The $10,000 Quadrillion Asteroid of Precious Metals is NASA's Latest Target

What would you do if you found a huge shiny metal-rich planet floating "nearby" in space? Well, NASA is going after it and plans to launch a ship in 2022. 

This huge metallic asteroid was found on March 17, 1852, by an Italian astronomer named Annibale de Gasparis. He named it after the Greek mythological god Psyche who represents the spirit. It's one of the largest asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and is classified as a metallic "M-class" asteroid. Scientists believe 16 Psyche is the core of an ancient planet in the extremely rare state of being completely exposed with no harsh atmosphere impeding exploration. This provides a unique opportunity to examine the inside of a planet to hopefully learn how ones such as ours are formed.

It's Worth How Much?!

Based on remote analysis, scientists have determined it contains iron, nickel, gold, platinum, copper, and other precious metals, making this a huge 156-mile wide untapped "goldmine" just waiting to be harvested. By calculating the mass and current metal prices, Dr. Elkins-Tanton estimates 16 Psyche's iron alone to be worth $10,000 quadrillion!

Well, it's not surprising considering this is the core of a planet. 

The implications of adding this wealth into Earth's commodity markets could actually be catastrophic. The prices of these metals may crash to almost zero and disrupting mining, manufacturing, and governmental industries. 

But that probably won't stop people from jumping on $10,000+ quadrillion jackpot. 

Dr. Elkins-Tanton said: 'Even if we could grab a big metal piece and drag it back here … what would you do? Could you kind of sit on it and hide it and control the global resource — kind of like diamonds are controlled corporately — and protect your market? What if you decided you were going to bring it back and you were just going to solve the metal resource problems of humankind for all time? This is wild speculation obviously.'

Both these educational and economical reasons have convinced NASA to launch a spaceship to claim it. The difficulties of mining the ore in space and transportation back and forth to Earth may be well worth it. 

There and Back Again

NASA originally planned to send a ship there by 2030 but have recently figured out a more efficient way to get there 4 years earlier by 2026, and they're excited about it. The new trajectory avoids an accelerating orbit-swing around Earth and slingshotting near the sun. 

'We challenged the mission design team to explore if an earlier launch date could provide a more efficient trajectory to the asteroid Psyche, and they came through in a big way,' said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. 

'This will enable us to fulfill our science objectives sooner and at a reduced cost.' 

'The biggest advantage is the excellent trajectory, which gets us there about twice as fast and is more cost-effective,' said Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe. 

'We are all extremely excited that NASA was able to accommodate this earlier launch date. 

'The world will see this amazing metal world so much sooner.'

The trajectory will still include a Mars gravity assist in 2023.

'The change in plans is a great boost for the team and the mission,' said Psyche Project Manager Henry Stone at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. 

'Our mission design team did a fantastic job coming up with this ideal launch opportunity.'

This more efficient travel route also means it would be easier to return to home base Earth with special deliveries. But the challenges of reusable rockets capable of landing or even parachuting cargo down may keep such precious payloads out of Earth's reach for now. 

Information Extraction

The spacecraft's payload will mainly contain magnetometers, multispectral imagers, and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer. These will be used to study the protoplanet's origins and verify theories of how planets are born and die. Psyche will be the first metal planet ever explored by humans. Much of our knowledge of planetary evolution comes from studying meteorites. 

Lindy Elkins-Tanton the lead scientist on the Nasa mission and the director of Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, said: '16 Psyche is the only known object of its kind in the solar system, and this is the only way humans will ever visit a core.

'We learn about inner space by visiting outer space. I figure we're either going to go see something that's really improbable and unique, or something that is completely astonishing.'

This may become a resource-rich base for manufacturing all kinds of equipment and used as a stepping stone for space exploration. And if NASA finds water there, then it could increase the chances of growing a sustainable living population there as well.

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Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5148821/The-10-000-quadrillion-asteroid-revealed.html#ixzz50UoAUNlL 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche

Amateur Canadian Explorers Accidentally Discover 15,000-year-old Caves Below Montreal

It's not every day someone uncovers portal into ancient history, so you can imagine it came as quite a surprise to these two Canadians when they accidentally broke through a limestone wall and fell into a huge cavern network from the last Ice Age. These amateur explorers were digging around in an existing cave with hammers and drills until they made this historic breakthrough discovery into an ancient world dating back 15,000 years. 

