| US: Court Considers Protecting Drug Makers From Lawsuits
by GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times February 26th, 2008 Less than a week after issuing a sweeping ruling that bars most lawsuits against medical device makers, the Supreme Court heard arguments Monday in the first of two cases that could determine whether drug makers receive similar protection. |
| US: Pfizer to End Lipitor Ads by Jarvik
by STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times February 26th, 2008 Under criticism that its ads are misleading, Pfizer said Monday that it would cancel a long-running advertising campaign using the artificial heart pioneer Robert Jarvik as a spokesman for its cholesterol drug Lipitor. |
| CHINA: China Plant Played Role In Drug Tied to 4 Deaths
by ANNA WILDE MATHEWS and THOMAS M. BURTON, The Wall Street Journal February 14th, 2008 A Chinese facility that hasn't been inspected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration made the active ingredient in much of the widely used Baxter International Inc. blood-thinner that is under investigation after reports of hundreds of allergic reactions and four deaths among the drug's users, the agency said yesterday. |
| US: Committee Investigates Ad Tactics for Lipitor by Stephanie Saul, New York Times February 8th, 2008 A Congressional investigation revealed that Pfizer agreed to pay Dr. Jarvik $1,350,000 as a celebrity pitchman for the heart drug Lipitor, and wants to know how much stunt doubles in the ads may have also been paid. |
| US: Drug Ads Raise Questions for Heart Pioneer
by STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times February 7th, 2008 Celebrity advertising endorsements are nothing new, of course. But the Lipitor campaign is a rare instance of a well-known doctor’s endorsing a drug in advertising — and it has helped rekindle a smoldering debate over whether it is appropriate to aim ads for prescription drugs directly at consumers. |
| CHINA: Tainted Drugs Tied to Maker of Abortion Pill
by JAKE HOOKER and WALT BOGDANICH, The New York Times January 31st, 2008 A huge state-owned Chinese pharmaceutical company that exports to dozens of countries, including the United States, is at the center of a nationwide drug scandal after nearly 200 Chinese cancer patients were paralyzed or otherwise harmed last summer by contaminated leukemia drugs. |
| GLOBAL: False 'Green' Ads Draw Global Scrutiny
by Tom Wright, Wall Street Journal January 30th, 2008 With companies eager to tout their "green" credentials to consumers, advertising watchdogs are stepping up efforts to rein in marketers that make false or exaggerated claims. |
| US: Antidepressants Under Scrutiny Over Efficacy
by DAVID ARMSTRONG and KEITH J. WINSTEIN, Wall Street Journal January 17th, 2008 The effectiveness of a dozen popular antidepressants has been exaggerated by selective publication of favorable results, according to a review of unpublished data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration. |
| EU: European Antitrust Regulators Raid Large Drug Makers
by STEPHEN CASTLE and JAMES KANTER, New York Times January 17th, 2008 Antitrust regulators on Wednesday raided big European drug makers as part of an investigation into whether patents and lawsuit settlements are being manipulated to keep generic products off the market. |
| GLOBAL: Global campaign vows to fight MNC drug monopoly by Marwaan Macan-Markar , IPS News November 26th, 2007 Public health and HIV/AIDS activists from the developing world are seeking to break the monopoly over drugs held by pharmaceutical giants through a new global campaign designed to influence international debate over the issue. |
| US: Merck Agrees to Settle Vioxx Suits for $4.85 Billion by Alex Barenson, New York Times November 9th, 2007 Three years after withdrawing its pain medication Vioxx from the market, Merck has agreed to pay $4.85 billion to settle 27,000 lawsuits by people who claim they or their family members suffered injury or died after taking the drug. |
| CHINA: Chinese Chemicals Flow Unchecked to Market by Walter Bogdanich, NY Times October 31st, 2007 Pharmaceutical ingredients exported from China are often made by chemical companies that are neither certified nor inspected by Chinese drug regulators, The New York Times has found. |
| US: F.D.A. Panel Urges Ban on Medicine for Child Colds by Gardiner Harris, NY Times October 20th, 2007 A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted Friday to ban popular over-the-counter cold products intended for children under the age of 6. |
| US: V.A. Is Limiting Use of Diabetes Drug by Stephanie Saul, NY Times October 18th, 2007 The Department of Veterans Affairs has decided to severely limit the use of Avandia, the once-popular drug for Type 2 diabetes, delivering another blow to the product’s maker, GlaxoSmithKline. |
| INDIA: Novartis Patents Case Far From Dead by Praful Bidwai, Inter Press Service News Agency August 9th, 2007 Cancer patients in India have reason to be relieved at a high court ruling this week which dismissed a petition by Swiss pharmaceuticals multinational corporation (MNC) Novartis challenging an Indian law which denies patents for minor or trivial improvements to known drugs. |
| INDIA: Setback for Novartis in India Over Drug Patent by Amelia Gentleman, The New York Times August 7th, 2007 Indian companies will be free to continue making less expensive generic drugs, much of which flow to the developing world, after a court rejected a challenge to the patent law on Monday. |
| US: Lawmaker Calls for Registry of Drug Firms Paying Doctors by Gardiner Harris, New York Times August 4th, 2007 An influential Republican senator says he will propose legislation requiring drug makers to disclose the payments they make to doctors for services like consulting, lectures and attendance at seminars. |
| US: FDA Panel to Review Avandia by Jennifer Corbett Dooren, The Wall Street Journal July 26th, 2007 The Food and Drug Administration will ask a panel of outside medical experts Monday whether it thinks GlaxoSmithKline PLC's diabetes drug Avandia should remain on the U.S. market. |
| US: Tax Break Used by Drug Makers Failed to Add Jobs by Alex Berenson, The New York Times July 24th, 2007 Two years ago, when companies received a big tax break to bring home their offshore profits, the president and Congress justified it as a one-time tax amnesty that would create American jobs. Drug makers were the biggest beneficiaries of the amnesty program, repatriating about $100 billion in foreign profits and paying only minimal taxes. But the companies did not create many jobs in return. Instead, since 2005 the American drug industry has laid off tens of thousands of workers in thi |
| US: Drug Safety Critic Hurls Darts From the Inside by Stephanie Saul, New York Times July 23rd, 2007 An activist doctor emerges as the nation's unoffical ariter of drug safety by digging deep into companies' clinical data. At the same time, he presides over industry-financeed research worth millions of dollars. |