Conflicts of Interests or Crooked Deals with Taxpayer Dollars? Do they make Democracy a pipe dream?

from today’s BMJ (British Medical Journal) Tom Jefferson: The UK turns to Witty, Vallance, and Van Tam for leadership: revolving doors? http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/12/06/tom-jefferson-the-uk-turns-to-witty-vallance-and-van-tam-for-leadership-revolving-doors/ December 6, 20173Revolving doors are used to facilitate entry or exit into a building. The trick with using these doors is always to get your timing right. Too fast or too slow and…

This piece in the Lancet, authored by Cowling and Yu, discusses issues of Ebola dissemination and means to reduce spread to other countries.  Its final paragraph discusses what we do not yet know, but need to learn: There are several important near-future research needs. Perhaps most urgent is a better understanding of the effectiveness of…

How “US Special Operations Forces are sabotaging the very strategy for reaching a political settlement that US officials claim to support” and murdering Taliban fighters who laid down their weapons and agreed to work with the government. Amy Goodman interviews the author on Democracy Now! here.

This article discusses literally a couple dozen vaccines and drugs that are in development for Ebola.  How is their testing being fast-tracked ? BioDrugs. 2013 Dec;27(6):565-83. doi: 10.1007/s40259-013-0046-1. Choi JH1, Croyle MA. Author information Abstract Ebola is a highly virulent pathogen causing severe hemorrhagic fever with a high case fatality rate in humans and non-human primates (NHPs)….

CNN notes, The DNA linked the anthrax used in the mailing to a flask used in Bruce Ivins’ lab at the U.S. Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases, said the source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the case. Maybe so, though I am awfully tired of all these “unauthorized” sources who talk…