 |
| INDIA: Supreme Court to Hear Dispute on Drug Patents
by Vikas Bajaj and Andrew Pollack, New York Times
March 6th, 2012
A Swiss drug company, Novartis, will go before the Indian Supreme Court this monnth to fight patent laws that protect the global supply of inexpensive medicines to treat AIDS, cancer and other diseases. The lawsuit - which involves a drug called Gleevec - is being opposed by international aid groups. |
| US: Online Age Quiz Is a Window for Drug Makers
by STEPHANIE CLIFFORD, New York Times
March 25th, 2009
RealAge, promising to help shave years off your age, has become one of the most popular quizzes on the Internet. The test asks 150 questions about lifestyle and family history to assign a “biological age." But then pharmaceutical companies pay RealAge to compile test results of RealAge members and send them marketing messages by e-mail. |
| US: High Court Eases Way to Liability Lawsuits
by Jess Bravin, Wall Street Journal
March 5th, 2009
The Supreme Court said drug makers can be sued in state court over alleged defects, even if the Food and Drug Administration has approved a medication's use. The 6-3 ruling undercuts years of business efforts to block state suits over the safety of products from motorcycle brakes to railway cars. |
| SWITZERLAND: Davos Scales Back Glitz
by Associated Press, New York Times
January 25th, 2009
The economic crisis that emerged out the collapse of securities based on shaky U.S. mortgages poses challenges for the Davos World Economic Forum, an arena that has championed market-driven approaches. |
| US: Research Center Tied to Drug Company
by GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times
November 24th, 2008
Court documents reveal that Dr. Joseph Biederman, a renowned child psychiatrist, pushed Johnson & Johnson to fund a research center whose goal was “to move forward the commercial goals of J&J.” |
| US: Radio Host Has Drug Company Ties
by GARDINER HARRIS, The New York Times
November 21st, 2008
An influential psychiatrist who was the host of the popular NPR program “The Infinite Mind” earned at least $1.3 million from 2000 to 2007 giving marketing lectures for drugmakers, income not mentioned on the program. |
| US: Eli Lilly settles Zyprexa inquiries in 32 states
by TOM MURPHY and MARLEY SEAMAN, Associated Press
October 7th, 2008
Drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co. cleared another legal cloud hanging over its top-selling drug Zyprexa when it announced a $62 million settlement Tuesday, but several other storms are still brewing for the antipsychotic medication. |
| ARGENTINA: Is GlaxoSmithKline Behaving Badly in Argentina?
by AINA HUNTER, ABC News
September 23rd, 2008
Michaela, a deceased 5 month old, is one of more than 13,000 Argentine children to participate in a clinical study implemented a little more than a year ago by the London-based GlaxoSmithKline, the world's second-largest drug manufacturer. |
| US: Judge to Unseal Documents on the Eli Lilly Drug Zyprexa
by MARY WILLIAMS WALSH, The New York Times
September 5th, 2008
A federal judge in Brooklyn decided on Friday to unseal confidential materials about Eli Lilly’s top-selling antipsychotic drug Zyprexa, citing “the health of hundreds of thousands of people” and “fundamental questions” about the way drugs are approved for new uses. |
| US: U.S. Drug Ads Questioned
by KEITH J. WINSTEIN and SUZANNE VRANICA, The Wall Street Journal
September 3rd, 2008
Consumer advertising for prescription drugs had a negligible impact on sales of products studied by Harvard Medical School researchers -- in a finding that may confound both advertisers and their opponents. |
| US: For Widely Used Drug, Question of Usefulness Is Still Lingering
by ALEX BERENSON, The New York Times
September 1st, 2008
About the only point on which both sides agree is that no one can judge ezetimibe’s safety and benefits for certain without more data, ideally from a clinical trial covering more than 10,000 patients and lasting several years, long enough to show that the drug actually helps patients live longer or avoid heart attacks. |
| US: Mannatech Settles Holder Suits
by SUZANNE SATALINE, Wall Street Journal
June 13th, 2008
Dietary-supplements maker Mannatech Inc. said it settled several lawsuits with shareholders who accused the company of using improper sales tactics to boost the value of the stock. |
| US: Researchers Fail to Reveal Full Drug Pay
by GARDINER HARRIS and BENEDICT CAREY, The New York Times
June 8th, 2008
A world-renowned Harvard child psychiatrist whose work has helped fuel an explosion in the use of powerful antipsychotic medicines in children earned at least $1.6 million in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007 but for years did not report much of this income to university officials, according to information given Congressional investigators. |
| US: Merck Wrote Drug Studies for Doctors
by STEPHANIE SAUL, The New York Times
April 16th, 2008
The drug maker Merck drafted dozens of research studies for a best-selling drug, then lined up prestigious doctors to put their names on the reports before publication, according to an article to be published Wednesday in a leading medical journal. |
