Month: May 2014

President Barack Obama has a modest, tongue-in-cheek suggestion for people in New York City who support his agenda: move to North Dakota. The idea drew laughs in what was otherwise a somber speech at a $32,400-per-ticket fundraiser for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the posh Upper East Side apartment of investment banker Blair Effron, co-founder of Centerview Partners. In the second of two fundraisers on Wednesday, Obama bemoaned how Democrats face some \"structural disadvantages\" in elections – winning with large margins in places like Brooklyn but losing to Republicans in red states. Obama described buying cheesecake at Junior's Restaurant in Brooklyn in October while campaigning with Bill de Blasio two days before the mayoral election.

U.S. health officials on Wednesday issued new recommendations urging healthcare workers to consider offering an HIV prevention pill to healthy individuals who are at substantial risk for HIV infection. The guidelines, issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Public Health Service, involve the use of pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP, a strategy in which at-risk individuals take a daily dose of an antiretroviral drug to reduce their risk of HIV infection. The strategy builds on a landmark 2010 study that found Gilead Sciences Inc’s Truvada – a pill already widely used to treat the human immunodeficiency virus – was more than 90 percent effective at preventing HIV infections among test subjects who took the drug as prescribed.

By Jean-Baptiste Vey and Benjamin Mallet PARIS (Reuters) – The French government has issued a decree allowing it to block any foreign takeovers of French companies in \"strategic\" industries, throwing up a potential roadblock to General Electric's planned $16.9 billion bid for Alstom's energy assets. Any such acquisition will now need the approval of the Economy Minister, the decree published in France's Official Journal said. The government had not previously given any hint it was considering such a measure, although Economy and Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg has openly criticized the Alstom-GE proposal and instead advocated a European tie-up with Germany's Siemens . No one at Alstom was immediately available for comment outside European business hours.

Six U.S. senators asked antitrust regulators to take a hard look at Pfizer Inc's plan to buy rival AstraZeneca PLC if the two companies reach a deal, saying they had \"significant concerns\" about how the proposed transaction would affect consumers. AstraZeneca, formed in 1999 from the merger of Sweden's Astra and Britain's Zeneca, has rejected a $106 billion offer from U.S. drugmaker Pfizer, but Pfizer has not given up and a possible deal has raised concerns in Europe and the United States. \"Should a merger or acquisition ultimately be accepted by AstraZeneca, whether under the terms of that offer or any subsequent offer, we want to bring to your attention our significant concerns with the potentially harmful impact to consumers that would result,\" the senators said in a letter. The senators, all Democrats, said that a 2009 deal by Pfizer to buy Wyeth Laboratories was followed by a Pfizer decision to close research and development sites.

By Jonathan Kaminsky OLYMPIA Wash. (Reuters) – An alarming number of babies in a rural swath of central Washington state over the last four years have been born with a rare and fatal defect that leaves them without part of their brain and skull, and scientists are stumped. In a three-county area that includes the city of Yakima, 26 babies born between 2010 and 2013 suffered from anencephaly, which occurs early in pregnancy when the fetal neural tube does not close, according to Juliet VanEenwyk, an epidemiologist with the Washington State Department of Health. The number of cases is four times the national average, VanEenwyk said, and health officials haven’t been able to work out the cause. \”That is the $64,000 question we’re trying to solve,\” VanEenwyk told Reuters.

A medical professional was hospitalized with the virus after traveling from Saudi Arabia.

By David Morgan and Julia Edwards WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sylvia Mathews Burwell, President Barack Obama's nominee for U.S. health secretary, moved closer to confirmation on Wednesday with a final Senate hearing that was marked more by bipartisan accolades than tough questions about Obamacare. Burwell, Obama's widely respected budget director, discussed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in terms that sometimes seemed calculated to appeal to Republicans. But if we can have conversations and those conversations can be specific, I think we can work to figure most things out,\" she told the Senate Finance Committee that will decide whether to send her nomination on for a final vote in the Senate. Republicans have made Obamacare their leading campaign issue in November's election battle for control of the Senate.

When the world’s leading cancer doctors meet in Chicago next month, new treatments from Merck & Co, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Roche Holding AG that help the immune system fight disease are expected to capture much of the spotlight. The drugs, known as anti-PD-1 or anti-PDL1 therapies, are biotech medicines that work by blocking a tumor’s ability to camouflage itself, thereby allowing T cells in the immune system to recognize and attack the cancer. At the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago beginning May 30, researchers will for the first time present data on Roche’s anti-PDL1 drug in advanced bladder cancer for which there have been few advances in decades. Merck will have no less than 16 studies involving its highly touted anti PD-1 drug, MK-3475, including a first look at the drug as an initial lung cancer treatment.

(Reuters) – Prima BioMed Ltd said its experimental lead treatment improved survival in some ovarian cancer patients without the disease worsening. The mid-stage trial was testing the drug, CVac, in 63 patients who showed no signs or symptoms of the disease after one or two rounds of treatment. Patients, who experienced remission after two rounds of chemotherapy, showed a median survival of 12.91 months without the cancer worsening, compared to 4.94 months for those receiving only chemotherapy. CVac, like Dendreon Corp’s prostate cancer vaccine Provenge, is a form of immunotherapy that stimulates the patient’s immune system to target and destroy tumors.