Pfizer’s Covid Vaccine Prevents 90% of Infections in Study Via Bloomberg: The Covid-19 vaccine being developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE prevented more than 90% of infections in a study of tens of thousands of volunteers, the most encouraging scientific advance so far in the battle against the coronavirus. Eight months into the worst pandemic in a century, the preliminary results pave the way for the companies to seek […]
Covid Vaccine Maker AstraZeneca Expects To Release Trial Data Soon Via CNBC: British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca said Thursday it expects vaccine data to be available this year as it reported a solid rise in third-quarter sales. “Results from late-stage trials are anticipated later this year, depending on the rate of infection within the communities where the clinical trials are being conducted. Data readouts will be submitted to regulators and published […]
FBI Warns Ransomware Assault Threatens US Healthcare System Via APNews: Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking. In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent […]
HHS Ending Ventilator Contracts, Citing Full Stockpile Via AP News: The Trump administration announced Tuesday it is canceling some of its remaining orders for ventilators, after rushing to sign nearly $3 billion in emergency contracts as the COVID-19 pandemic surged in the spring. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement affirming that the national stockpile has now reached its maximum capacity for the life-saving breathing machines, with […]
Winchester, VA - Luxturna is a new gene therapy which was developed to treat progessive blindness and received FDA approval last year. The condition it treats is an inherited genetic disease resulting from mutations in the RPE65 gene. Only a few thousand people in the United States are affected by it. The gene mutation disrupts the cells located near the retina, causing the victim to gradually lose their vision. Luxturna therapy […]
Winchester, VA - Ectopia cordis is a condition in which a baby's heart grows outside the body while in utero. Babies with this condition have a less than 10% chance of survival. The Guardian reports that one baby, Vanellope Hope Wilkins is defying those odds, and is the first baby in the U.K. to do so. Born by cesarean section on November 22, at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester, Vanellope overcame her […]
Winchester, VA - International Business Times reports that doctors in Dallas, Texas have delivered a baby. What's new, eh? Well, what's new is that this baby was gestated in a womb which was donated by a living woman, and transplanted into another woman's body. The baby was delivered by cesarean section in November at the Baylor University Medical Center, and the womb was donated by a 36 year old nurse, who […]
Winchester, VA - In health news...One in seven people experience regular migraines, and they are three times more common in women than in men. The BBC reports that a new approach to migraines is helping some people cut the amount of migraines they experience in half. The new treatment uses antibodies to alter the activity of a chemical in the brain. The chemical in question, calcitonin gene-related peptide, or CGRP for […]
Winchester, VA - Detroit mother Rebecca Bredow made the news last week when she was jailed for refusing a judge's order to vaccinate her nine year old son. Before the couple split, Bredow and the boy's father, James Home, were in agreement with Bredow's religious objections to not vaccinating the boy. For most of his life, Bredow has had sole custody of the boy. When Home reconsidered his vaccination stance, he […]
