Hepatitis B is a serious disease. It is highly prevalent in many countries in Asia (nearly 10% of Chinese carried the illness in 1992), but fortunately is of low prevalence in the US. Per CDC, the overall reported US incidence rate for 2013 was 1.0 case per 100,000 population. After adjusting for under-ascertainment and under-reporting,…
The following excerpts from today’s NY Times article point to serious failures of data collection, analysis, and commitment to safety at FDA. The failures follow lax, politically-driven regulations, which allow products to be licensed without data if they are substantially like other licensed products. There is no good guideline for how alike the products must…
This is a preliminary report from a Scottish doctor, and may turn out to be wrong later. He has analyzed data from Italy on deaths, and concluded that those patients on ACE inhibitors or ARBs (which target ACE receptors, which are also used by coronavirus) had significantly higher death rates. Because coronavirus disease is currently…
Get ready for turbulence ahead. Yesterday American Airlines had almost 300 of its flights canceled, almost 10 percent of its total schedule, far more than ANY other carrier in the United States (Southwest remains second), and another 673 delayed. It is no doubt purely coincidental that I have heard from multiple pilots at American this…
The US government spent half a $Billion (yes, with a B) on a UK public relations firm to make fake videos that were supposedly made by al Qaeda (and, I read elsewhere, ISIS.) A former contractor for a UK-based public relations firm says that the Pentagon paid more than half a billion dollars for the production and dissemination of fake Al-Qaeda videos that…
SARS-CoV (the first SARS virus) and its cousin SARS-CoV-2 (the virus causing our current pandemic) are classified by the US government as Select Agents, organisms that pose a significant threat to humans, and could be used for bioterrorism. The current Select Agent program came into being after the 2001 anthrax letters event. The Department of Health…