Vice President Mike Pence will be put in charge of the U.S. response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak, President Donald Trump announced Wednesday in an address from the White House. CNBC reports: Trump, in a rare appearance in the White House briefing room, maintained that the risk to the U.S. from the virus "remains very low," amid global fears that a pandemic could be imminent. But the U.S. is ready for "anything," Trump said, including an outbreak "of larger proportions." In that spirit, Trump said he would be putting Pence, who has "a certain talent for this," in charge of the response. The president cited his veep's experience with health care policy during his time as governor of Indiana.

Around noon Wednesday, the CDC had confirmed 60 coronavirus cases in the U.S., a majority of which came from passengers repatriated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was quarantined off the coast of Japan. The Trump administration has taken numerous steps in response to the virus, such as declaring a public health emergency and imposing travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines. And White House officials, along with Trump himself, have worked to ease fears of a pandemic that have rattled governments and investors around the world.

Top U.S. public health officials said Tuesday that Americans should prepare for the spread of the coronavirus in communities across the country. From a report: "It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore but rather more a question of exactly when this will happen and how many people in this country will have severe illness," Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the head of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a media briefing Tuesday. Measures to contain the virus in the U.S. so far have involved restricting travel to and from China -- the center of the outbreak -- and isolating identified cases. But Messonnier said evidence that the virus is spreading to countries outside the region, such as Iran and Italy, has raised the CDC's "level of concern and expectation that we'll see spread" in the U.S.

Last month, 109 people gathered in a Singapore hotel for an international sales conference held by a U.K.-based company that makes products to analyze gas. When the attendees flew home, some unwittingly took the coronavirus with them [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: The virus had a 10-day head start on health authorities who, after belatedly learning a 41-year-old Malaysian participant was infected, began a desperate effort to track the infection through countries including South Korea, England and France. Health investigators have found at least 20 people in six Asian and European countries who were sickened, some who attended the conference and others who came in contact with participants. A globalized economy, one that's far more integrated than in the early 2000s when the SARS virus broke out, is complicating the task of responding to epidemics.

After this one conference alone, 94 participants left Singapore, authorities determined. Some joined Lunar New Year dinners. Others went on vacation, one to an Alpine ski town. They had eaten, taken car rides and shared a roof with others who then boarded more planes to places the virus hadn't yet reached. Health officials used international communications channels to share names of the potentially infected and relied on self-reporting by sickened conference-goers, creating "activity maps" that detailed their movement. They checked flight manifests and called passengers. French authorities closed down schools in sparsely populated towns. U.K. public-health officials isolated health-care workers who got the illness and searched for patients with whom they came in contact.

"As China ramps up efforts to control the narrative around the coronavirus outbreak, it is also expanding its efforts to leverage online platforms to track down people who dare to speak out," reports Vice. "From tracking down Twitter users using their mobile numbers to hacking WeChat accounts to find out someone's location, Beijing is eager to stop any negative news from being shared online -- and is will to use intimidation, arrests and threats of legal action." From the report: Joshua Left, a 28-year-old entrepreneur who runs a self-driving car startup in Wuhan, China, arrived in San Francisco in mid-January for a vacation, just as the first reports of a new "SARS-like" virus outbreak in China reached the U.S. He almost immediately began worrying about his family back in his hometown of Wuhan, where the disease appeared to originate, and where panic was starting to set in. Concerned that his family might not be getting information on the scale of the burgeoning epidemic, he posted messages on his WeChat account sharing information he was afraid were not available inside China. "But then things started to get weird," he told VICE News.

Left, who asked not to be identified by his full Chinese name, said he first received a warning message from WeChat administrators. Then he began receiving strangely specific messages that appeared to come from four of his friends on WeChat, all asking him for his location, what hotel he was staying at in San Francisco, what his room number was, and what his U.S. phone number was. Then his cell phone received a warning message that someone in Shanghai was trying to log into his account. Finally, when he wouldn't tell them where he was staying, the same accounts all simultaneously began urging him to return to China as soon as possible. Left told VICE News the he believes his friends only sent the messages after they were coerced by agents from the Ministry of State Security in an attempt to get him to reveal his location, and part of a much wider effort by the Chinese government to crack down on any dissenting voices who are sharing content related to the coronavirus outbreak. The report also mentions a separate incident where agents from the Ministry of State Security detained and interrogated a Chinese resident for criticizing the Chinese government's delayed response to the coronavirus outbreak on Twitter. After the resident refused to meet with the Ministry over the phone, the agents showed up at his front door with a screenshot of his tweet that they say "attacks the Communist Party of China."

