A tin pot dictator plunders billions from his blighted nation’s treasury. Sensing he’ll soon be exiled, amid public relations fanfare, he offers ill-gotten millions to a local university for a new school…
Though the codeine we take today is made synthetically, small amounts of codeine are actually found in the opium poppy.
Daniel Jolivet/Flickr
Many suspect Van Gogh suffered from foxglove extract overdose due to the yellow halos in his paintings and his portrait of his physician holding the plant.
Good models have been developed to ensure benefit sharing in the biodiversity business. But major challenges prevent developing countries from translating this into social justice.
Spider silk is just one of the ways nature has inspired innovation.
Silk image from www.shutterstock.com
More than 700,000 people die each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. The World Health Organisation is trying to end the age of ignorance to protect this global common good.
This project offers the tantalising possibility that plants containing drugs, such as agents to treat HIV, could be farmed on a small scale at low cost by communities that need them most.
Bashing drugmakers can be an easy way to score political points.
Reuters
Clinton, who named drug companies among her enemies in this week’s debate, is pushing populist-inspired policies that could hamper the flow of new medicines.
A deadly meeting? The potentially lethal viper, Echis carinatus.
Shantanu Kuveskar
News that a leading manufacturer will cease making a well-known antivenom is not actually new.
Off-label use is when an approved medicine is prescribed for a different reason, at a different dose, or in different patient groups than originally intended.
Benny Lin/Flickr
The off-label use of medicines is not illegal and it doesn’t mean regulators have specifically “disapproved” its use. But there are a number of issues to consider before using a medicine off-label.
Generic medicine is essential to regions like the Southern African Development Community where HIV is endemic and cheap drugs are needed.
shutterstock
Erica Penfold, South African Institute of International Affairs
The generic drug industry has become essential to developing countries that need access to cheaper drugs to treat their heavy burdens of communicable diseases.
Insulin, which is used for controlling diabetes and has been in the market for 30 years, was the first biologic.
Yusmar Yahaya/Flickr
Biologics are widely accepted as the most effective way of treating certain diseases. They have become the fastest-growing class of therapeutic compounds, with about 300 now available for human use.