It was Daniel Caron and his friend, Luc Le Blanc, who made the discovery. 'Normally you have to go to the moon to find that kind of thing,' Daniel Caron, one of the explorers, told The Canadian Press.

It's 650-foot long, 9-foot wide cave with a 20-foot ceiling above a lake. Caron believes the caverns were created during the Ice Age when pressure from the massive glaciers split the rock apart. Made from thousands of years of dripping water, stalactites hang from the ceiling with a 15-foot deep lake that they had to use an inflatable boat to cross. 

Cave explorer Daniel Caron points to a wall of a cave under a park in Montreal

The hallway looks almost manmade with vertical walls and horizontal ceiling. Perhaps they stumbled upon the legendary Mines of Moria?! Well, so far there are no signs of dwarves or orcs so it seems this is a natural network of inner earth caves. 

Francois Gelinas, the director of Quebec's speleological society told The Canadian Press, 'They built the street over the cave and they never found the cave. There is no technology available to detect the presence of caverns. Underground excavation is the only thing on the planet where there is no scientific, technical or technological means of knowing if there are caverns, and whether they are large or small,' he said.

Check out the video of these ancient caverns!

Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5150023/Two-explorers-discover-15-000-year-old-cave-Montreal.html#ixzz50V7zzQKY 

2,400-Year-Old Statues of the Goddess of Hygiene Rescued from Rubble of Ancient Medicine City

Archaeologists in Turkey just discovered statues of Greek goddess Hygieia and god Eros.

Discovered in the Anavarza Antique City of the Kozan district of present-day Turkey, Hygieia is the symbol of health. As the daughter of Asclepius the god of medicine and Epione the goddess of healing, Hygieia is herself the goddess of cleanliness and hygiene. Finding her sculpture here embodies the city's vision and ideals of health. Eros is the god of sexual desire. 

Anavarza was a fine ancient Cilician city founded by the Assyrians over 2,000 years ago. During the early Roman Empire it was known as Caesarea and became the Metropolis of the late Roman province Cilicia Secunda. So it is a major historical site for researchers today. It dates back to over 2,000 years ago. It has a 5,000-foot wall with 20 bastions encompassing it, which seemed unable to hold back the forces that almost completely destroyed these antique statues.

Archaeologists first began excavating Anavarza in 2013 and found ruins of a church, bathhouse, and large double-lane road measuring 110 feet wide and about 9,000 feet long. These features indicate this was a well-established city where many people trafficked to spend time cleansing their bodies and their souls. 

"The famous pharmacologist Dioskurides, who worked in the army during the Roman period and who attracted attention with the medicines he made, lived in Anavarza. In this sense, we can call Anavarza the city where medicine and pharmacology developed," Dervişoğlu told Doğan News Agency.

The statue was made out of limestone about 2,400 years ago but unfortunately, Hygieia is broken into two parts and missing her hands and head. Dervişoğlu is working to find the statue's missing parts to restore this ancient symbol of health for everyone who visits. 

The director of the Adana Museum, Nedim Dervisoglu, is proud to have these statues because they prove the rich cultural heritage of the city's ancient history. He cares about people learning not just about the local history but also inspiring them to learn of their own history. 

To recognize and honor these symbolic statues, they were added to the UNESCO Temporary List of World Heritage Sites.

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Sources:

https://www.dailysabah.com/history/2017/11/26/statue-of-hygieia-and-eros-uncovered-in-southern-turkey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anazarbus

Facebook's New Kid-Friendly Messenger App, Safe Haven or Lure?

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook is coming for your kids.

The social media giant is launching a messaging app for children to chat with their parents and with friends approved by their parents.

The free app is aimed at kids under 13, who can't yet have their own accounts under Facebook's rules, though they often do.

Messenger Kids comes with a slew of controls for parents. The service won't let children add their own friends or delete messages — only parents can do that. Kids don't get a separate Facebook or Messenger account; rather, it's an extension of a parent's account.

A Kids-Focused Experience

While children do use messaging and social media apps designed for teenagers and adults, those services aren't built for them, said Kristelle Lavallee, a children's psychology expert who advised Facebook on designing the service.

"The risk of exposure to things they were not developmentally prepared for is huge," she said.

Messenger Kids, meanwhile, "is a result of seeing what kids like," which is images, emoji and the like. Face filters and playful masks can be distracting for adults, Lavallee said, but for kids who are just learning how to form relationships and stay in touch with parents digitally, they are ways to express themselves.