The resident was forced to sign a "promise note" saying he would not repeat the "threat" he had made.

The deadly outbreak of a novel coronavirus has the world on edge, but it has not yet developed into a pandemic, according to the World Health Organization. From a report: Although WHO has declared the outbreak a "public health emergency of international concern," the outbreak has not met the criteria needed to be described as a pandemic when it comes to its geographical spread and impact, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press briefing with reporters on Monday. "Our decision about whether to use the word 'pandemic' to describe an epidemic is based on an ongoing assessment of the geographical spread of the virus, the severity of disease it causes and the impact it has on the whole society," Ghebreyesus said during the briefing. "For the moment, we are not witnessing the uncontained global spread of this virus and we are not witnessing large-scale severe disease or deaths," he said. "Does this virus have pandemic potential? Absolutely it has. Are we there yet from our assessment? Not yet. So how should we describe the current situation? What we see are epidemics in different parts of the world, affecting countries in different ways and requiring a tailored response."

Six public health labs in the US plan to start monitoring the general population for the new coronavirus this week. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that the risk of the virus still remains low for the general population. But activating the disease surveillance network will allow the CDC and other public health officials to find any undetected virus circulating through the country. From a report: "It's important because right now, all the efforts are focused on people who have a direct link to China, or a direct link to lab-confirmed cases. There's no system in place to detect low-level transmission that might be under the radar," says Edward Belongia, the director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Population Health at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute. The six labs -- in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, and New York City -- are already part of the nationwide influenza surveillance network, and they conduct regular monitoring of all types of viruses. At the labs, samples from sick people are tested for various pathogens, creating a big-picture look at how much various diseases are spreading through the community. Surveillance hasn't started yet, in part because of problems with the test for the novel coronavirus developed by the CDC. The test that will be used for surveillance that was designed to diagnose people who have symptoms of the illness caused by the virus called COVID-19. It was distributed to public health labs around the country last week, but the majority of the labs had trouble running it. The CDC says this often happens during the rollout of a new test, but it has not specified what the reasons for the errors are.
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1 out of 8 Americans live in California. Now a proposed California law "would provide most adults in the state with a universal basic income of $1,000 per month, similar to the proposed plan of former presidential candidate Andrew Yang," reports Newsweek:
The California Universal Basic Income (UBI) Program was introduced by Democratic California State Assemblymember Evan Low on Thursday. Low was the co-chair of Yang's campaign and the proposal bears a striking similarity to the former candidate's national plan... The program would be paid for with a state value-added tax of 10 percent on goods and services, with exemptions for groceries, medicine, medical supplies, clothing, textbooks and other items. Recipients of several programs, including the state's Medicaid plan, would be ineligible...

Funding the program with a value-added tax has been blasted by some who believe such a tax would disproportionately burden the poor. Concerns have also been raised over potentially forcing people to choose between UBI and other existing public assistance programs... Proponents of UBI argue that the Yang plan and others could counter the anticipated problem of increasing automation inevitably leading to widespread unemployment.

Experts warn that a large percentage of the workforce is likely to be decimated by automation, with some studies estimating as many as 73 million jobs eliminated by 2030.

McGruber quotes Atlanta TV station WSB: The city of Marietta, Georgia is suing drug manufacturer Mallinckrodt after Mallinckrodt increased the price of the drug Acthar by 97,500%.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court, claims one city employee needs the drug Acthar, which is used to treat seizures in small children.

"Acthar used to cost $40, but Mallinckrodt has raised the price of the drug to over $39,000 per vial," the city claims in the lawsuit. "This eye-popping 97,500% price increase is the result of unlawful and unfair conduct by Mallinckrondt. The city has expended over $2 million for just one patient covered by the city's self-funded health plan...."

