously doubt that uninformed conclusion by the writer of this article. The pharmaceutical wholesaling system that was developed in the 1990’s to spur competition has been analyzed to be incapable of turning a significant profit without the injection of stolen, gray-manufactured (i.e. illegal generics breaking patent) or simply fake medications. That system requires that 5% or more of pharmaceuticals shipped into the primary pharmacies be of such origin. I will try to find the book on this that came out roughly 5 years back.
It is virtual certainty that these medications will find their way back into the USA’s primary pharmaceutical distribution system, acquired at fence prices by big name wholesalers. The reason is simple, to do otherwise is to sacrifice profit, and the system requires them. In the current more difficult economy there is even more motivation.
Pharmaceuticals are brought into repackaging operations where their documents are switched out, their packaging is replaced, and if necessary, the pills are ground up and re-pelleted.
At least, with these heists, there is the opportunity for US consumers to receive full strength medications. But Prozac and cancer medications are popular with organized crime to re-manufacture at lower doses for several reasons.
1. Prozac is known to “stop working” for people. So if that happens, the physician just switches the patient to another medication. Prozac stays in the system a long time.
2. Cancer patients feel better quite often if their meds are bogus. If they get a recurrence, nobody questions anything and if they die, nobody wonders. And those meds are expensive, so the black market profit on bogus medications is similar to cocaine. The difference is that if the black marketers get caught, they get a relative slap on the wrist.
This is a winner for organized crime and the wholesale pharma system. Expect it to continue until that system is ended. But don’t hold your breath because that wholesale system donates to politicians and to big name universities, like Harvard.
I seriously suggest that the writer of this article do better research. This is a scandal and nothing is being said for the most part.
Ellen
Waiting for the title of the book.