pharma

Tornado damage to Pfizer plant could aggravate drug shortages

The timing could not be worse. The tornado that struck North Carolina Wednesday damaged a Pfizer plant that makes almost 30% of sterile injectable medicines sold to U.S. hospitals, just as the shortage of prescription medicines escalates. While the Rocky Mountain plant is one of Pfizer’s biggest manufacturing facilities, the impact is still being determined. In addition to sterile injectables, it produces glass vials, plastic vials, syringes, flexible containers, and semi-rigid bottles. Local media reports suggested warehouse inventory may have been wiped out.

Current shortages range from ADHD pills to injectable treatments for syphilis and different forms of cancer, traced to quality control failures at manufacturing plants and surging demand, famously for weight loss drugs. “It’s hard to know exactly what the impact will be, but this stands to just make things worse,” said Erin Fox of University of Utah Health Care. STAT’s Ed Silverman has more.

academia

Stanford's president has resigned, but the debate is just beginning 

Ben Margot/AP

True to form, academics are debating the resignation of Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, expressing support or disappointment after an investigation found he failed to “decisively and forthrightly” correct past papers containing data manipulation. It’s a win for scientific accountability, some said, or misplaced blame, others believe. Two takes: 

Cori Bargmann of Rockefeller University: “Marc is one of the most accomplished scientists of his generation. … I’m sad that he made the decision to step down from the presidency of Stanford, because he was excellent in that role as well.”

David Blake of Augusta University “I don’t think that this is ever going to change. … There’s no punishment to the lab if people in the lab are getting impactful publications by making things up. And if there’s problems with it, [the lab head] will trash the trainee’s career and apologize.”

STAT’s Jonathan Wosen and Annalisa Merelli have more voices here.

health inequity

Black cancer survivors are at higher risk of dying from cardiovascular disease

People who survive cancer are more likely than others to die from cardiovascular disease because their treatments can be so harsh or because they have common risk factors for both diseases. A new study of more than 900,000 U.S. adults finds that Black cancer survivors are more vulnerable to cardiovascular disease than white cancer survivors, with up to three times the risk of death from cardiovascular disease than white patients, depending on the cancer type.

Writing in the International Journal of Epidemiology, the study authors link this higher mortality risk to differences in socioeconomic status and health insurance. Socioeconomic factors for the neighborhoods where cancer survivors lived include education level, employment, household income, and house value or rent. Disparities in health insurance status could explain 12% to 31% of the excess cardiovascular deaths among Black versus white survivors, the authors say, and both factors “underscore the importance of neighborhood-level interventions and equitable access to care.”