HAIPHONG, Vietnam (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Sunday that he will find out who was responsible for the mistaken shipments of live anthrax to 11 U.S. states and two countries and will “hold them accountable.”
By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Patients with colon and other cancers who have a specific defect in genes needed for DNA repair are far more likely to respond to a new class of drugs such as Merck & Co’s Keytruda, which enlist the immune system to attack tumors, a new study has shown. The small study, financed not by Big Pharma but by swimmers who raised charitable donations, tested Keytruda in patients with advanced colon and rectal cancers and found 92 percent of patients with the genetic defect had their disease controlled compared with 16 percent who did not carry the defect. The findings, announced on Friday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago, point to a new way to predict who will respond to the treatments, which are known as PD-1 inhibitors and can cost $150,000 a year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Obama administration attorneys are urging a federal judge to throw out an election-year lawsuit by House Republicans over the president’s health care law.
Recently, on the “Dr. America” show, I reported on the now-viral story of Luis Lang, a 49-year-old man from South Carolina who initially opposed Obamacare, and is now facing financial ruin as he suffers some dire health problems, including possible blindness. I made a small donation on his GoFundMe online fundraiser, as did many progressives…
On May 24 last year a pregnant woman and an older housewife staggered into Kenema hospital in eastern Sierra Leone and were diagnosed within a day as the country's first Ebola cases. Both women had attended the funeral of a widely-respected faith healer known as Mendinor, whose “powers” were renowned on both sides of Sierra Leone's border with Guinea. The grandmother, whose real name was Finda Nyuma, had been treating sick patients in her home village, a diamond-mining town just a few hours' walk from Gueckedou in Guinea, where the outbreak began in December 2013.
By Chris Arsenault VATICAN CITY (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Britain’s anti-slavery commissioner received the backing of the Catholic Church on Saturday for a campaign to push for a global pact vowing to eradicate slavery in the next 15 years. Kevin Hyland, who took up the new role last year, is lobbying world leaders to support a commitment to end forced labor and slavery of all forms in a set of global development goals to be adopted at the United Nations in September. While slavery is illegal in every country on earth, an estimated 36 million people are trapped in modern slavery.
By P.J. Huffstutter and Bill Berkrot CHICAGO and NEW YORK (Reuters) – As a virulent avian influenza outbreak continues to spread across the Midwestern United States, some egg-dependent companies are contemplating drastic steps: importing eggs from overseas or looking to egg alternatives. A spokeswoman for grain giant Archer Daniels Midland Co said that, as egg supplies have tightened and prices risen, the company has received numerous inquiries from manufacturers about the plant-based egg substitutes it makes. “The U.S. has never imported any significant amount of eggs, because we’ve always been a very low-cost producer,” said Tom Elam of FarmEcon, an agricultural consulting company.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A man is suing Blue Bell, saying he contracted listeria-related meningitis after eating ice cream produced by the company.
Wallabies hooker Tatafu Polota-Nau, who said earlier this month he might retire if he was badly concussed again, will be rested from Super Rugby for another three weeks to ensure he has fully recovered from a head knock. The hard-running rake suffered the latest in a long string of concussions in the New South Wales Waratahs’s win over the ACT Brumbies in Canberra on May 1 and has not played since. Michael Cheika, both Waratahs and Australia coach this year, said the 29-year-old would not play against Canterbury Crusaders this weekend or on the two-match tour of South Africa that follows the 2014 Super Rugby final re-match.
By Naveen Thukral and Gavin Maguire YONG PENG, Malaysia (Reuters) – In barns filled with classical music and lighting that changes to match the hues outside, rows of chickens are fed a diet rich in probiotics, a regimen designed to remove the need for the drugs and chemicals that have tainted the global food chain. As food giants face growing pressure to offer healthier produce, Southeast Asian poultry firm Kee Song Group says its use of “good” bacteria in feed and water means it can meet one the industry's biggest challenges: how to mass produce drug and hormone-free poultry at a reasonable price. A series of scandals in the last few years from melamine-tainted milk powder in China, horse meat supplied as beef in Europe and growth drugs causing lameness in U.S. cattle has triggered a consumer backlash over food standards and safety. Recently, Tyson Foods Inc pledged to eliminate the use of human antibiotics in chicken by 2017, one of the most aggressive timetables yet by a U.S. poultry firm.