Month: December 2015

(credit: NEPA Scene/Flickr)

Prescription drug manager Express Scripts Holding Co. plans to make it easier for patients to get a cheap alternative to Turing pharmaceuticals’ price-boosted drug, Daraprim.

Express Scripts, which manages prescription for tens of millions of Americans, will promote the use of the $1 per pill alternative to Turing’s $750 per pill drug, potentially sparing tens of thousands of dollars in treatment costs per patient. That cheap alternative is already being made and sold by Imprimis Pharmaceuticals in San Diego.

In a press release, Steve Miller, senior vice president and chief medical officer of Express Scripts, said that "leveraging our expertise to improve access and affordability to an important medication is the right thing to do..."

(credit: Mark Zuckerberg)

In a public post on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced Tuesday that they will donate 99 percent of their Facebook shares "during their lives"—an amount currently worth $45 billion—to their new charity, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

The organization, which seems to be modeled on the Gates Foundation, states its laudable albeit vague goal to “join people across the world to advance human potential and promote equality for all children in the next generation.”

The announcement came in the form of a public letter to their newly born daughter Max. It addresses important long-term goals that are often stymied in the public sector, things like “advancing human potential and promoting equality.”

(credit: Jhaymesisviphotography)

Following revised policies from other federal law enforcement agencies, the Internal Revenue Service now says it will require the use of a warrant when deploying a stingray, also known as a cell-site simulator.

In a new letter to an Oregon senator, IRS Director John Koskinen wrote that the stingray has only been used as part of 11 grand jury investigations to track 37 phones. The IRS stingray has also been used to assist with four other non-IRS investigations both at the federal and the state level. According to the document, the IRS first obtained its stingray in October 2011, and it's attempting to procure a second.

Stingrays, also known as cell-site simulators, can be used to determine a phone’s location by spoofing a cell tower, and in some cases they can intercept calls and text messages. Once deployed, the devices intercept data from a target phone as well as information from other phones within the vicinity. In late October, Koskinen told a Senate committee that the IRS stingrays are "only used in criminal investigations."