Lavallee, who is content strategist at the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University, called Messenger Kids a "useful tool" that "makes parents the gatekeepers." But she said that while Facebook made the app "with the best of intentions," it's not yet known how people will actually use it.

As with other tools Facebook has released in the past, intentions and real-world use do not always match up. Facebook's live video streaming feature, for example, has been used for plenty of innocuous and useful things, but also to stream crimes and suicides.

 

Hooked on Facebook

Is Messenger Kids simply a way for Facebook to rope in the young ones?

Stephen Balkam, CEO of the nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute, said "that train has left the station."

Federal law prohibits internet companies from collecting personal information on kids under 13 without their parents' permission and imposes restrictions on advertising to them. This is why Facebook and many other social media companies prohibit younger kids from joining. Even so, Balkam said millions of kids under 13 are already on Facebook, with or without their parents' approval.

He said Facebook is trying to deal with the situation pragmatically by steering young Facebook users to a service designed for them.

Facebook said Messenger Kids won't show ads or collect data for marketing. Facebook also said it won't automatically move users to the regular Messenger or Facebook when they get old enough, though the company might give them the option to move contacts to Messenger down the line.

Messenger Kids is launching Monday in the U.S. on Apple devices — the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Versions for Android and Amazon's tablets are coming later.

UN Voices Alarm About Spread of HIV in Egypt

By NARIMAN EL-MOFTY, Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — The U.N. is voicing alarm over the spread of HIV in Egypt, where the number of new cases is growing by up to 40 percent a year, and where efforts to combat the epidemic are hampered by social stigma and a lack of funding to address the crisis.

The virus that causes AIDS, U.N. officials say, is infecting more young and adolescent people than any other age group.

Egypt, home to some 95 million people, ranks behind only Iran, Sudan and Somalia in the Middle East for the rate at which the epidemic is spreading, according to U.N. figures. In Egypt, patients are often jailed on trumped up charges and ostracized by society. The disease is associated with homosexuality, which is not explicitly illegal but is widely seen as a transgression against religion and nature in the conservative, Muslim-majority country.

"There is a 25-30 percent increase in incidents every year... It's is alarming to us because the growth of the epidemic and the discontinuation of interest from donors in funding," Ahmed Khamis, of the U.N. AIDS agency, told The Associated Press.

Estimates of the number of people living with HIV in Egypt vary. UNAIDS says there are over 11,000 cases, while the country's Health Ministry estimates the figure to be around 7,000.

The rise in the number of new infections, however, is not in dispute.

"Most recently, we've been seeing people of a much younger age group infected with the virus. There is a higher risk now for adolescents and youths than in the past," said Khamis.

"We don't have exact numbers, but this is what the evidence we are seeing on the ground is suggesting," he added, explaining that the lack of funds is hampering Egypt's capacity to produce precise figures.

Patients who require surgical intervention are often unable to access basic health care at hospitals because of the associated stigma, UNAIDS officials said.

The virus can be spread through sexual contact, as well as contaminated needles or syringes, or blood transfusions. It can also be passed from infected women to their babies at birth or through breast-feeding. But in Egypt, the virus is widely associated with homosexuality, which is seen by many Egyptians as a lifestyle choice.

In a recent conference on AIDS, Islamic scholar and cleric Ali al-Jifri spoke about the stigma and discrimination surrounding HIV and AIDS patients. "A person diagnosed with HIV is a human. We should never question their diagnosis," he told the conference.

A Christian priest, Bolous Soror, told the conference that Egyptians should accept others, regardless of their HIV status.

Shunned by society, it is not uncommon for patients to contemplate suicide.

Ahmed, 40, is one of them. He has been trying to gain asylum status in the U.S. because, he says, he has lost hope in a future in Egypt.

"I do not want to be living a life always feeling strapped down and imprisoned," he told his therapist during a session attended by an AP reporter. Fearing further stigma, he asked that he be identified only by his first name.

In an anonymous testimony given to UNAIDS and seen by the AP, one woman said she was infected by her late husband and later found it hard to live in a society that rejects people carrying the virus. She was beaten and denied by her family an inheritance she and her children were legally entitled to when her husband died. When she attempted to start a new life with her children in a different neighborhood, her in-laws made sure her new neighbors learned about her condition.

NASA Nails Test on Voyager Spacecraft, 13 Billion Miles Away

By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA has nailed an engine test on a spacecraft 13 billion miles away.

