One day after U.S. bankruptcy judge Robert Drain approved an opioid settlement plan that locks Purdue Pharma’s Sackler family into paying about $6 billion into the nationwide fund, family members of those whose lives were devastated by addiction to drugs like OxyContin confronted the de facto face of the nation’s opioid crisis in court.

The Sackler family owners of Purdue Pharma LP reached a deal with nine state attorneys general to pay up to $6 billion in cash to resolve widespread litigation alleging that they fueled the U.S. opioid epidemic, bringing the OxyContin maker closer to exiting bankruptcy.

A mediator in Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy case on March 2 indicated an agreement was being drafted between the company’s owners and U.S. states pressing for more money to resolve allegations that the OxyContin maker fueled the opioid epidemic.

The three largest U.S. drug distributors and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson agreed to finalize a proposed $26 billion settlement resolving claims by states and local governments that they helped fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic.

Oxycontin

The Sackler family owners of Purdue Pharma LP proposed a new and larger settlement worth up to $6 billion to resolve allegations that the OxyContin maker and the company’s owners contributed to the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic, a mediator’s report showed on February 18.

A U.S. patient with leukemia has become the first woman and the third person to date to be cured of HIV after receiving a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS, researchers reported on February 15.

Virologist Luc Montagnier passed away, French news agency AFP reported on February 10. Montagnier won a Nobel Prize for his part in discovering the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes AIDS,

Teva

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. reached a settlement worth $225 million to resolve claims the drugmaker fueled an opioid epidemic in Texas by improperly marketing addictive pain medications, the state’s attorney general said on Feb. 7.

A new variant of HIV was recently discovered in Europe that is more contagious and more deadly – the virus degrades the immune system into AIDS twice as fast as previous strains.

While food shortage and malnutrition have been a common scenario throughout human history, the worldwide public health crisis caused by the epidemic of obesity is relatively recent.