| January 15, 2024 | |
| No Organization is Immune to Cyber Attacks | |
| In 2023, healthcare organizations experience its worst year ever for cyber attacks. It’s not the number of attacks but the attacks have been more damaging and affected more people, says John Riggi, national advisor for cybersecurity for the American Hospital Association. About 106 million individuals have been affected by cyber attacks involving healthcare organizations, according to federal data on health data breaches says Riggi, compared to about 44 million people affected by health data breaches in 2022. This translates to nearly 1 in 3 Americans have been affected by a health data breach this year. To read more. | |
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| February 15, 2024 | |
| Can Donald Trump Legally Run for the 2024 Elections: Three Big Legal Questions | |
| Depending on whether our next President is a Democrat or Republican will affect future businesses, politics and basically everything because of each parties political beliefs. The state of Colorado has tried to bar Trump from being on the ballot. ”Colorado officials have argued that his role in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress makes him an insurrectionist and that the 14th Amendment bars insurrectionists from the presidency in addition to Trump’s involvement in overturning the election. Maine has also moved to bar Trump, and other states would likely follow if the Supreme Court were to allow it.” To read more. | |
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| March 15, 2024 | |
| Should the Government Seize Patents for Certain Costly Medications, a Policy Know as the March-in Rights? | |
| The elections have dominated the news and in doing so, one of the things that has been flying under the radar with the general public is President Biden’s proposal in early December 2023 “to seize the patents of certain costly medications in an effort…… to slash high drug prices and promote more competition in the pharmaceutical industry in the U.S.” A controversial policy known as “march-in rights.” Should the Government Seize Patents for Certain Costly Medications, a Policy Know as the March-in Rights? What is your opinion? To read more. | |
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| April 15, 2024 | |
| Do Infections Accelerate Cognitive Decline and Increase the Risk of Dementia and Alzheimer’s? | |
| We all know that when we are young, we have a healthy immune system that can fight off infections or recover from an infections fairly quickly if it is a bacterial infection with the help of antibiotics. Viral infections since there is no treatment we have to rely solely on our immune system to recover. But as we age, the risk for infection-related complications increases with age due to changes in our immune system response which is usually weaken. One of these complications is the acceleration of cognitive decline. Infections can cause short term cognitive impairments which are reversible once the infection is cleared, but they can also lead to long-term cognitive impairments in people who are already on the trajectory toward dementia. An infection can unmask dementia in people with subtle symptoms. To read more. | |
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| May 15, 2024 | |
| The 911 on Microplastics | |
| We hear about how plastics or microplastics are bad and can be harmful to humans, wildlife and the environment. But the 911 details aren’t being emphasized enough, so I’m going to summarize it here. What are Microplastics? Microplastics (MPs) as defined by Frias J., and Nash R. are “synthetic solid particles or polymeric matrices, with regular or irregular shape and with size ranging from 1 μm to 5 mm, of either primary or secondary manufacturing origin, which are insoluble in water.” Unlike other materials, plastic does not biodegrade. It can take 100 to 1000 years to break down aka life-long materials, so when it is discarded, it builds up in the environment until it reaches a point of crisis. To read more. | |
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| June 15, 2024 | |
| The BIOSECURE ACT and What It Means | |
| The BIOSECURE Act being considered by both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate would prohibit U.S. federal funding (including loans, grants, and contracts (including contract extensions and renewals)) in connection with biotechnology equipment or services produced or provided by Chinese biotechnology service providers that are named in the legislation (BGI Genomics, MGI, Complete Genomics, and WuXi AppTec) as well as certain other to-be-identified entities that are subject to the control of a “foreign adversary” (defined by law to be China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and Russia). This Act was proposed I’m assuming because of political tension between the US and China, competition from China wanting to be the biotechnology center of excellence in the world and where Intellectual Property (IP) is the main determining factor to being a leading Biotech Center. Therefore, IP is heavily guarded and any sharing, giving or stealing IP is a major offense. In February, U.S. intelligence officials informed Senators on the bipartisan homeland security committee that WuXi AppTec had transferred a U.S. client’s intellectual property to China without the customer’s consent for military for use by China’s military. To read more. | |
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| July 15, 2024 | |
| Major Advancements in Understanding How to Slow Down the Aging Process | |
| Society has been searching for ways to slow the aging process for thousands of year, before BC. Today, with advance knowledge and modern technology, scientist are getting to a little closer to solving this very complex puzzle. We know that the brain is the body’s control center communicating and instructing to all parts of our body how to function through neurons. Scientists, found that the brain may also play an unexpected role in aging. To read more. | |
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| August 15, 2024 | |
| Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) Are the Culprits for Soaring Cost of Medications | |
| With the rising cost of medications, for decades everyone blamed the drug manufacturers. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) held a hearing on February 7th, 2024 asking the question “Why Does the United States Pay, by Far, the Highest Prices in the World for Prescription Drugs?” with the CEOs of Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck all testifying. This is part of the initiative for Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed in August 16, 2022. At the hearing, the CEOs were grilled and there were four key takeaways, but two main points: 1)Republicans shared the concern about prices but defended drugmakers. 2)Pharmaceutical CEOs pointed to high research and development costs, middlemen. To read more. | |
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| September 15, 2024 | |
| Five Reasons Why Companies are Abandoning Cell and Gene Therapy | |
| Gene therapy is a new class of medical treatment, known as a “living drug,” that provides a one-time treatment option by rewriting or fixing errors in the natural genetic ciphering and curing previously intractable diseases. These therapies are predominantly a viral vector-based medicine and has met with a fair bit of skepticism from both from the science community and the patients. Thanks to advancements in gene editing such as CRISPR and recombinant viral vector development, the interest of clinicians and pharmaceutical industries had been rekindled. However, recently companies are pulling out of the gene therapy market for five (5) main reasons, To read more. | |
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