| US: Drug Makers Near Old Goal: A Legal Shield
by GARDINER HARRIS and ALEX BERENSON, The New York Times
April 6th, 2008
The Bush administration has argued strongly in favor of the doctrine, which holds that the F.D.A. is the only agency with enough expertise to regulate drug makers and that its decisions should not be second-guessed by courts. The Supreme Court is to rule on a case next term that could make pre-emption a legal standard for drug cases. The court already ruled in February that many suits against the makers of medical devices like pacemakers are pre-empted. |
| US: Eli Lilly E-Mail Discussed Unapproved Use of Drug
by ALEX BERENSON, The New York Times
March 17th, 2008
John C. Lechleiter, an Eli Lilly official who is about to become the company's top executive, wrote an e-mail message in 2003 that appears to have encouraged Lilly to promote its schizophrenia medicine Zyprexa for a use not approved by federal drug regulators. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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: 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. |
| 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: 3 Executives Spared Prison in OxyContin Case
by Barry Meier, The New York Times
July 20th, 2007
After hearing testimony from parents of young adults who died from overdoses involving the painkiller OxyContin, a federal judge Friday sentenced three top executives of the company that makes the narcotic to three years' probation and 400 hours each of community service in drug treatment programs. |
| US: Bristol-Myers to Pay Fine
Agence France Presse
May 31st, 2007
Bristol-Myers Squibb has agreed to plead guilty and pay a $1 million criminal fine for lying to the government about a patent deal on its blood-thinning drug Plavix, officials said Wednesday.
The Justice Department said in a statement that the company’s actions had threatened to reduce competition for the drug, one of the best-selling prescription medications worldwide. |
| THAILAND: Holding Big Pharma's feet to the fire
by Marwaan Macan-Markar, Inter Press Service
May 17th, 2007
For nearly a week, the advertising pages of Thai- and English-language dailies have been the stage for debates on Thailand's decision to break patents on anti-AIDS drugs in the interest of public health. A lobby championing the cause of the powerful pharmaceutical companies ran full-page spreads in the morning newspapers with an eye-catching warning in large, bold text, which said: "The Wrong Prescription for Thailand". |
| US: BP/UC Deal Raises Concerns
by Richard Brenneman, Berkeley Daily Planet
March 2nd, 2007
The proposed agreement between one of the world’s largest oil companies, BP (formerly British Petroleum) and UC Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of Illinois has ignited a firestorm that promises to burn long and hot. |
| US: Corporate Profits Take an Offshore Vacation
by Lucy Komisar, Inter Press Service
February 23rd, 2007
Last week, Merck, the pharmaceutical multinational, announced that it will pay 2.3 billion dollars in back taxes, interest and penalties in one of the largest settlements for tax evasion the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has ever imposed. |
| SOUTH AFRICA: MCC stalls new Aids drugs
by Belinda Beresford, Mail & Guardian Online
February 3rd, 2007
South Africans have been denied the “biggest advance” in antiretroviral therapy over the last few years because of a lack of urgency in the drug registration process in South Africa, according to the Treatment Action Campaign. |
| ASIA: Asian Govts Push Generic Drugs
by Marwaan Macan-Markar, Inter Press Service
December 18th, 2006
In moves that are winning them praise, two South-east Asian governments -- in Thailand and the Philippines -- appear determined to push ahead with plans to provide cheaper generic drugs even if they incur the wrath of pharmaceutical giants. |
| US: Pfizer Drug Dealt Blow in Testing
by Alex Berenson, The New York Times
November 1st, 2006
Pfizer said yesterday that clinical trials of torcetrapib — a heart medication that is the most important drug in the company’s pipeline — confirmed that it raises blood pressure, a potentially serious side effect. |
| THAILAND: Patent or patient? How Washington uses trade deals to protect drugs
by Alan Beattie, Andrew Jack and Amy Kazmin, The Financial Times
August 22nd, 2006
As the World Health Organisation's top man in Thailand, William Aldis knew Thai officials were hosting their US counterparts in the northern city of Chiang Mai to negotiate what to many outsiders might seem an entirely worthy objective: a bilateral free-trade deal. But he saw dangers - and decided to make his views public. |
| US: Drug Companies Face Inquiry for Drug Patent
by Stephanie Saul, The New York Times
July 27th, 2006
Two big drug companies that market the best-selling drug Plavix — Sanofi-Aventis and Bristol-Myers Squibb — had been looking for good news this week: an all-clear from the federal government and several states to settle a patent dispute.
