Big Pharma

COVID-19 Bonanza: Stimulus Hands Health Industry Billions Not Directly Related To Pandemic   (Hannah Norman/KHN Illustration; Getty Images) The coronavirus stimulus package Congress rushed out last week to help the nation’s hospitals and health care networks hands the industry billions of dollars in windfall subsidies and other spending that has little to do with defeating the COVID-19 pandemic. The $2 trillion legislation, which President Donald Trump signed Friday, includes more than $100 billion in emergency funds to compensate hospitals and other health care providers for lost revenue and other costs associated with COVID-19. The measure also calls for spending up...

MIGHTY SELF LAUNCHES NEW CBD-BASED NUTRACEUTICAL   SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. (2020)—This year, Mighty Self, a health and wellness company that creates science-backed products formulated to help people sustain and enhance mental and physical health by harnessing the power of cannabinoids is launching  BALANCE, a nutraceutical product that is designed to support the human body’s natural inflammatory response as well as help calm nervous tension.  BALANCE is formulated with full-spectrum whole plant hemp-based CBD extract in combination with complementary bioactive and apoptogenic herbs that assist in the body’s processes to boost mood, calm the mind, and relieve nervous tension. Made from specially selected domestic hemp,  BALANCE is...

Ancient gut microbiomes shed light on human evolution A new study on the microbiomes of our ancestors offers hypotheses about the influence of microbes on our early social and daily lives Newswise — The microbiome of our ancestors might have been more important for human evolution than previously thought, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. An adaptive gut microbiome could have been critical for human dispersal, allowing our ancestors to survive in new geographic areas. "In this paper, we begin to consider what the microbiomes of our ancestors might have been like and how they...

The ‘nocebo’ effect: how informed consent can cause unnecessary harm in clinical trials University of Oxford Research published today in the Journal of Medical Ethics found that the way informed consent is currently taken causes unnecessary ‘nocebo’ harms. The requirement of informed consent means that it is an ethical requirement to warn patients about risks of taking part in clinical trials. But recent research shows that the way in which patients are told about these risks can actually cause harm. Dr Jeremy Howick, Director of the Oxford Empathy Programme, Faculty of Philosophy, and study author, says: ‘Sometimes when we warn patients about negative side effects...

Ethnobotanical medicine is effective against the bacterium causing Lyme disease   A preclinical study in test tubes showed that selected plant-based herbal medicines, especially Ghanaian quinine and Japanese knotweed, work better than antibiotics. Lyme disease, also called borreliosis, is the most common vector-borne disease in the Northern hemisphere. It is caused by the spirochete (corkscrew-shaped) bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi and close relatives and mainly spread through the bite of infected ticks. Currently, more than 300,000 new cases are reported in the USA each year, compared to 65,000 in Europe, and these numbers are rising due to climate change and urban sprawl. The standard...