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| US: Drug Makers Scrutinized Over Grants
by Gardiner Harris, The New York Times
January 11th, 2006
A Congressional investigation of the money that drug companies give as supposed educational grants has found that the payments are growing rapidly and are sometimes steered by marketing executives to doctors and groups who push unapproved uses of drugs.
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| US: F.D.A. Puts Restrictions on Guidant
by Vikas Bajaj, The New York Times
December 28th, 2005
The Food and Drug Administration yesterday released a warning letter it sent to the Guidant Corporation, restricting the ability of the company to win approval for some new medical products. In the letter, sent a week ago, the agency said Guidant, the heart device maker, had not fully responded to its concerns about manufacturing procedures at the company's biggest plant.
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| US: Lilly Pleads Guilty to Misdemeanor Violation
Reuters
December 21st, 2005
Eli Lilly and Co. said on Wednesday it will plead guilty to a misdemeanor violation as part of a settlement with the government over its marketing and promotional practices for an osteoporosis drug. |
| AFRICA: Death By Dilution
by Robert Cockburn, American Prospect
December 20th, 2005
When fakes of a GlaxoSmithKline anti-malarial drug turned up in Africa, authorities assumed the drug giant would want to know. Instead, they learned about a huge, evil trade in fake drugs -- and about an industry that doesn’t want the truth to get out. |
| INDIA: Testing Drugs on India's Poor
by Scott Carney, Wired
December 19th, 2005
Multinational corporations are riding high on the trend toward globalization by taking advantage of India's educated work force and deep poverty to turn South Asia into the world's largest clinical-testing petri dish. |
| US: Gimme an Rx! Cheerleaders Pep Up Drug Sales
by Stephanie Saul, New York Times
November 28th, 2005
Sales representatives in the pharmaceutical industry are frequently female and invariably good looking because they are.drawn from the ranks of cheerleaders to sway the hearts of the nation's doctors, who still are mostly men. |
| GLOBAL: World Bank Gets Cold Feet on Bird Flu Drug Patent
by Marwaan Macan-Markar, Inter Press Service
November 4th, 2005
The World Bank has decided that it is not in keeping with its mission to get involved in the emerging global debate on the Tamilfu patent held by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche and that could be broken under the 'compulsory licencing' rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). |
| U.S.: Fiction Genre Fits Big Pharma
by Michael Hiltzik, LA Times
October 27th, 2005
According to a proposal, PhRMA was to pay Phoenix a six-figure sum for the marketing and production of a written-to-order fictional thriller. The plotline was what Hollywood would term high-concept — a group of shadowy terrorists conspires to murder thousands of Americans by poisoning the medicine they're importing from Canada to beat U.S. drug prices. PhRMA subsequently pulled the plug on the deal. |
| US: Vioxx Verdict Raises Profile of Texas Lawyer
by Alex Berenson, The New York Times
August 22nd, 2005
Merck is found liable for the death of Robert C. Ernst, who died in 2001 after taking Merck's painkiller Vioxx for eight months. The jury awarded $253.5 million to Carol Ernst, Mr. Ernst's widow and Mr. Lanier's client, in one of the largest damage awards ever to a single plaintiff. |
| US: Drug Industry Creates Voluntary Ad Guidelines
by Jennifer Corbett Dooren, Dow Jones
August 3rd, 2005
Responding to increased criticism from Congress, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, announced a set of voluntary guidelines aimed at governing the way drugs are advertised to consumers. |
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