Atlanta pharmacist Ira Katz said Acthar is what's called a "biologic" and they can be classified as specialty drugs. "They put them into the specialty class, and the prices are outrageous, just outrageous," Katz said.

hackingbear writes: A group of 27 prominent public health scientists from outside China, who have studied SARS-CoV-2 and "overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife" just like many other viruses that have recently emerged in humans, is pushing back against a steady stream of stories and even a scientific paper suggesting a laboratory in Wuhan, China, may be the origin of the outbreak of COVID-19. "The rapid, open, and transparent sharing of data on this outbreak is now being threatened by rumors and misinformation around its origins," the scientists, from nine countries, write in a statement published online by The Lancet .

Many posts on social media have singled out the Wuhan Institute of Virology for intense scrutiny because it has a laboratory at the highest security level -- biosafety level 4 -- and its researchers study coronaviruses from bats; speculations have included the possibility that the virus was bioengineered in the lab or that a lab worker was infected while handling a bat. Researchers from the institute have insisted there is no link between the outbreak and their laboratory. Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance and a cosignatory of the statement, has collaborated with researchers at the Wuhan institute who study bat coronaviruses. "We're in the midst of the social media misinformation age, and these rumors and conspiracy theories have real consequences, including threats of violence that have occurred to our colleagues in China."

schwit1 quotes a report from MSN: Cancer doctors fear superbugs which can't be treated with antibiotics will soon remove chemotherapy as a treatment option for their patients, a survey has revealed. Cancer patients are more vulnerable to infections because the disease and its treatments can stop the immune system from working correctly. Of the 100 oncologists in the U.K. surveyed between December 20, 2019 and February 3, 2020 by the Longitude Prize -- which was established to tackle antimicrobial resistance in cancer care -- 95 percent said they were worried about the effect superbugs could have on their patients.

An estimated one in five cancer patients need antibiotics during their treatment, according to existing research cited by the authors of the report, and cancers including multiple myeloma and acute leukemia can't be treated without them. The survey revealed that 46 percent of doctors believe drug-resistant bugs will make chemotherapy unviable. Some cancer treatments, which the report didn't name, will be obsolete in five years, 28 percent of the cancer doctors predicted. A further 39 percent forecast this would happen within the next decade, and 15 percent in two decades. Four in 10 (41 percent) said they had seen a rise in patients developing drug-resistant infections in the last year, with 23 percent of their cancer patients developing an infection during treatment on average.

As many as 65,000 cancer patients are at risk of catching a superbug infection after having surgery in the U.K. in this decade, the data suggested. Among the doctors surveyed, 5 percent of their patients who had surgery developed an infection which didn't respond to antibiotics. A total of 86 percent of the doctors said the bugs Staphylococcus, E. coli and pseudomona put cancer patients at the most risk of serious harm. The research also highlighted frustrations clinicians have with the way infections are diagnosed, with 60 percent saying laboratories take too long to identify them in their patients.

Gizmodo's Ed Cara explains why HIV drugs are being used to treat the new coronavirus. An anonymous reader shares the report: On Tuesday, the Japanese government announced it will begin clinical trials to test treatments for the deadly new coronavirus that's engulfed China and spread to over two dozen countries. Rather than new drugs, they'll be studying existing medications already used to treat HIV and other viral diseases. But why exactly are researchers hopeful that these drugs can be repurposed for the new coronavirus, and how likely are they to work? The new coronavirus, recently named SARS-CoV-2 due to its close genetic ties to the SARS coronavirus, is made out of RNA. Other RNA viruses include the ones that cause Ebola, hepatitis C, and yes, HIV/AIDS.

RNA viruses come in all shapes and sizes, and those that infect humans can do so in different ways. But many of the drugs that go after HIV and the hepatitis C virus broadly target weaknesses found in all sorts of viruses. The approved hepatitis C drug ribavirin, for instance, interferes with something called the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, an enzyme essential for many viruses -- including coronaviruses -- to produce more of themselves inside a cell. HIV drugs like lopinavir inhibit other enzymes that allow viruses to break down certain proteins, which cripples their ability to infect cells and replicate. Broad antiviral drugs like lopinavir should be able to work against SARS-CoV-2, scientists theorize. And there's already some circumstantial evidence they do. Some of these drugs have been successfully tested out for SARS and MERS, for instance, two other nasty coronaviruses that have emerged in recent years.

