I'm Joe Gradyton and I'm Terry Grady welcome to this podcast of the People's Pharmacy.

You can find previous podcasts and more information on a range of health topics at people's Pharmacy.com.

When you think of climate change, you might imagine floods, fires, and droughts.

Why are physicians also concerned?

This is the People's Pharmacy with Terry and Joe Grady. In an unusual move early this fall, more than 200 leading medical journals published the same

editorial about climate change and its impact on health. This crisis, say the

authors, is too urgent to postpone until after the pandemic is over.

We don't usually think of doctors as advocates, but the

editorial calls for urgent action to control global warming. Physicians worry

about increasing tropical infections, along with heart and breathing problems.

Coming up on the People's Pharmacy, Headlines, a panel of experts assembled by the FDA

has narrowly voted to recommend approval of the first oral antiviral drug against COVID-19.

These outside advisors voted 13 to 10 to give Monopiravir the green light.

But the debate was intense,

and the outcome was not a slam dock for the developers,

Ridgeback biotherapeutics, and Merck.

Originally, the public was told that the drug was 50% effective at

reducing severe illness and hospitalization. By the time the data were

submitted for FDA consideration though, the relative risk

reduction dropped to 30%. The absolute risk reduction was only 3%.

Concerns were also raised that the drug might be dangerous for fetal development and could lead to birth defects.

Because the drug interferes with the way the virus replicates itself,

...