Archives: Morning Breakouts

In other campaign trail news, media outlets examine who is supporting and opposing GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich's run, and how health policies are playing into their decisions.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that the question is whether patents can be applied to concepts drawn from nature and notes that the case could redefine ownership of technological or scientific innovations.

The decision to keep the contraceptive pill "Plan B" behind the counter could shield the Obama administration from a bruising battle with conservatives but comes at the expense of liberal groups who are "shocked" at the decision.

"A group that tracks funding for neglected diseases released its fourth annual report Wednesday, showing for the first time since 2007 a decrease in government and public spending in global health research and development," the Center for Global Health Policy's "Science Speaks" blog reports (Mazzotta, 12/7). The Global Funding of Innovation for Neglected Diseases (G-FINDER) survey report, conducted by Policy Cures and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, found that "[p]ublic funding from the world's richest nations for research and development (R&D) of new neglected disease products fell by US$125 million (down six percent) in 2010," a Policy Cures press release (.pdf) states (12/7).

Sarah Brown, international advocate for global maternal and newborn health and wife of former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, answers questions about her work from Forbes contributor Rahim Kanani in this interview excerpt. Brown "discussed the evolution of her interests, the current landscape of maternal and newborn health worldwide, critical levers of progress, leadership lessons in the context of global advocacy, and much more," according to Forbes (12/7).

"A group of health organizations [on Wednesday] launched a new international consortium to better prepare the clinical research community to respond to the next pandemic or other emerging health threat," CIDRAP News reports (Schnirring, 12/7). "The International Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Consortium (ISARIC) is a global collaboration of over 20 hospital-based clinical research networks ... aimed at ensuring the clinical researchers have in place the necessary open access protocols and data-sharing processes and have considered the ethical issues that will allow them to respond to rapidly emerging diseases with epidemic or pandemic potential, such as the recent pandemic H1N1 influenza and SARS outbreaks and potentially other rapidly emerging public health threats," according to a Wellcome Trust press release.

"Women, particularly those living in mountain regions in developing countries, are facing disproportionately high risks to their livelihoods and health from climate change, as well as associated risks such as human trafficking, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)," released at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa, the UNEP News Centre reports.

"Fatal snakebites worldwide have been vastly underreported because many die before seeking or reaching medical care, researchers" from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt, Germany, reported on Monday at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene's (ASTMH) annual meeting, UPI.com writes (12/5). NPR's "Shots" blog notes that, "even at the low end of estimates, deaths from snakebites would exceed those from better-known scourges, such as cholera, dengue fever and Chagas disease," according to researchers at the symposium (Hensley, 12/6).