In late January, Obama administration officials announced that they were very concerned about the slow pace of new drugs coming from the pharmaceutical industry. They should be concerned. The number of new chemical entities (NCEs) launched in recent years is near historic lows. And there are many unmet medical needs for which no therapies are available or on the horizon. (more)
TOKYO — When the Japanese government raised the tax on cigarettes on Oct. 1, it should have sparked a public health revolution in this land of heavy smokers. (more)
GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug giant, has agreed to pay $750 million to settle criminal and civil complaints that the company for years knowingly sold contaminated baby ointment and an ineffective antidepressant — the latest in a growing number of whistle-blower lawsuits that drug makers have settled with multimillion dollar fines. (more)
In the fall of 1999, the drug giant SmithKline Beecham secretly began a study to find out if its diabetes medicine, Avandia, was safer for the heart than a competing pill, Actos, made by Takeda. (more)
An outraged retiree, “Mr. Edwards,” recently wrote on a health care blog that despite taking a particular brand name cholesterol-lowering statin for 17 years with good results, his United Healthcare/AARP health insurance policy would not cover his preferred prescription. It would, however, authorize another statin—Merck’s Zocor. (more)
When the pharmaceutical industry maps the world, here’s what it sees: 87% of its $773 billion in revenue comes from the U.S., Europe, and Japan, but sales in those places are stagnant, according to research firm IMS Health (RX). So where is growth to be found? (more)
Over the past half-century, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has made it increasingly harder for Americans to get access to innovative new drugs and medical devices. By raising the hurdles medical products manufacturers must clear before they get approval, the agency has increased the cost of new treatments and delayed their availability. (more)
When you went to sleep last Sunday night, 20 percent of your genome belonged to a researcher or company. One day later, following federal district court judge Robert Sweet’s ruling, it belonged to you. (more)
As many of the smarter pro-life leaders anticipated over the past week, Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak’s winding road toward supporting the Senate version of President Obama’s national health care reform came to an end as an “aye” today thanks to an Executive Order from the White House. (more)
President Obama wants a health care bill now. And this time, he swears it will be corruption-free. (more)
Product recalls are the Dante’s Inferno of crisis management. Ostensibly about the process of identifying and fixing a problem, they have become the hellholes of America’s political and legal systems. What awaits the unfortunate manufacturer facing a full-blown national recall is not an exercise in remediation, but months (or longer) in the dunking pool of public disgrace followed by the transfer of huge sums of money to plaintiffs’ lawyers. (more)
Full Document Available in PDF Over the past three decades, collaborative arrangements between academic biomedical researchers and private industry have grown dramatically, resulting in medical innovations that have benefited society greatly. However, a growing chorus of criticism directed at private companies that sponsor and conduct biomedical research casts doubt on the very ethos of science. Academics and anti-business activists have waged a campaign against industry-sponsored clinical trials that denies the fundamentally commercial nature of such research and hinders medical progress. These critics point to a small number of unfortunate and tragic cases in which financial conflicts of interest may have played a role in research-related injuries and deaths in order to unjustifiably condemn the profit motive in biomedical research as a whole. (more)
Most people take nutritional supplements to assure themselves that they are getting their recommended daily amount of vitamins and minerals to help prevent illness and disease. They have a right to purchase those products that they believe will keep them healthy. (more)
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