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Medicare Pricing Delay is Political Win for Amgen, Drug Maker

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Eric Lipton, Kevin Sack - Jan. 19 (News Report) - Just two weeks after pleading guilty in a major federal fraud case, Amgen , the world’s largest biotechnology firm, scored a largely unnoticed coup on Capitol Hill: Lawmakers inserted a paragraph into the “fiscal cliff” bill that did not mention the company by name but strongly favored one of its drugs.

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Michele Bachmann says HPV vaccine can cause mental retardation

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan, Louis Jacobson - Sep. 16 (Fact Check) - After criticizing Texas Gov. Rick Perry for mandating a vaccine for school girls, Rep. Michele Bachmann added some scary charges: She claimed to have just met a woman whose daughter suffered mental retardation from the vaccine, that it has "very dangerous consequences" and that it puts "little children's lives at risk." In the CNN/Tea Party Express debate in Tampa on Sept. 12, 2011, Bachmann blasted Perry for mandating a vaccine for school girls to guard against human papilloma virus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer. The vaccine can prevent the virus, but the virus is sexually transmitted, which makes ...

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Mass Psychosis in the US

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - Jul. 13 (Special Report) - Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In 2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid reflux.

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Zocor: FDA discourages high doses

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Chris Woolston - Jun. 14 (News Report) - When the FDA announced that the popular cholesterol drug simvastatin, brand name Zocor, would need a new label warning, it simply reinforced something that many doctors already knew: The highest “recommended” dose of 80 milligrams a day is so dangerous that it probably shouldn’t be recommended at all.

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FDA panel against use of Avastin for breast cancer

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Catherine Larkin - Jun. 02 (News Report) - A panel of cancer experts ruled Wednesday that Avastin - the world's best-selling cancer drug, developed by Genentech in South San Francisco - should no longer be used in breast cancer patients because of concerns the medicine didn't work as well in follow-up studies and may cause deadly bleeding. Outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted 6-0 against Avastin's use in breast cancer at a first-of-its-kind hearing in Silver Spring, Md. Their recommendations will be sent to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, who will make the final ruling on an unspecified date. Avastin will remain on the market because it's approved for four other types of tumors.

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House GOP Proposal Seeks $285 Million in FDA Cuts

Tue, 24 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

foodsafetynews.com - By Marler Clark - May. 24 (News Report) - A new budget proposal put forth by House Republicans Monday would cut the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's budget for Fiscal Year 2012 by $285 million, an 11.5 percent reduction from FY 2011, just as the agency moves to implement an ambitious new food safety law.

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FDA chemist charged with insider trading

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By David S. Hilzenrath - Mar. 30 (News Report) - As a chemist at the Food and Drug Administration, which screens medicines for sale to the public, Cheng Yi Liang had access to the kind of information that can move drug company stocks. According to the government, he has illegally traded on that information in advance of at least 27 FDA announcements since 2006, reaping profits or avoiding losses of more than $3.6 million.

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Pair of Supreme Court rulings deal blows to business

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By David G. Savage - Mar. 23 (News Report) - Decisions make it easier to sue drug makers over alleged stock fraud and allow workers to sue their employers if they suffer retaliation after making an oral complaint.

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Prana Biosciences Skyrockets On Parkinson's Drug Success

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Al Zheimer - Mar. 22 (News) - Prana Biotechnology today announced the publication of new data on the ability of PBT2 to repair the damage in an Alzheimer's affected brain thereby facilitating the restoration of cognition in Alzheimer's Disease. The findings help to explain the rapid improvement in cognition previously reported in transgenic Alzheimer's mice and in patients in a Phase IIa clinical trial.

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Supreme Court rules vaccine makers protected from lawsuits

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Robert Barnes - Feb. 23 (News Report) - Federal law protects pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits by parents who claim that vaccines harmed their children, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.

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Executed man's mother urges ban on exports profiting from death penalty

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Owen Bowcott - Feb. 13 () - Patches Rhode believes her son Brandon died in agony after anaesthetic supplied by UK wholesaler appeared ineffective.

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Don't swallow this pill

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Times of India - By Unni Karunakara - Jan. 21 (Opinion) - MSF's International President urges India not to cut off access to crucial low-cost medicines.

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Vaccine-autism researcher should be prosecuted

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

CNN - By Alex B. Berezow - Jan. 14 (Opinion) - Finally, after 13 years of needless controversy, the British Medical Journal determined that Andrew Wakefield's vaccine-autism link constituted an "elaborate fraud."