Slashdot readers fahrbot-bot and operator_error share a report from Phys.Org: Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a device that uses a natural protein to create electricity from moisture in the air, a new technology they say could have significant implications for the future of renewable energy, climate change and in the future of medicine. As reported today in Nature, the laboratories of electrical engineer Jun Yao and microbiologist Derek Lovley at UMass Amherst have created a device they call an "Air-gen," or air-powered generator, with electrically conductive protein nanowires produced by the microbe Geobacter. The Air-gen connects electrodes to the protein nanowires in such a way that electrical current is generated from the water vapor naturally present in the atmosphere.

The new technology developed in Yao's lab is non-polluting, renewable and low-cost. It can generate power even in areas with extremely low humidity such as the Sahara Desert. It has significant advantages over other forms of renewable energy including solar and wind, Lovley says, because unlike these other renewable energy sources, the Air-gen does not require sunlight or wind, and "it even works indoors." The Air-gen device requires only a thin film of protein nanowires less than 10 microns thick, the researchers explain. The bottom of the film rests on an electrode, while a smaller electrode that covers only part of the nanowire film sits on top. The film adsorbs water vapor from the atmosphere. A combination of the electrical conductivity and surface chemistry of the protein nanowires, coupled with the fine pores between the nanowires within the film, establishes the conditions that generate an electrical current between the two electrodes. "We are literally making electricity out of thin air," says Yao. "The Air-gen generates clean energy 24/7." Lovely adds, "It's the most amazing and exciting application of protein nanowires yet."

The current generation of Air-gen devices can power small electronics, and they are expected to be brought to commercial scale soon.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A vending machine for powerful opioids has opened in Canada as part of a project to help fight the Canadian city's overdose crisis. The MySafe project, which resembles a cash machine, gives addicts access to a prescribed amount of medical quality hydromorphone, a drug about twice as powerful as heroin. Don Durban, a social worker from Vancouver, is one of 14 opioid addicts using the MySafe vending machine. After being prescribed opioid-based painkillers in the early 2000s, the father of two developed an addiction and now feels unable to cope without a daily dose of hydromorphone.

Unlike most addicts, Durban, 66, does not have to break the law by sourcing his fix through drug dealers. Instead he is prescribed Dilaudid -- the brand name for hydromorphone -- and, for the past couple of weeks, has been able to collect his pills from a vending machine near his home in Eastside, a rundown neighborhood with a large homeless community. "This is a godsend," he told the Guardian during one of his visits to the machine. After verifying his identity with a biometric fingerprint scan, the machine dispensed Durban with three pills for each of his four daily visits, in line with his prescription. "It means I don't have to go and buy iffy dope," he said. "I have a clean supply. I don't have to deal with other people so much. You're treated like an adult, not some kind of demonic dope fiend. We're just people with mental health issues."

Magnetic resonance imaging is no longer confined to radiology departments. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced this month that it has provided clearance to the "world's first" bedside MRI system, according to an announcement. From a report: Hyperfine said it will begin shipping its portable, low-field modalities this summer. It's 510(k) clearance falls on the same day that Yale researchers reported the device can accurately and safely image patient's brains for stroke. Those preliminary results are set to be presented next week at the American Stroke Association's International conference in Los Angeles, the group announced. "We've flipped the concept from having to get patients to the MRI to bringing the MRI to the patients," said Kevin Sheth, MD, senior author and a chief physician at Yale School of Medicine. "This early work suggests our approach is safe and viable in a complex clinical care environment."

The study included 85 stroke patients who underwent bedside MRI within seven days of experiencing symptoms. A majority of individuals completed the exam, which took an average of 30 minutes. Six experienced claustrophobia and a few couldn't fit into the machine, but there were no adverse events. According to Connecticut-based Hyperfine, their machine will cost $50,000, which is 20-times cheaper than traditional systems, runs on 35-times less power and weights 10 times less than normal 1.5T MRI machines.

Today China announced it was taking unusual new steps to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. It's blocking the transfer of old bank notes between provinces and cities affected by the outbreak, according to the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China — and that's just the beginning.

Bloomberg reports: The central bank also ramped up measures to sanitize old money to reduce contagion risks and added 600 billion yuan ($85.9 billion) of new cash for Hubei, the epicenter of the coronavirus, he said.

"Money from key virus-hit areas will be sanitized with ultraviolet rays or heated and locked up for at least 14 days, before it is distributed again," Fan said at a press conference on Saturday. Money circulated in less riskier areas is subject to a week of quarantine and commercial lenders have been asked to separate cash from hospitals and food markets, he said.

