Health

Big Pharma Merck and Co. are being sued over their shingles vaccine Zostavax. The vaccine pulled in $749 million in sales last year for Merck. Several patients filed lawsuits claiming that Merck’s shingles vaccine caused serious injury and death. Attorneys have said that many more cases are on the way. Vaxxter reports: The plaintiffs have sued in Pennslyvania federal courts. “I think Merck has failed terribly … to warn about the very serious side effects and the failure of the vaccine to do what they claim it does,” attorney Marc Bern told FiercePharma. Bern, founding partner at Marc J.

Australia has announced plans to ban all unvaccinated children from attending school, in harsh new rules introduced by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnball.  Turnball says that parents need to vaccinate their children or suffer the humiliation of being excluded from the education system. Under the new law, unvaccinated children from nursery preschool and childcare centers will be excluded from attending.

The much anticipated CBO scoring of the American Health Care Act, aka "Trumpcare" is out, and among the key highlights are that while the US federal budget would be reduced by $337 billion over the 2017-2026 period, it would also mean that 14 million more would be uninsured by 2018 under the Republican ObamaCare replacement bill, with the number rising to 24 million by 2026. Furthermore, it adds that "average premiums for single policyholders in the nongroup market would be 15% to 20% higher than under current law", i.e. prices would go up.

A few weeks ago we noted that none other than John Boehner, the former Republican Speaker of the House, scoffed at the idea of repealing and replacing Obamacare as he essentially predicted that Republicans would become their own worst enemy (see "Boehner: Full Repeal And Replace Of Obamacare 'Is Not Going To Happen'"):

“[Congressional Republicans are] going to fix Obamacare – I shouldn’t call it repeal-and-replace, because it’s not going to happen,” he said.

 

“I started laughing,” he said. “Republicans never ever agree on health care.”

Scientists in the United States have been given the go-ahead to legally resurrect 20 brain-dead patients using advanced stem cell technology.  Participants will have been certified dead and will kept alive via life support, whilst being monitored for several months. Biotech company Bioquark has been tasked with stimulating and regrowing neurons in order to bring the patients back from the dead.