Last week, ground controllers sent commands to fire backup thrusters on Voyager 1, our most distant spacecraft. The thrusters had been idle for 37 years, since Voyager 1 flew past Saturn.

To NASA's delight, the four dormant thrusters came alive. It took more than 19 hours — the one-way travel time for signals — for controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to get the good news.

Engineers wanted to see if these alternate thrusters could point Voyager 1's antenna toward Earth, a job normally handled by a different set that's now degrading. The thrusters will take over pointing operations next month. The switch could extend Voyager 1's life by two to three years.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is the only spacecraft traveling through interstellar space, the region beyond our solar system. Voyager 2 is close on its heels — nearly 11 billion miles from Earth. The thruster test worked so well that NASA expects to try it on Voyager 2. That won't happen anytime soon, though, because Voyager 2's original thrusters are still working fine.

The Voyager flight team dug up old records and studied the original software before tackling the test. As each milestone in the test was achieved, the excitement level grew, said propulsion engineer Todd Barber.

"The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all," he said in a statement.

The twin Voyagers provided stunning close-up views of Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also offered shots of Uranus and Neptune.

The First Man Mummified Like King Tut in 3,000 Years was Terminally Ill Taxi Driver from England

The late Mr. Billis became the first man mummified in the style of the ancient Egyptians for at least 3,000 years.

Mr. Alan Billis was a taxi driver in Torquay, England who loved documentaries and history. One day saw an ad seeking people willing to be embalmed in the same way as ancient Egypt's King Tutankhamen and, as he was dying from lung cancer, signed up. When he did die at age 61 from the cancer, scientists used the ancient Egyptian embalming techniques not used since 1,323 BC on King Tut's body. 

Mr. Billis' wife Janet and their three grown-up children all gave this their blessing. She said "He just said, 'I’ve just phoned someone up about being mummified.' "I said, 'You’ve what?' I thought here we go again. It’s just the sort of thing you would expect him to do."

Torquay's Tutankhamun

English Channel 4's program called "Mummifying Alan: Egypt's Last Secret" recently aired on TV dubbing Alan "Torquay’s Tutankhamun." In the documentary he says,

"People have been leaving their bodies to science for years, and if people don’t volunteer for anything nothing gets found out."

The experts: Professor Vanezis, Dr. Buckley, Dr. Fletcher and Maxine Coe with a mummified Alan Billis before them

Except for Mr. Billis' heart and brain, all his internal organs were taken out and put in jars over several months. To preserve his skin, scientists soaked the body in a mix of oils, Natron salt, and resins for a month in a glass tank in the Medico-Legal Center in Sheffield. Afterwards, they put it into a drying chamber and wrapped it in linen fabric.

According to Dr. Stephen Buckley from the University of York that researched Egyptian mummification techniques, believes Mr. Ballis' body will last for thousands of years.

Dr. Stephen Buckley with mummified Mr. Billis

It's good to note how Mrs. Ballis' feels about all this during and after the process. She told the Radio Times,

“I didn’t find it upsetting. There wasn’t anything scary. I think it was because you could see they all took such good care of Alan.

When I did eventually watch the film and saw his mummified face, you could see it was still him, still very much Alan.

’I won’t be Tutankhamun, I’ll be Tutanalan,’ he used to say. The involvement in the television programme kept him occupied, took his mind off the illness.”

— Mrs. Ballis

Original Mummies

If you want to check out a real Egyptian mummy, you can see King Rameses III in Egypt's Cairo Museum. As for "Tutan-Alan," he will be being studied by scientists researching decomposition. 

The forensic pathologist overseeing the project, Professor Peter Vanezis was impressed with the results saying,  

"The skin itself has this leathery appearance which indicates that he has become mummified all over. It makes me very confident that his tissues have been mummified correctly and in a very successful manner."

So are you now considering volunteering your body for scientific research? Do you think ancient Egyptians mummified their bodies so future generations could clone them to resurrect their royal bloodline? 

Controversial Plastination Exhibits

Besides mummifying via embalming, there's another technique called plastination. This requires fresh bodies whose fluids have not congealed too much because a plasticine solvent replaces the blood and other bodily fluids. When this hardens, the tissues basically become plastic. 

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding a Chinese-based plastination company who cannot prove it got their bodies from willing volunteers nor from bodies left "unclaimed." This company has been parading hundreds of the "unknown" Chinese corpses on display around the world in the Body Exhibitions fully nude with some even engaging in sex acts (which we will not show here). Needless to say, this has sparked shock, outrage, and protests.

