
By Tanya Sichynsky from NYT Food https://ift.tt/3CrKNyV
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(LONDON) —Pharmaceutical company Merck agreed to allow other drug makers to produce its COVID-19 pill, in a move aimed at helping millions of people in poorer countries get access to the potentially life-saving drug, a United Nations-backed public health organization said on Wednesday.
The Medicines Patent Pool said in a statement that it had signed a voluntary licensing agreement for molnupiravir with Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.
The agreement will allow the Medicines Patent Pool to grant further licenses to qualified companies who are approved to make the drug. Neither drug maker will receive royalties under the agreement for as long as the World Health Organization deems COVID-19 to be global emergency. Molnupiravir is the first pill that has been shown to treat the disease.
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Charles Gore, the executive director of the Medicines Patent Pool, said the early results for molnupiravir were “compelling” and that he hoped this first voluntary licensing agreement for a COVID-19 treatment would lead to others.
Despite repeated requests from governments and health officials, no vaccine makers have agreed to a similar deal. A hub set up by WHO in South Africa intended to share messenger RNA vaccine recipes and technologies has not enticed a single pharmaceutical to join.
Merck has requested its pill be licensed by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency, decisions that could come within weeks.
Merck reported this month that molnupiravir cut hospitalizations and deaths by half among patients with early symptoms of COVID-19. The results were so strong that independent medical experts monitoring the trial recommended stopping it early.
An antiviral pill that people could take at home to reduce their symptoms and speed recovery could prove groundbreaking, easing the crushing caseload on hospitals and helping to curb outbreaks in poorer countries with weak health care systems.
It would also bolster a two-pronged approach to the pandemic: treatment by way of medication and prevention, primarily through vaccinations.
The charity Doctors Without Borders welcomed the agreement Merck struck to share its COVID-19 pill, but said it didn’t go far enough.
“The license excludes key upper-middle-income countries like Brazil and China from its territory, where there are strong, established capacity to produce and supply antiviral medicines,” said Yuanqiong Hu, a senior legal and policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders, who called the deal “disappointing.”
In many ways, the United States Senate is an anachronism left over from a time when thirteen colonies were independent sovereign nations. The Senate was created as a representative of those entities, not of the people. Today, however, at a time when our very democracy is at risk, the Senate serves as a roadblock to the American people’s ability to have their will realized.
The survival of our democracy is under attack, and the Senate threatens the ability of Americans to see their views acted upon. This is not what the Constitution, nor the Framers, contemplated.
I was elected to the Maryland State Senate in 1966. That was the indirect result of two profound Supreme Court cases: one decided in 1962 (Baker v. Carr) and one decided in 1965 (Reynolds v. Sims). The first decision said that the lower houses of every state had to be apportioned based on population—not geography. The central premise being “one man, one vote.” The second case held that both state houses and state senates must reflect populations not geographical subdivisions—in other words, “people, not trees.”
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Before these two decisions, it was common for states to diverge widely in the voting power of different residents, depending on where they lived. In another case, also in 1964, Wesberry v. Sanders, the Court applied the “one man, one vote” requirement to the U.S. House of Representatives.
As a result of those decisions, Prince George’s County, where I lived, received four additional senators. Up to that time, each of our twenty-three counties had one senator, which meant that Maryland’s smallest county, Kent County, with 15,481 people in 1960, had as many senators as Prince George’s County, with 357,395. I was elected to one of the new seats created to address that unjust imbalance.
In the cases I’ve mentioned, the Supreme Court found that it was a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause not to have “substantially equal legislative representation for all citizens in a state regardless of where they live.” That principle applied to state legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives. It did not apply, however, to the U.S. Senate.
That’s because the Senate’s makeup had been determined not by fairness, but by a political deal between thirteen sovereign entities that they would be represented equally in the Senate. While that agreement was included in the Constitution, it is, nevertheless, as much in violation of the “one man, one vote” principle as were the state legislatures before the Court’s rulings in the 1960’s.
Notwithstanding the Seventeenth Amendment, the Senate cannot now be called a representative body of the people. Voters in Wyoming are almost eighty-times more powerful than their fellow citizens in California—an egregious violation of the sacred principle of equal protection. Seventy-five Senate seats represent about 40% of the population!
To compound that inequality, the Senate has adopted rules and customs that make the majority even less able to work its will. As a result of the Senate’s much-abused filibuster rule, one Senator from any state can effectively veto the actions of the entire body.
The filibuster defies the clear intent of the Constitution and its writers—and of the almost universal legislative practice that “the majority rules.” In fact, James Madison, in Federalist 58, in response to a suggestion that more than a majority be required, said: “In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed.”
And, in Federalist 22, Alexander Hamilton said: “What at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser.”
The writers of the Constitution clearly contemplated that there were times that extraordinary majorities would be called for: 1) amending the Constitution; 2) impeaching a president or other office holders; 3) approving a treaty negotiated by the executive; and 4) overriding a veto by a president. However, the drafters of the Constitution discussed but did not include a provision for the passage of legislation to need more than a majority vote. Therefore, I believe the filibuster to be an unconstitutional requirement for more than a majority to pass legislation.
The Senate has considered itself to be the “greatest deliberative body.” They have, however, become the most non-deliberative body. And, in recent decades, they don’t even discuss (i.e. filibuster) their reasons for opposition.
The House has many times sent to the Senate legislation supported by large majorities of the American people and a majority of the U.S. Senate—only to see its consideration blocked. Just last week, the minority in the Senate refused to even debate critical voting rights legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act. From raising the minimum wage to securing equal pay to enacting commonsense gun reforms, the minority regularly blocks any consideration whatsoever.
