A COVID Vaccine for All

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January 03, 2022

Dear Reader, A new, easy-to-store COVID-19 vaccine authorized last week by India's drug regulation agency holds the potential to significantly advance global vaccine equity, write Peter J. Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi, both at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. The recombinant protein vaccine, called CORBEVAX, soon will overtake COVID-19 vaccine doses contributed by the U.S. or any other G7 country, the authors write. Read more below about this privately funded development.

Robin Lloyd robinlloyd99

Vaccines A COVID Vaccine for All With proved technology and no-frills tech transfer, CORBEVAX is poised to reach hundreds of millions in the coming weeks By Peter J. Hotez,Maria Elena Bottazzi

Medicine Genetic Therapies for Brain Diseases Hopes are high for a class of drug that could treat neurodegenerative conditions—but a recent clinical trial has brought the field up short By Diana Kwon,Nature magazine

Behavior Racism in Health Care Isn't Always Obvious As physicians, we believe that recognizing it begins with understanding our own privilege and biases By Joseph V. Sakran,Ebony Jade Hilton,Chethan Sathya

Cancer A $1-Billion Boost to the NCI Will Help Us Beat Cancer The organization's underfunding means critical research is not being done By Senator Chris Coons,Senator Jerry Moran

Inequality Equity in Health Care Is Essential How to improve well-being by fighting bias, discrimination and ignorance

Epidemiology Omicron's Effect Won't Be as Mild as Hoped It's too soon to know if the variant causes milder COVID, but its transmissibility and ability to evade vaccines are still cause for concern By Tanya Lewis

Public Health After Surgery, Black Children Are More Likely to Die Than White Children A study of nearly 200 U.S. medical centers found that even apparently healthy kids suffer racial disparities in complications associated with surgery By Jim Daley

Behavior We Learned the Wrong Lessons from the Tuskegee 'Experiment' It's understandable that Black Americans are wary of vaccines, but that despicable episode involved the withholding of treatment, whereas vaccines actively prevent disease By Melba Newsome

Public Health We Can't Fight COVID-19 on a Country-by-Country Basis A physician in hard-hit South Africa points out that squelching the disease in one place means nothing if it's raging elsewhere By Zolelwa Sifumba

Ethics Will Giving COVID Booster Shots Make It Harder to Vaccinate the Rest of the World? Wealthy countries have bought up most of the available vaccine doses for booster shots but still have far more than they need By Sara Reardon

Public Health Why Racism, Not Race, Is a Risk Factor for Dying of COVID-19 Public health specialist and physician Camara Phyllis Jones talks about ways that jobs, communities and health care leave Black Americans more exposed and less protected By Claudia Wallis

Public Health The Biden Administration Should Offer Free At-Home COVID Testing The federal testing strategy has tried to improve availability but still puts the burden on people to find expensive tests that are often in short supply By Megha Satyanarayana

Policy Global Vaccine Equity Is Much More Important Than 'Vaccine Passports' We need to suppress the level of SARS-CoV-2 in as many humans as possible as quickly as possible By Steven W. Thrasher

Mental Health Mindfulness Can Improve Your Attention and Health A focus on the present, dubbed "mindfulness," can make you happier and healthier. Training to deepen your immersion in the moment works by improving attention By Amishi P. Jha

Vaccines Omicron Is Here: A Lack of COVID Vaccines Is Partly Why Global players need to get more vaccines to African nations and convince more people to take them By Michael Head

Medicine After COVID-19 Successes, Researchers Push to Develop mRNA Vaccines for Other Diseases mRNA vaccines are now in the limelight as a key tool for tackling COVID-19, but the technology was originally developed for other diseases, such as cancer, that researchers are now hoping to treat By Mike May,Nature Medicine

Reproduction Being Denied an Abortion Has Lasting Impacts on Health and Finances A landmark study of women seeking abortions shows the harms of being unable to end an unwanted pregnancy By Mariana Lenharo

Cognition What Causes Alcohol-Induced Blackouts? In search of answers, a neurobiologist looks to rodents By Charles F. Zorumski

FROM THE STORE Scientific American Health & Medicine, Volume 3, Issue 6

QUOTE OF THE DAY "There's really no financial incentive for pharmacies to open and stay open in minority neighborhoods." Dima Qato, a pharmacy professor at the University of Southern California, Kaiser Health News

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FROM THE ARCHIVE The Best Fun Science Stories of 2021: Rhythmic Lemurs, a Marscopter and Sex-Obsessed Insect Zombies Check out the weird and wonderful stories that delighted us this year By Andrea Thompson,Sarah Lewin Frasier,Sophie Bushwick,Jeffery DelViscio,Lee Billings | December 2021

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