According to traditional Chinese culture, the remains of the deceased are treated with great respect and honor. Many Chinese are simply repulsed by such a concept of publicly displaying naked dead bodies. This exhibition is doing something quite different than ancient Egypt preserving their royalty's bodies wrapped up and contained in intricately decorated sarcophaguses. It's even different than privately studying the bodies for medical research, which are also required to be donated. 

“A New York Times report found that “Here in China, determining who is in the body business and where the bodies come from is not easy. Museums that hold body exhibitions in China say they have suddenly ‘forgotten’ who supplied their bodies, police officials have regularly changed their stories about what they have done with bodies, and even universities have confirmed and then denied the existence of body preservation operations on their campuses.

In May 2008, a settlement with the attorney general of New York obliged Premier Exhibitions, Sui’s exhibition partner, to publish a disclaimer on its website and at the exhibition hall, stating that the origin of Dalian Hoffen’s cadavers was from ‘the Chinese Bureau of Police.’”

This means these bodies are likely from innocent prisoners of conscience who are victims of a brutal and immoral communist regime. 

The largest population of such prisoners in China are of Falun Gong practitioners, who believe in living by the universal principles of Truthfulness, Compassion, and Forbearance and practice a set of qigong-like slow-moving exercises. They have no political aspirations, are non-violent, have no membership system, and don't charge anything.

This kind of traditional self-cultivation practice was well-known and common in Chinese traditional culture. Think of Taoists practicing martial arts and meditation up in the mountains, Buddhist monks farming, training, meditating, and studying Buddhist sutras in temples. It was made available to the public in 1992 by Shifu Li Hongzhi in China and spread by word of mouth to millions of people because of health benefits and being completely free.

However, despite great benefits to society and public popularity, the communist regime could not make money off of it and feared people would become harder to control under its atheistic communist ideology. So, in 1999 the communist dictator Jiang Zemin launched a brutal and unconstitutional persecution campaign arresting, torturing, raping, murdering, and even harvesting organs of Falun Gong practitioners and others.

Website ►http://endorganpillaging.org/ Facebook ►https://www.facebook.com/EndOrganPillaging Subscribe ►http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=IntlCoalition The basis of the report is a meticulous examination of the transplant programs of hundreds of hospitals in China, drawing on media reports, official propaganda, medical journals, hospital websites and a vast amount of deleted websites found in archive.

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Sources:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2050293/Terminally-ill-taxi-driver-Alan-Billis-mummified-Channel-4-documentary.html#ixzz50DkQS98p 

http://fofg.org/2015/03/08/the-dark-secret-of-the-bodies-exhibitions/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/hundreds-protest-bodies-revealed-exhibit-of-plastinated-corpses-in-niagara_1325194.html

http://www.stoporganharvesting.org/

First baby from a uterus transplant in the US born in Dallas

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Chief  Medical Writer

The first birth as a result of a womb transplant in the United States has occurred in Texas, a milestone for the U.S. but one achieved several years ago in Sweden.

A woman who had been born without a uterus gave birth to the baby at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.

Hospital spokesman Craig Civale confirmed Friday that the birth had taken place, but said no other details are available. The hospital did not identify the woman, citing her privacy.

Baylor has had a study underway for several years to enroll up to 10 women for uterus transplants. In October 2016, the hospital said four women had received transplants but that three of the wombs had to be removed because of poor blood flow.

The hospital would give no further information on how many transplants have been performed since then. But Time magazine, which first reported the U.S. baby's birth, says eight have been done in all, and that another woman is currently pregnant as a result.

A news conference was scheduled Monday to discuss the Dallas baby's birth.

A doctor in Sweden, Mats Brannstrom, is the first in the world to deliver a baby as a result of a uterus transplant. As of last year, he had delivered five babies from women with donated wombs.

There have been at least 16 uterus transplants worldwide, including one in Cleveland from a deceased donor that had to be removed because of complications. Last month, Penn Medicine in Philadelphia announced that it also would start offering womb transplants.

Womb donors can be dead or alive, and the Baylor study aims to use some of both. The first four cases involved "altruistic" donors — unrelated and unknown to the recipients. The ones done in Sweden were from live donors, mostly from the recipients' mother or a sister.

Doctors hope that womb transplants will enable as many as several thousand women born without a uterus to bear children. To be eligible for the Baylor study, women must be 20 to 35 years old and have healthy, normal ovaries. They will first have in vitro fertilization to retrieve and fertilize their eggs and produce embryos that can be frozen until they are ready to attempt pregnancy.

