Archive by category | World watch

Timeline of events: A brief history of what made news this year

Timeline of events: A brief history of what made news this year

This year has proven to be a veritable cliff-hanger for the world of biomedicine. At the same time that the US government stands poised on the brink of the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’, pharmaceutical companies are stumbling with the industry’s ‘patent cliff’ and academic researchers face the looming ‘funding cliff’. But not everything in 2012 was so dire, with dozens of new drugs to hit worldwide markets and countless discoveries made to enable the next generation of medicines. What follows are a set of ‘Cliff’s notes’ to the year that was for the field.  Read more

Pharma backs latest attempt at a global health R&D treaty

Pharma backs latest attempt at a global health R&D treaty

The World Health Organization (WHO) kicks off its annual meeting in Geneva next Monday, and one of the most contentious issues on the agenda will undoubtedly be a proposed agreement to fund the development of drugs for diseases that overwhelmingly afflict the world’s poor. The proposal, outlined today in PLoS Medicine, would require the WHO’s 193 member states to commit to increase government funding for global health initiatives from the $3 billion or so spent worldwide today to more than $6 billion annually in the near-future.  Read more

With even Europe falling behind, can WHO meet new goals for measles?

With even Europe falling behind, can WHO meet new goals for measles?

Perhaps it takes falling behind to know that you have to get ahead: shortly after The Lancet released a report today saying the World Health Organization had failed to meet its 2010 goal for global measles reduction, the WHO announced that it has a new, more ambitious target of eliminating measles and rubella—also known as German measles—in at least five of six global regions by 2020. The expanded goals come as Europe, despite its historically strong public health systems, is struggling to recover from more than 26,000 measles cases in 2011, a number on-par with developing countries such as Nigeria and Somalia.  Read more

MRSA’s killing potential explained, providing a new drug target to halt the superbug

MRSA’s killing potential explained, providing a new drug target to halt the superbug

Since it first arose more than 50 years ago, the methicillin-resistant staph infection known as MRSA has ravaged hospital wards around the globe, causing untreatable, often lethal, infections in people already weakened by disease. As with most cases of antibiotic resistance, the rise of the first MRSA bacteria was the fault of humans. The Staphylococcus aureus bacterium, which causes everything from respiratory infections to meningitis, mutated to become resistant to all the first-line drugs used to treat it—first penicillin, and later methicillin and other drugs known as beta-lactams.  Read more

Science down under

I’ve just returned from a two-week trip to Australia to scout out stories on the state of research in the country. We’re planning to run a special issue about Australia science early next year so you can read about it in detail then, but one thing I can tell you is I have never met a bunch of people who take more pride in their country.  Read more