Instead, they got a notice that the proposed settlement is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Department of Justice. |
| US: Hospital Chiefs Get Paid for Advice on Selling
by Walt Bogdanich , The New York Times
July 17th, 2006
One recent sun-splashed afternoon, executives who run some of America's leading nonprofit hospitals met at a stately Colorado resort for an unusual mission: to advise companies confidentially on how best to sell their drugs, medical devices and financial services to hospitals. |
| INDIA: Petri Dish for Pharmaceutical MNCs
by Ann De Ron, Inter Press News Service
July 10th, 2006
Pharmaceutical multinationals, seeking to ramp up profits through cheap drug trials, are increasingly turning to India with its combination of a vast pool of poor, ignorant patients on the one hand and skilled medical personnel and fine research infrastructure on the other. |
| US: Another Merck Drug Is Under Legal Attack
by Molly Selvin, The Los Angeles Times
July 5th, 2006
As Merck & Co. defends itself against a deluge of litigation involving its pain reliever Vioxx, the pharmaceutical giant also is fielding the first of what could be another wave of lawsuits involving Fosamax, its second-biggest seller. |
| US: Charities Tied to Doctors Get Drug Industry Gifts
by Reed Abelson, The New York Times
June 28th, 2006
Around the country, doctors in private practice have set up tax-exempt charities into which drug companies and medical device makers are, with little fanfare, pouring donations — money that adds up to millions of dollars a year. And some medical experts see that as a big problem. |
| US: Drug Firms a Danger to Health – Report
by Sarah Boseley, The Guardian (UK)
June 26th, 2006
Drug companies are accused today of endangering public health through widescale marketing malpractices, ranging from covertly attempting to persuade consumers that they are ill to bribing doctors and misrepresenting the results of safety and efficacy tests on their products. |
| US: Drug Prices Up Sharply This Year
by Milt Freudenheim, The New York Times
June 21st, 2006
Prices of the most widely used prescription drugs rose sharply in this year's first quarter, just as the new Medicare drug coverage program was going into effect, according to separate studies issued yesterday by two large consumer advocacy groups. |
| US: Drugs firm blocks cheap blindness cure
by Sarah Boseley, The Guardian
June 17th, 2006
A major drug company is blocking access to a medicine that is cheaply and effectively saving thousands of people from going blind because it wants to launch a more expensive product on the market. |
| US: Lawyer: Merck Scrapped Study on Vioxx
by Linda A. Johnson, The Associated Press
June 16th, 2006
Merck & Co. scrapped a planned study of the cardiac safety of Vioxx once it knew U.S. regulators were going to tone down their warning about heart risks for patients taking the painkiller, a plaintiff's lawyer argued Friday in a product liability trial. |
| US: Grandmother Takes on Merck in Vioxx Trial
by LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press
June 5th, 2006
Drug maker Merck & Co. repeatedly tried to downplay the cardiac risks of its painkiller Vioxx, so user Elaine Doherty didn't know about them and couldn't control them before she suffered a heart attack after taking the drug, her lawyer told jurors as a product liability trial began Monday.
|
| US: Merck Admits a Data Error on Vioxx
by Alex Berenson, New York Times
May 31st, 2006
In an admission that could undermine one of its core defenses in Vioxx-related lawsuits, Merck said yesterday that it had erred when it reported in early 2005 that a crucial statistical test showed that Vioxx caused heart problems only after 18 months of continuous use. |
| US: FDA Warns Wyeth on Quality at Puerto Rico Plant
RUETERS
May 30th, 2006
Possible contaminants in headache remedies, hormone replacement therapy and other pills made at Wyeth's (WYE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) plant in Puerto Rico have not been adequately checked out or corrected, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday. |
| US: Uh-oh, it's the shareholders
by Bruce Meyerson, Chicago Sun-Times
May 21st, 2006
It happens only once a year, and yet so many headstrong corporate CEO's can't seem to cope with being in a room with shareholders for a few hours at the annual meeting.