The share of cash in broad money supply has dropped steadily in recent years in China, with the rise of mobile payments largely replacing bank notes in daily life.
"It's an extreme move that makes sense," argues Quartz: Whether it's dollars, pounds, euros, shekels, or in this case yuan, currency is notoriously dirty. A 2017 study [PDF] of $1 bills in New York found some 397 bacterial species living on the surface. And when someone with the flu handles it, that virus has been shown to survive for up to 12 days.

The World Health Organization has said that it is still not known how long the the coronavirus can survive on surfaces and objects, including money. Preliminary information has shown it can survive a few hours or more, but can be killed with basic disinfectants.

Motherboard reports on the possible explanations for why people born blind are protected from schizophrenia: Over the past 60-some years, scientists around the world have been writing about this mystery. They've analyzed past studies, combed the wards of psychiatric hospitals, and looked through agencies that treat blind people, trying to find a case. As time goes on, larger data sets have emerged: In 2018, a study led by a researcher named Vera Morgan at the University of Western Australia looked at nearly half a million children born between 1980 and 2001 and strengthened this negative association. Pollak, a psychiatrist and researcher at King's College London, remembered checking in the mental health facility where he works after learning about it; he too was unable to find a single patient with congenital blindness who had schizophrenia. These findings suggest that something about congenital blindness may protect a person from schizophrenia. This is especially surprising, since congenital blindness often results from infections, brain trauma, or genetic mutation -- all factors that are independently associated with greater risk of psychotic disorders.

More strangely, vision loss at other periods of life is associated with higher risks of schizophrenia and psychotic symptoms. Even in healthy people, blocking vision for just a few days can bring about hallucinations. And the connections between vision abnormalities and schizophrenia have become more deeply established in recent years -- visual abnormalities are being found before a person has any psychotic symptoms, sometimes predicting who will develop schizophrenia. But the whispered-about fact persists: Being born blind, and perhaps specific types of congenital blindness, shield from the very disorders vision loss can encourage later in life. A myriad of theories exist as to why -- from the blind brain's neuroplasticity to how vision plays an important role in building our model of the world (and what happens when that process goes wrong). Select researchers believe that the ties between vision and psychotic symptoms indicate there's something new to learn here. Could it be that within this narrowly-defined phenomenon there are clues for what causes schizophrenia, how to predict who will develop it, and potentially how to treat it?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: The UN health agency on Tuesday announced that "COVID-19" will be the official name of the deadly virus from China, saying the disease represented a "very grave threat" for the world but there was a "realistic chance" of stopping it. "We now have a name for the disease and it's COVID-19," World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in Geneva. Tedros said that "co" stands for "corona", "vi" for "virus" and "d" for "disease", while "19" was for the year, as the outbreak was first identified on 31 December.

Tedros said the name had been chosen to avoid references to a specific geographical location, animal species or group of people in line with international recommendations for naming aimed at preventing stigmatization. WHO had earlier given the virus the temporary name of "2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease" and China's National Health Commission this week said it was temporarily calling it "novel coronavirus pneumonia" or NCP. Under a set of guidelines issued in 2015, WHO advises against using place names such as Ebola and Zika -- where those diseases were first identified and which are now inevitably linked to them in the public mind. More general names such as "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" or "Spanish flu" are also now avoided as they can stigmatize entire regions or ethnic groups. WHO also notes that using animal species in the name can create confusion, such as in 2009 when H1N1 was popularly referred to as "swine flu." This had a major impact on the pork industry even though the disease was being spread by people rather than pigs.

"Russia's intelligence services are apparently behind a well-coordinated social media campaign to blame the U.S. for creating and unleashing the Wuhan coronavirus on the world," reports the International Business Times.

That conclusion comes from the Atlantic Council think tank (founded in 1961), which established its Digital Forensic Research Lab in 2016. Eto Buziashvili, an analyst at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, published a report detailing how Russia's state propaganda units are disseminating different versions of conspiracies alleging the coronavirus is a U.S. creation. Western intelligence sources quoted by media said posts blaming the U.S. for attacking China with 2019-nCoV first began appearing on pro-Russia social media outlets such as VK (VKontakte) and Topcor.ru. The fake news has now spread to traditional Russian news media organizations such as Pravda and Izvestia and state propaganda platforms. State-controlled outlets are accusing the U.S. of using bioweapons against China...