Surely, the Founders had no such intent for legislation to be frozen. They clearly believed the majority would rule, not just in the House but in the Senate as well.
The Senate should become a democratic body, even if not a representative one, and honor the principle of majority rule. Let the people’s voices not be silenced by a minority.
I would urge my colleagues in the Senate to eliminate Rule XXII, which allows a filibuster (feigned or real) to silence the majority. The premise that such a rule is necessary as some kind of check and balance fails to understand that good principle. It is the legislature that checks the executive, who checks the legislature by the veto, and Supreme Court who checks both on behalf of the Constitution and the minority.
If the Senate Minority has veto power over the Senate Majority, our democracy is upside down, and there is real danger that Americans will conclude their democracy is broken. That has happened too often around the world. We must not let it happen here.
Most guidelines and data on breast cancer have come from studies of white women of European descent.
“I don’t experience the screening recommendations in the same way that white women do,” says Yvette Gullatt, chief diversity officer for the University of California system. “I experience breast cancer in Black women as highly aggressive and lethal. I’ve had white colleagues who were diagnosed with breast cancer and go to radiation in the morning, and are back at work by 10 a.m.; they never miss a day.”
Gullatt joined the WISDOM study, which stands for Women Informed to Screen Depending On Measures of risk, in the hopes that she can improve breast cancer care for Black women. “We need more studies like this because [researchers] need more data in order to diagnose and treat us better,” she says.
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The WISDOM study was launched in 2016 by Dr. Laura Esserman with the hope of bringing a more personalized approach to figuring out each woman’s risk for the disease, plus tailor a screening and treatment program appropriate for that risk.
Esserman and her team are working closely with community advocates to increase awareness and education about clinical trials among Black women, who already have a deep mistrust of the medical system given notorious episodes of medical exploitation, including the Tuskeegee and Henrietta Lacks experiences. In those cases, Black patients were used in research studies without being fully informed of their participation or the potential risks of participating. Providing them with the opportunity to learn more about research trials is especially important, since about 25% of breast cancers among Black women are triple negative, a highly aggressive form that’s missing the locks to three hormone-based drug “keys” that have become effective weapons in fighting the disease in recent years. Without these locks, the drugs can’t work, and tumors grow more quickly and seed new growths in other parts of the body. Most of these cancers also start in younger Black women, under age 40, so they aren’t picked up because they aren’t getting mammograms yet, per current guidelines.
Rickie Fairley, a former marketing executive and breast cancer survivor, is working to improve education among Black women about the need to participate in trials like WISDOM. She has mobilized other women to serve as a clearinghouse for those who aren’t as familiar with the facts about breast cancer risk among Black women or about research and clinical trials. “Right now, we are not empowering Black women, or women of color, to understand the importance of research,” she says, noting that many Black women are afraid to join research studies. “There’s not enough data about Black women. We’re trying to figure out how to change the language so that we’re not afraid anymore, so that we take the fear away from any kind of research and empower us to participate in it.”
As part of WISDOM’s recruitment, Esserman has also reached out to the VA health system in the U.S. to include female veterans whose risk of breast cancer may be related to not just hereditary factors but environmental exposures during their service. Lisa Edwards, a veteran who was discharged from the Army in 1989, says the study is an opportunity to raise awareness and resources for women’s health in the VA system in general. “As female veterans, we faced chemicals and exposure just as the men did,” she says. “But because our bodies react differently, I think in the future it may help researchers understand certain cancers from chemicals that react differently in women than in men.”
Esserman hopes that having a more tailored approach to figuring out a woman’s risk based on her biological and social situation will mean that more women get the screening schedule and treatment for managing their breast health that’s right for them.
Saudi Arabia said Middle Eastern economies will be boosted by efforts to cut planet-warming gases and announced a fund to invest in carbon-capture technology.
“Climate change is an economic opportunity for individuals and the private sector,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in Riyadh on Monday at a forum attended by several heads of state. Reducing emissions will “create jobs and strengthen innovation in the region.”
The kingdom will establish a fund to improve carbon sequestration and back a plan to feed hundreds of millions of people by providing them clean cooking fuels, Prince Mohammed said. The two initiatives will cost 39 billion riyals ($10.4 billion) and Saudi Arabia will contribute 15%.
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The government will also open regional centers for early warning of storms, for sustainable fishing and for cloud seeding.
On Saturday, the prince pledged that Saudi Arabia would neutralize greenhouse gas emissions within its borders by 2060. It marked a seismic shift for the world’s biggest oil exporter, though officials included plenty of caveats and emphasized that Saudi Arabia and others would need to pump crude for decades to come.
The kingdom will try to develop facilities that capture and store carbon emissions as part of that commitment. The technology will be used for the production of blue hydrogen, a fuel made by converting natural gas and seen as crucial to the green-energy transition.
The net-zero goal “is a major step forward,” U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate envoy, John Kerry, said earlier on Monday. “It’s critical to have one of the world’s largest producers of fossil fuels step up at a moment when all countries, no matter their circumstances, need to come together.”
Other leaders at the Riyadh conference emphasized the need for governments to accelerate efforts to slow climate change.
“Just in the last two years we have seen fires in Siberia, in California, in the Mediterranean—unprecedented,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan said. “I hope that collectively we take this challenge much more seriously than we have done.”
Pakistan is stopping all coal projects and wants to make renewables 60% of its energy mix by 2030, he said.
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