Tag: big pharma

Private Investigators Say Several People Murdered Canadian Billionaire Couple Barry and Honey Sherman

Private investigators in Canada believe that a prominent billionaire couple found dead in their Toronto mansion last month were murdered by multiple assailants, pouring cold water on the theory that their deaths were a result of a murder-suicide.

Canada’s CBC News reported the private investigators’ findings on the couple’s mysterious killing Saturday, citing an unnamed source familiar with a parallel investigation into their deaths.

Police had earlier deemed the deaths of Barry Sherman, 75, and his wife Honey, 70, “suspicious” after a realtor discovered the bodies dangling from a railing near their basement swimming pool on December 15. A coroner’s report determined the couple had died from a form a strangulation called “ligature neck compression.”

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Vaccine Execs Rake In $1 Billion In Stock Sales As Positive Headlines Boost Shares

With the race to find a vaccine for COVID-19 in full effect, biotech executives and other insiders from at least 11 companies have made hand over fist – raking in over $1 billion in stock sales after announcing positive developments, according to the New York Times.

In some cases, company insiders are profiting from regularly scheduled compensation or automatic stock trades. But in other situations, senior officials appear to be pouncing on opportunities to cash out while their stock prices are sky high. And some companies have awarded stock options to executives shortly before market-moving announcements about their vaccine progress. -NYT

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Covid-19 Vaccines With ‘Minor Side Effects’ Could Still Be Pretty Bad

On Monday, vaccine researchers from Oxford University and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced results from a “Phase 1/2 trial,” suggesting their product might be able to generate immunity without causing serious harm. Similar, but smaller-scale results, were posted just last week for another candidate vaccine produced by the biotech firm Moderna, in collaboration with the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

As both these groups and others push ahead into the final phase of testing, it’s vital that the public has a clear and balanced understanding of this work—one that cuts through all the marketing and hype. But we’re not off to a good start. The evidence so far suggests that we’re getting blinkered by these groups’ PR, and so seduced by stories of their amazing speed that we’re losing track of everything else. In particular, neither the mainstream media nor the medical press has given much attention to the two vaccines’ potential downsides—in particular, their risk of nasty adverse effects, even if they’re not life-threatening. This sort of puffery doesn’t only help to build a false impression; it may also dry the tinder for the future spread of vaccine fear-mongering.

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Bad News For Moderna: More Evidence Shows COVID-19 Antibodies Disappear Not Long After Infection

Following trial results released yesterday showing Moderna’s vaccine candidate might not be safe for human consumption – apparently, the candidate caused “adverse” reactions in roughly 50% of patients who participated in a recent study – the dozens of companies, universities and governments working on COVID-19 vaccine candidates just received another piece of disheartening news: A growing body of evidence gleaned from research into the virus suggests that antibodies may not offer protection for more than 2-3 months, for many people.

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