A Russian website called Katushya.org says the People's Liberation Army (PLA), China's armed forces, is claiming the coronavirus was artificially produced in U.S. laboratories with the goal of destroying China from within.
"So far, their efforts have gained very little traction," Eto Buziashvili wrote on January 30, while adding that it still "serves as a reminder of Russia's long history of employing anti-U.S. influence operations during public health crises."

But the progressive political magazine Mother Jones argues that pro-Kremlin websites "are just one example of the kinds of outlets trying to capitalize on coronavirus fears. Some YouTube creators have been doing their best to get views and hawk money-making products and services on the backs of coronavirus fears; high-profile right-wing conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones are doing the same. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have tried to step up their efforts to curb misinformation linked to the virus, but hoaxes and conspiracies continue to seep through."

"Chinese researchers reportedly have applied for a local patent on an experimental Gilead drug that they believe could help fight the novel coronavirus outbreak -- and also significantly bolster Gilead's bottom-line going forward..." reports The Street. "If granted, Gilead will need to get Chinese patent owners on board when it wants to sell the drug for treating the novel coronavirus infection outside China."

"The move is a sign that China views Gilead's therapy as one of the most promising candidates to fight the outbreak that has now claimed almost 500 lives..." Time reports. "While Gilead's experimental drug isn't licensed or approved anywhere in the world, it is being rushed into human trials in China on coronavirus patients after showing early signs of being highly effective."

But China's move concerns Bloomberg Opinion biotech/pharma columnist Max Nisen: If the patent is granted, it will confirm long-standing drugmaker fears about China's commitment to IP protection, raising concern about the industry's future in a crucial market. It also could further erode the already weak incentives for pharma to invest in drugs to combat emerging infectious diseases... [T]he company could see any potential return on the medication curtailed if China starts manufacturing it.

China's increasingly affluent population represents a huge opportunity for drugmakers. Many are investing heavily in the region despite previous data integrity and sales scandals. Leadership has recently demonstrated a greater commitment to IP rights in its initial trade deal with the U.S., but granting this patent could erode trust in the government and scare off foreign drugmakers.

The consequences wouldn't be limited to declining corporate confidence in China, even if this is a one-time emergency event. The world dramatically under-invests in drugs to combat infectious diseases, and a move like this by the Chinese government wouldn't help. Developing such medicines isn't very profitable, compared to drugs for rare diseases and cancer. That's especially true when it comes to emerging viruses, in spite of the obvious risk. Outbreaks are more common in developing countries, which limits pricing power. By the time a company has managed to get approval for any given drug, often a years-long process, there's a good chance that the outbreak will be over.

Seizing the rights to treatments dents drugmakers' already limited incentive to invest in infectious-disease drugs, let alone spend heavily to develop and maintain the ability to respond rapidly to outbreaks and scale up manufacturing. Without the promise of some kind of return, investment is going to dry up. I'm not a rah-rah pharma guy. The industry often abuses the patent system, especially in the U.S., in order to profit for years off of old drugs to the detriment of patients and the health-care system. Its pricing practices are frequently unconscionable. This isn't one of those situations. It's arguably one of the rare cases where the ability of drugmakers to profit needs to be boosted rather than crimped.

Early signs of cancer can appear years or even decades before diagnosis, according to the most comprehensive investigation to date of the genetic mutations that cause healthy cells to turn malignant. From a report: The findings, based on samples from more than 2,500 tumours and 38 cancer types, reveal a longer-than-expected window of opportunity in which patients could potentially be tested and treated at the earliest stages of the disease. The work was carried out as part of the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes project, the most comprehensive study of cancer genetics to date. "What's extraordinary is how some of the genetic changes appear to have occurred many years before diagnosis, long before any other signs that a cancer may develop, and perhaps even in apparently normal tissue," said Clemency Jolly, a co-author of the research based at the Francis Crick Institute in London. "Unlocking these patterns means it should now be possible to develop new diagnostic tests that pick up signs of cancer much earlier," said Peter Van Loo, co-lead author, also of the Crick Institute. "There is a window of opportunity."