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MERCK PROFITS
approve Merck’s plan to buy New Jersey neighbor Schering-Plough Merck & Co. has posted a huge Corp. That sale alone saw the profit margin due to higher than company reap an impressive $1.7 average sales and the sale of billion (after tax), but even without a business. it, profits would still The company, have been up 58 whose range of percent from the The sale products inalone saw the year before. company reap an cludes cholesAs a result of impressive terol drugs its profitable year, and vaccines, Merck is moving along with the after tax up from number asthma and allergy eight to number treatment Singulair, two on the pharma posted a net income of $3.42 power ladder, thanks billion, triple the amount it made at in part to its $41 bilthe same time last year. lion acquisition of A large part of that inSchering-Plough. Other come came from the sale successes for Merck have of half of the Merial been the company's new diaanimal health busibetes drugs, Januvia and Janumet, ness so that reguwhich brought in a combined total lators would of $664 million. Meanwhile Singulair sales increased five percent to $1.1 billion.
$1.7 billion
GATES PLEDGES $10 BILLION FOR VACCINES At the reccent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, revered business tycoon and founder of computer software giant Microsoft, Bill Gates, announced with his wife that they will commit $10 billion over the next decade to help research, develop and deliver vaccines for the world’s poorest countries. According to Mrs. Gates, who announced the initiative last Friday, the vaccines are now the “number one priority” of the Gates Foundation
because of the “incredible impact” they have on children’s lives. Bill Gates added that the next 10 years must be defined as “the decade of vaccines”. The boost comes after a model used by the Foundation and developed by a consortium led by the Institute of International Programs at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health stated that significantly scaling up the delivery of vaccines in developing countries could prevent the deaths of some 7.6 million children.
AUTISM ARTICLE DISAVOWED A prestigious medical journal has dren. In 2004, as scrutiny and critidisavowed an article it published cism of the study intensified, ten of more than a decade ago linking 13 co-authors of the 1998 autism arautism in children to a common ticle publicly disassociated themchildhood vaccine. The original arti- selves from it. Paul Offit, a vaccine cle raised widespread concern researcher at Children’s about the safety of the Hospital in Philadelphia, vaccine, prompting says at least 12 studies many parents have been done worldwide to worldwide conco-authors of the 1998autism stop vaccinating cluding repeatedly article publicly their children. that the MMR disassociated In 1998, a vaccine does not themselves from it high-profile article cause autism.
10 of 13
published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, announced a link between autism and the MMR vaccine, used against measles, mumps and rubella. There had been no established cause shown for autism, a disorder that affects a youngster’s social skills and ability to interact with the outside world. In the original paper, British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield described a small sample of 12 children, eight of whom showed evidence of autism shortly after receiving the vaccine. However, subsequent investigations by British regulators led to charges that Dr. Wakefield falsified data and was paid by the parents of autistic chil-
“We’ve reached the many hundreds of thousands mark of children who did or didn’t receive MMR to see whether risk of autism was greater in the vaccinated group and it wasn’t; consistently, reproducibly, redundantly,” he says. “I think the problem is there are people who simply don’t believe the science. They hold on to this notion that MMR causes autism or that vaccines cause autism much as one holds a religious belief.” Source: voanews.com.
FAST FACT
1% of children aged 3 to 17 in the US have an autism spectrum disorder