Archives: Morning Breakouts

The medication, called ella, helps prevent pregnancy up to five days after unprotected sex. But abortion opponents criticized the drug, saying it keeps a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

Democrats are looking at proposals to crack down on licensing agreements between drug companies that keep generic drugs out of the market, Politico reports.

Though genetic testing is already available to consumers - at costs sometimes in the thousands of dollars - the information they provide isn't always supported by evidence and may be misleading.

Senate Republicans fail to revise Democrats' jobless benefits and tax extenders package, which includes a provision to stop a pending 21 percent cut in Medicare pay to doctors.

According to two new studies, "giving pregnant and nursing women triple antiretroviral drug therapy, or treating breast-fed infants with an antiretroviral medication, can dramatically cut transmission rates, enabling moms to both breast-feed and to protect nearly all children from infection," HealthDay News/Bloomberg Businessweek reports (Goodwin, 6/16).

NPR's Morning Edition examines the Obama administration's Global Health Initiative (GHI) and efforts to combat HIV/AIDS. The $63 billion dollar "initiative preserves the Bush AIDS relief plan," known as PEPFAR, and aims "to allow patients to get care at one location rather than having to seek care at different places. For example, family planning at one facility and HIV care at another," NPR notes.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs said Wednesday that the G8 could endanger its credibility if leaders fail to fulfill several "broken multi-billion-dollar pledges" aimed at helping the developing world, Canwest News Service/Vancouver Sun reports.

Citing USAID's Feed the Future initiative as "central" to U.S. foreign policy, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday announced plans to "leverage the work" of U.S. researchers to "benefit farmers in developing countries worldwide," PTI/The Hindu reports. During the 2010 World Food Prize ceremony Clinton said, "In a few decades, the world's population will grow to 9 billion people. If we are to feed the future without leveling the forests, draining the aquifers and depleting the soil of all its nutrients, we need science" (6/17).

"HIV drugs can be administered as effectively by nurses as by doctors, a finding that could yield major benefits in the fight against AIDS in Africa," according to a study published online Wednesday in the Lancet, Agence France-Presse reports.