Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@qoto.org

'Em março de 2020, assim que a covid chega à Europa e para facilitar esta alegada concertação, quatro dos laboratórios visados, entre os quais a Germano de Sousa e a Joaquim Chaves, criaram dois grupos de WhatsApp: um chamado Covid Seguradoras, com a Medis, a Multicare e a AdvanceCare, para “discutir o fornecimento de testes covid”, e outro apenas entre eles, para “acordar a posição nas negociações em curso com as seguradoras”. Também aqui a AdC considera ter havido conversas sobre preços, que, na sua ótica, embatem na Lei da Concorrência. O Ministério da Saúde não quis comentar.'

https://expresso.pt/semanario/primeiro/em-destaque/2024-07-25-covid-19-laboratorios-criaram-grupos-de-whatsapp-e-trocavam-mensagens-para-concertar-precos-dos-testes-481982b3

Interesting, but that's a big 'if':
“They support the hypothesis that vaccination against shingles might prevent dementia,” Taquet said. “If validated in clinical trials, these findings could have significant implications for older adults, health services and public health.”
https://www.ft.com/content/d0aaf521-8f24-444d-86b7-c260ae7909a6

The usual suspects:
"Observed amounts of Neanderthal DNA approximately match expectations based on ancestry proportions, suggesting neutral evolution. Nevertheless, we identified genomic regions that have significantly less or more Neanderthal ancestry than expected and are associated with spermatogenesis, innate immunity, and other biological processes"
#Preprint #Genomics
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.25.605203v1?med=mas

'Academics are only the latest of several groups of what we might call content creators to take umbrage at having their work ingested by the generative AI models currently racing to hoover up the products of human culture. Newspapers, visual artists and record labels are already taking AI companies to court.'

https://theconversation.com/an-academic-publisher-has-struck-an-ai-data-deal-with-microsoft-without-their-authors-knowledge-235203

'The University of York law professor Charlotte O’Brien said the three rulings would have terrible real life consequences, akin to Windrush for vulnerable EU citizens.

“It could mean that years and decades from now, people with settled status under the EUSS [EU settlement scheme] may find they have no proof that they ever had withdrawal agreement-based rights.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/25/uk-post-brexit-scheme-eu-citizens-courts

'An attenuated live virus vaccine is highly effective, but lapses in delivery have resulted in increasing cases worldwide. Although the primary cause of failure to control measles is failure to vaccinate, waning vaccine-induced immunity and the possible emergence of more virulent virus strains may also contribute.'

https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/jvi.00758-24

'San Francisco-based Tetsuwan Scientific recently closed a $2.5mn funding round and aims to create an AI robot scientist that can conduct research and physical experiments in a lab. Its chief executive, Cristian Ponce said robots would be able to reproduce experiments with greater accuracy than humans, freeing up scientists for creativity and discovery.
“Generative AI [has been] applied to stupid things that don’t matter, like back-office tasking or accounting software, but applying generative AI to scientific discovery is the most impactful thing that we could do,” Ponce said.'
https://www.ft.com/content/bea9df71-371c-4045-9cb4-64c22789bf7b

"The Swiss drugmaker also defenestrated three phase 1 programs. Anti-CD25 Treg depleter RG6292 landed on the discard pile. Roche previously stopped a monotherapy clinical trial but continued to study RG6292 in combination with its checkpoint inhibitor Tecentriq."
#Immunology #Treg
https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/roche-pumps-brakes-pompe-axing-gene-therapy-after-assessing-competition

'While other reportable sexually transmitted infections declined or remained flat during the pandemic, over 207,000 cases of syphilis were reported in 2022, an 80 percent increase since 2018 and the highest number reported since 1950.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/opinion/syphilis-disease-rates-rising.html

'The prospect of an H5N1 pandemic has been a source of concern ever since the virus was isolated from humans in Hong Kong in 1997. In response, the U.S. government began developing pandemic-preparedness plans. A series of reports from the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has emphasized the need for the stockpiling of personal protective equipment, resilient supply chains, and greater coordination between agencies and various levels of government. Yet despite these plans and warnings, and despite being ranked the most prepared among 195 countries to handle a pandemic on the Global Health Security Index in 2019, when Covid-19 arrived, the United States fared terribly by most measures'

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2406427