After the uterus transplant, the embryos can be thawed and implanted, at least a year after the transplant to make sure the womb is working well. A baby resulting from a uterine transplant would be delivered by cesarean section. The wombs are not intended to be permanent.  Having one means a woman must take powerful drugs to prevent organ rejection, and the drugs pose long-term health risks, so the uterus would be removed after one or two successful pregnancies.

The American Society for Reproductive Medicine issued a statement Friday calling the Dallas birth "another important milestone in the history of reproductive medicine."

For women born without a functioning uterus, "transplantation represents the only way they can carry a pregnancy," the statement said. The group is convening experts to develop guidelines for programs that want to offer this service.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at @MMarchioneAP
 

New Dengue Vaccine Could Worsen Disease in Some People, Company Stands to Lose $118 Million

LONDON (AP) — Drugmaker Sanofi says that its dengue vaccine, the world's first, should only be given to people who have previously been sickened by the virus, according to new long-term data.

In a statement, Sanofi said it had recently examined six years of patient data. Scientists concluded that while the vaccine protects people against further infection if they've already been infected with dengue, that's not the case for people who haven't previously been sickened by the disease.

"For those not previously infected by dengue virus...the analysis found that in the longer term, more cases of severe disease could occur following vaccination," Sanofi said. "These findings highlight the complex nature of dengue infection."

People who catch dengue more than once can be at risk of a hemorrhagic version of the disease. The mosquito-spread disease is found in tropical and sub-tropical climates worldwide. It causes a flu-like disease that can cause joint pain, nausea, vomiting and a rash. In severe cases, dengue can cause breathing problems, hemorrhaging and organ failure.

The World Health Organization says that about half the world's population is at risk of dengue and estimates that about 96 million people are sickened by the viral infection every year.

Sanofi is proposing that national authorities update their prescribing information. It also said doctors should assess the likelihood of prior dengue infection in people before choosing whether they should get the vaccine.

"For individuals who have not been previously infected by dengue virus, vaccination should not be recommended," Sanofi said. The vaccine is currently recommended in most dengue-endemic countries for people over age nine.

The company expects to take a 100 million euro ($118 million) loss based on the news.

There is no specific treatment for dengue and there are no other licensed vaccines on the market.

US approves monthly injection for opioid addiction

By MATTHEW PERRONE, AP Health Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health officials on Thursday approved the first injectable form of the leading medication to treat patients recovering from addiction to heroin, prescription painkillers and other opioids.

The Food and Drug Administration approved once-a-month Sublocade for adults with opioid use disorder who are already stabilized on addiction medication.

The monthly injection has the potential to reduce dangerous relapses that occur when patients stop taking the currently available daily medication. But that benefit has not yet been shown in studies and the new drug comes with a hefty price: $1,580 per monthly dose. The older version of the drug, Suboxone, costs $100 a month

The approval comes amid the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history and a longstanding gap in medication-based treatment for patients recovering from addiction to opioids, including painkillers like OxyContin and illegal narcotics like heroin and fentanyl. More than 64,000 Americans died from drug overdoses last year, most involving opioids.

Drugmaker Indivior already sells the injection's key ingredient, buprenorphine, in medicated strips that dissolve under the tongue. Patients take the daily medication to control withdrawal symptoms like nausea, muscle aches and pain. When dosed appropriately the drug also reduces the euphoric effects of other opioids, discouraging abuse.

The new injection has potential to reduce abuse and diversion of buprenorphine, which is itself an opioid sometimes sold on the black market. The FDA is requiring Indivior to conduct follow-up studies on the drug.

Roughly 2.4 million Americans are currently addicted to the opioids, according to federal figures, and about 1.1 million are receiving drug therapy to treat the condition. Indivior's Suboxone is the most widely used drug, though access has long been limited by gaps in insurance coverage, caps on prescriptions and training requirements for would-be prescribers.

The FDA last year approved an implantable pellet version of buprenorphine that releases the drug over six months. Other opioid abuse medications include methadone and naltrexone, an injection approved to treat opioid and alcohol addiction.

FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has pledged to promote all available forms of medication-based addiction treatments. He has stressed that some patients may need to take the medications for life.

While studies show patients on medications like buprenorphine cut their risk of death by half, some recovery groups favor abstinence-only approaches to treatment.