Month: March 2014

Author of "The Plant-Powered Diet: The Lifelong Eating Plan for Achieving Optimal Health, Beginning Today," Dr. Katz concluded that eating real food …

LONDON (AP) — England’s public health agency says two people have caught tuberculosis from a pet cat, the first time the bacterial disease has been documented to spread from cat to human.

SHAHPARA, India (AP) — The scourge of polio ends in India with a lively 4-year-old girl, Rukhsar Khatoon, who became ill as a baby after her parents forgot to get her vaccinated.

By Paul Ingram TUCSON, Arizona (Reuters) – Arizona regulations that would limit the use of the most popular abortion-inducing drug risk harming women seeking to end their pregnancies, attorneys for a women’s health provider argued in federal court in Tucson on Wednesday. The controversial regulations would require any medicine used to induce an abortion to be administered strictly according to protocols issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and subject to instructions on the label. The FDA in 2000 approved it for use within seven weeks of a pregnancy, but doctors in many parts of the country have begun using a new protocol that simplifies the use of the drug for women. Federal courts have upheld similar laws in Ohio and Texas, but state courts in Oklahoma and North Dakota have rejected such measures, according to Planned Parenthood Arizona.

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline is linking with two top bioscience centres on an open-access research project to tap into "big data" generated by gene research, in a move highlighting how drug companies are learning to share. The new public-private Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation (CTTV) is being created by GSK working alongside the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute, both of which are based in Cambridge, England. "I fully expect others to join," Patrick Vallance, GSK's head of pharmaceuticals research and development, told Reuters. As a result, there is a growing trend among pharmaceutical companies to become more open about sharing early-stage – or pre-competitive – research work, rather than keeping their science locked up behind high walls.

Americans in most states who tried to apply for medical coverage under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law by a March 31 deadline but met with technical difficulties will get an automatic extension to enroll, officials said on Wednesday. The new federal guidelines apply to consumers in the 36 states served by the federal health insurance marketplace and its website, HealthCare.gov. Monday is the cut-off date for choosing a health plan in 2014. We won’t close the door on those who tried to get covered and were unable to do so through no fault of their own,” said Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency overseeing the healthcare law rollout.

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is to take a broader view of the value offered by new medicines under proposals that may make it more likely that it will say “yes” to novel drugs in future. Chief Executive Andrew Dillon told Reuters that wider uptake would only occur, however, if pharmaceutical manufacturers kept a tight rein on prices. NICE, which determines the use of treatments on the state-run health service, will in future look at the “wider societal impact” of therapies, as well as their cost-effectiveness on more limited clinical grounds.

By Ben Hirschler LONDON (Reuters) – British healthcare cost agency NICE is to take a broader view of the value offered by new medicines under proposals that may make it more likely that it will say “yes” to novel drugs in future. Chief Executive Andrew Dillon told Reuters that wider uptake would only occur, however, if pharmaceutical manufacturers kept a tight rein on prices. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which determines the use of treatments on the state-run health service, will in future look at the “wider societal impact” of therapies, as well as their cost-effectiveness on more limited clinical grounds.