China

750 – number of new jobs added to Roche's Chinese workforce this year, representing an increase of 25%.

900 – number of additional reps Pfizer wants to bring to China.

6,000 – number of layoffs worldwide announced by Pfizer in 2010

$1.6 billion – price paid by Charles River Laboratories International for one of China's largest drug-research contractors, WuXi AppTec Co.

$50 billion – estimated value of the Chinese drug market in 2011, according to market research firm IMS Health.

Swine flu

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18,449 – number of confirmed deaths from pandemic H1N1, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

214 – number of countries affected by the epidemic.

40 million – number of vaccine doses (costing about $260 million) incinerated in June 2010 by the US government after they expired.

Stem cells

76 – number of human embryonic stem cell lines available for NIH funding.

$1.1 billion – amount of money allocated by the US National Institutes of Health for stem cell research in its 2011 budget.

Reproduction

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4 million – number of individuals born thanks to in vitro fertilization, as estimated by the Karolinska Institute when they awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Medicine to IVF pioneer Robert Edwards.

12 – number of embryos implanted into the womb of Nadya Suleman by her fertility doctor. Suleman subsequently gave birth to octuplets, earning her the infamous title of 'octomom'.

Drugs

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84 – number of new drugs approved by the FDA in 2010 (as of 9 November); it was 95 in 2009.

5 – number of new biologics approved by the FDA in 2010 (as of 9 November); it was 7 in 2009.

Cancer

1.3 million – estimated annual deaths from lung cancer worldwide, according to the WHO.

$2 billion – profits for Philip Morris International in the second quarter of 2010 alone.

23%–42% – estimated range of prostate cancers detected by prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing that would otherwise never have been detected in the man's lifetime.

$93,000 – the cost of one year of Provenge, the first vaccine to treat prostate cancer, created by Dendreon.

Women in math and science

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13:1 – proportion of seventh grade boys to girls scoring over 700 on the SAT math section, in 1983 (Science 222, 1029–1031, 1983).

3.8:1 – same ratio, 2010 (Intelligence doi: 10.1016/j.intell.2010.04.006, 2010).

50.7% – proportion of women earning PhDs in the US in 2008–2009, according to the Council of Graduate Schools. This is the first academic year in which women have overtaken men in earning doctoral degrees.

9 – number of women awarded Nobel Prizes in Medicine to date.

AIDS

14.6 million – the number of people worldwide supposed to be receiving antiretroviral treatment (ART) for HIV/AIDS, according to new guidelines from the WHO.

9.3 million – the number of people who fall into this category that are not getting ART.