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File under 'can't win'

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Jan. 04 (Opinion) - The Democrats promised that they'd be more responsible. They'd pay for their big projects. When health-care reform came around, they made good. They cut $500 billion from Medicare, handing conservatives a potent attack line. They introduced a tax on high-value health insurance plans, infuriating their union supporters. They didn't just pay for the bill: They overpaid for the bill, packing it with enough spending cuts and revenue increases to cut the deficit by more than $100 billion in the first 10 years, and then used the momentum of the bill to get liberals to sign off on cost controls, like an independent board designed to control Medicare's costs, that they'd have never countenanced in normal times.

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Bring on the health-care fight

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Eugene Robinson - Jan. 04 (Opinion) - If the incoming Republican leadership in the House of Representatives is serious about trying to repeal health-care reform, there's only one appropriate Democratic response: "Make my day."

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Pharmaceutical Industry Is Biggest Defrauder of the Federal Government Under the False Claims Act, New Public Citizen Study Finds

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Common Dreams - Dec. 16 (Press Release) - The drug industry has now become the biggest defrauder of the federal government, as determined by payments it has made for violations of the False Claims Act (FCA), surpassing the defense industry, which had long been the leader, according to a new Public Citizen study released today. The study found that pharmaceutical cases accounted for at least 25 percent of all federal FCA payouts over the past decade, compared with 11 percent by the defense industry.read more

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Controversial Drug Given to All Guantanamo Detainees Akin to "Pharmacologic Waterboarding"

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

TruthOut - By Jason Leopold, Jeffrey Kaye - Dec. 01 (Special Report) - The Defense Department forced all "war on terror" detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison to take a high dosage of a controversial antimalarial drug, mefloquine, an act that an Army public health physician called "pharmacologic waterboarding."

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Americans pay too much for health care -- in charts

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Nov. 24 (News Report) - There are a lot of complicated explanations for why American health-care costs so much, but there are also some simple ones. Chief among them is "we pay too much." And I don't mean in general. I mean specifically. Mountains of research show that for every piece of care you might name -- a drug, a doctor visit, a diagnostic -- you'll pay far more in the United States than in other countries.

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Looking for a Superbug Killer

Sat, 06 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Andrew Pollack - Nov. 06 (News Report) - Worried about an impending public health crisis, government officials are considering offering financial incentives to the pharmaceutical industry... to spur the development of vitally needed antibiotics... a considerable number of pharmaceutical giants have abandoned this field in search of more lucrative medicines. The number of new antibiotics in development is “distressingly low,”

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Antipsychotic Drugs - Side Effects May Include Lawsuits

Sat, 02 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Duff Wilson - Oct. 02 (News) - FOR decades, antipsychotic drugs were a niche product. Today, they’re the top-selling class of pharmaceuticals in America, generating annual revenue of about $14.6 billion and surpassing sales of even blockbusters like heart-protective statins. While the effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs in some patients remains a matter of great debate, how these drugs became so ubiquitous and profitable is not. Big Pharma got behind them in the 1990s, .......

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Mississippi River pours as much dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico as BP

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The New Orleans Times-Picayune - By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune - Aug. 11 (News Report) - Every day during the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, contractors sprayed an average 140,000 pounds of Corexit dispersant onto oil slicks on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico and into the oil being released a mile below.

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Viagra for Children?

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Discovery News - By Benjamin Radford - Aug. 03 (News Analysis) - The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will decide later this week whether or not to approve a version of Viagra for use in treating children afflicted with a rare lung disease. The active ingredient in Viagra, a chemical called sildenafil, works by blocking an enzyme that regulates blood flow which in turn might help children by controlling blood pressure.

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Doctors reconsider old antibiotics despite hazards

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Andrew Zajac - Jul. 18 (News Report) - More than half a century ago, when antibiotics were transforming modern medicine, a now almost forgotten drug was hailed as something close to the miracle of miracles. Doctors rushed to prescribe it for an array of medical problems — that is, until they discovered that the drug, chloramphenicol, sometimes had lethal side effects. Yet today, improbable as it may seem, an effort is underway to revive the use of chloramphenicol and other antibiotics that had largely been banished because of their potential danger.

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FDA weighs alternative to 'morning after' pill

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Rob Stein - Jun. 12 (News Report) - A French drug company is seeking to offer American women something their European counterparts already have: a pill that works long after "the morning after."

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The (in) justice of COFINA?

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Center for the New Economy - Apr. 23 (Opinion) - Imagine it is the year 2035 and all international trade and travel has halted to a dead stop due to the sudden appearance of a highly contagious disease hitherto unknown to humanity. The good news is that Chinese Pharmaceutical Company, which is majority-owned by the Chinese government, has developed a highly effective vaccine against this disease. The bad news is that it will cost the government of Puerto Rico $2 billion to acquire sufficient doses to protect its population

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