Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
Bayer said on Tuesday that its Monsanto chemical subsidiary has proposed a $7.25 billion settlement to resolve lawsuits by customers alleging that its Roundup weedkiller product caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. If the settlement wins court approval, Monsanto would make annual payments for up to 21 years. People diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma who were exposed to Roundup before the proposed legal remedy was announced on Tuesday can file a claim to receive payments, according to Reuters. Non-Hodgkins lymphoma is a type of cancer that develops in white blood cells called lymphocytes, which are part of the body’s infection-fighting immune system. Bayer said…
Feb 17 (Reuters) – Tylenol-maker Kenvue on Tuesday beat Wall Street estimates for fourth-quarter results and announced a global workforce reduction, as it proceeds toward a planned takeover by Kimberly-Clark. Kenvue said its board has approved a plan to optimize its operating model, resulting in a net reduction of its global workforce by about 3.5%. The company had about 22,000 employees as of last year. Kleenex-maker Kimberly-Clark in early November proposed buying Kenvue for more than $40 billion to create a global consumer health company with brands like Band-Aid and Huggies diapers. The merger is expected to close in the…
Feb 18 (Reuters) – Australia’s CSL said on Wednesday it had entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Eli Lilly and Co, granting it certain rights to develop and commercialise clazakizumab, an antibody aimed at preventing heart-related illness and death in people with end‑stage kidney disease. CSL will receive an upfront payment of $100 million and be eligible to receive potential clinical, regulatory and commercial milestone payments, as well as royalties on global net sales. Clazakizumab blocks IL‑6 from binding its receptor, which may dampen the downstream inflammatory cascade that drives symptoms and disease progression in immuno‑inflammatory disorders, CSL said.…
Feb 18 (Reuters) – Moderna (MRNA) said on Wednesday the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has agreed to review its influenza vaccine, reversing an earlier decision to reject the application, after the company made modifications. The reversal, which comes just a week after the FDA’s surprise decision to not review the company’s experimental flu vaccine application, lifted shares of the vaccine maker more than 3% before the bell. The FDA has accepted Moderna’s revised approach seeking full approval for the shot for adults aged between 50 and 64, and accelerated approval for those aged 65 and above, the company said,…
Subsidies. Love ’em or hate them, they dominated the news during the Affordable Care Act’s sign-up season, and their reduction is now hitting many enrollees in the pocketbook. While lawmakers continue to disagree on a way forward, and the politics of affordability keeps the issue front and center, it would be understandable to think these are the only taxpayer-funded health insurance subsidies in the U.S. system. But that would be wrong. “The vast majority of people with health insurance get some kind of federal subsidy for it, from Medicaid to Medicare to the ACA to employer-sponsored insurance,” said Larry Levitt,…
NEW YORK (AP) — Debra Whitman was traveling for work when her father was suddenly admitted to the hospital in serious pain. She jetted home to Maryland and took several days off to care for him in his rural community in eastern Washington state and to set him up with a motorized lift chair that would help him stand up. Fortunately for Whitman, who serves as chief public policy officer at AARP, her employer offers paid time off for caregiving for elderly family members, a benefit which experts say is growing in popularity as the U.S. population ages. “Instead of…
Feb 19 (Reuters) – Cassava Sciences said on Thursday the U.S. Department of Justice had ended its probe into the company regarding allegations of research misconduct for its experimental Alzheimer’s drug simufilam. The company said the probe ended four months after the Justice Department dismissed a criminal indictment in Maryland accusing Hoau-Yan Wang, a medical professor and former Cassava adviser who allegedly submitted false data regarding the drug. Cassava scrapped the development of the drug for Alzheimer’s last year following disappointing clinical trial results. The biotech has previously been charged by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading claims…
By Jonathan Stempel Feb 19 (Reuters) – The Washington Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday that Amazon.com must face lawsuits by families that lost relatives who died by suicide after consuming sodium nitrite they bought from outside vendors on the retailer’s website. All nine justices rejected a ruling by an intermediate-level appeals court that the families could not sue Amazon for negligence because suicide was a superseding cause of their relatives’ deaths. Justice G. Helen Whitener wrote that Amazon owed customers a duty of reasonable care, and must avoid exposing them to “harm from the foreseeable conduct of a third…
Feb 19 (Reuters) – Johnson & Johnson is preparing a potential sale of the orthopedics unit that it has been planning to separate, with big buyout firms already circling, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The business, known as DePuy Synthes, could be valued at more than $20 billion in a sale, according to Bloomberg. The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. J&J last year said it had planned to separate its orthopedics business into a standalone company within the next 18 to 24 months, marking its second major spinoff…
Feb 19 (Reuters) – German biopharmaceutical company BioNTech sued Moderna in Delaware federal court on Thursday, alleging that Moderna’s COVID-19 shot mNEXSPIKE infringes a patent related to COVID vaccine technology. The lawsuit said that mNEXSPIKE, Moderna’s next-generation COVID shot approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2025, violates BioNTech’s rights in technology for a streamlined messenger RNA-based vaccine design that can be given to patients at a lower dosage. Moderna sued BioNTech and its partner Pfizer for patent infringement over their COVID shot Comirnaty in 2022, in a lawsuit that is ongoing. The cases are among a wave…