— Religion helps bring communities together, but it might be bringing us too close to each other. An outbreak of mumps among more than 1,500 people at an Orthodox Jewish summer camp in upstate New York, most of whom were immunized, suggest that the unique characteristics of religious communities — such as large family sizes and longer school hours — could help spread disease. (LA Times)

— New details are emerging in the case of the neurobiologist accused of shooting three colleagues after being denied tenure at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. On Saturday, police in Braintree, Massachusetts, said that Amy Bishop killed her teenage brother more than two decades ago, and yesterday, a law enforcement official in Boston said that Bishop was questioned in the attempted mail bombing of a Harvard Medical School professor in 1993. (Boston Globe)

— Score another point for generics companies in India: The Delhi high court last week refused to block approval of a copycat version of Bayer’s billion dollar cancer drug Nexavar. The ruling is the latest indication that India’s patent office and courts do not plan to recognize drug patents just because they are granted in the United States and other western countries. “The US would grant a patent to a piece of toilet paper,” Amar Lulla, chief executive of the Mumbai–based drugmaker Cipla, told the Wall Street Journal.

— A drug used to treat genital herpes can also slow the progression of HIV in patients with both diseases, researchers reported today. The African trial of more than 3,300 heterosexual people dually infected with herpes simplex virus type 2 and HIV-1 found that two years of treatment with the anti-HSV2 drug aciclovir led to a 16% reduction in the number of patients with dangerously low T cell counts. (BBC)

Image by Gorillasushi via Flickr Creative Commons