|
| WORLD: From Asia to America, How Bausch's Crisis Grew
by Barnaby J. Feder, The New York Times
May 18th, 2006
Early in March, Bausch & Lomb received a troubling phone call from a New Jersey eye doctor. Dr. David S. Chu, a specialist in cornea diseases, alerted the company that three of his recent patients had been afflicted with a microbe that caused a potentially blinding eye infection. |
| US: Doctors Object to Gathering of Drug Data
by Stephanie Saul, The New York Times
May 4th, 2006
A rebellion is under way by some doctors, who consider the data-gathering an intrusion that feeds overzealous sales practices among the nation's estimated 90,000 drug company representatives. Public officials are also weighing in. A vote on a state bill to clamp down on the practice is scheduled for today in New Hampshire, and similar bills have been introduced in other states, including Arizona and West Virginia. |
| US: Generic Drug Payoff Draws Gov't. Interest
by Andrew Bridges, Associated Press
April 25th, 2006
Brand-name pharmaceutical companies have resumed paying generic drug manufacturers to stay off the market under the terms of some legal settlements, attracting renewed scrutiny from federal regulators, trade officials said Monday. |
| SOUTH AMERICA: Creating a Network Against Biopiracy
by Mario Osava, Inter Press Service News Agency
March 27th, 2006
Two patents granted in the United States between 2000 and 2002 and another for which an application has been filed have put "maca", a high altitude Andean plant that is used by indigenous people in Peru, at the centre of a new battle against biopiracy, which involves the construction of an international network against the misappropriation of traditional knowledge. |
| INDIA: A Nation of Guinea Pigs
by Jennifer Kahn, Wired Magazine
March 1st, 2006
The market in India for outsourced clinical drug trials will hit $1.5 billion by 2010. Enticed by numbers like these, developing countries have been scrambling to catch Big Pharma's eye - India most aggressively of all. |
| UK: Drug firm censured for lapdancing junket
by Sarah Boseley, The Guardian
February 14th, 2006
One of the world's largest drug companies has been disciplined by the industry's UK watchdog after admitting that its staff entertained doctors to greyhound racing, lapdancing and Centre Court tickets at Wimbledon. |
| US: In Article, Doctors Back Ban on Gifts From Drug Makers
by Gardiner Harris, The New York Times
January 25th, 2006
The gifts, drugs and classes that makers of pharmaceuticals and medical devices routinely give doctors undermine medical care, hurt patients and should be banned, a group of influential doctors say in today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
|
| US: Former Biogen Executive Settles Insider-Trading Charges
by John Hechinger, Wall Street Journal
January 12th, 2006
The former general counsel of Biogen Idec Inc. settled securities-fraud and insider-trading charges, agreeing to pay more than $3 million related to his sale of company shares on the day the biotech company learned that a patient taking its new multiple sclerosis drug was sick with a deadly infection.
|
| 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.
|
| 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.
|
| 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. |
| INDIA: Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
by Stan Cox, Counterpunch
February 15th, 2005
In this 50-mile-long stretch of rural India west of Hyderabad, the country's fifth largest city, almost 40 percent of the country's bulk pharmaceuticals are produced (a large proportion of them for export). The progress the the people of Digwal have made in protecting themselves against the industry's wastes puts them in a league of their own. |
| USA: Drug Companies Pushing ADHD Drugs for Children
by Kelly Hearn, Alternet
November 29th, 2004
As public scrutiny of drug companies grows, so do questions about what critics say is a vast over-prescribing of MPH, especially as more adults are taking other MPH-based medicines such as Concerta. Many in and outside the scientific community suspect the dubious marketing tactics of big drug money have fueled the spiraled use of MPH. |
| US: Merck Steps Up Public Relations Campaign After Recall
by Theresa Agovino, Associated Press
November 22nd, 2004
Merck & Co.'s campaign to defend itself in the wake of the recall of the pain reliever Vioxx intensified as it placed a package of three full-page ads in seven prominent newspapers beginning last Friday. |
| US: How Schering Manipulated Drug Prices And Medicaid
New York Times
July 31st, 2004
$345.5 million settlement by Schering-Plough to resolve a government Medicaid investigation provides a detailed glimpse into how drug companies can manipulate prices to overcharge state and federal programs. |
| US: A Record Year for Shareholder Activism
by G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Christian Science Monitor
June 28th, 2004
Question: What single force can get Tyco International to strive for cleaner emissions, inspire PepsiCo to study the impact of AIDS in developing nations, and even get Merck & Co. to declare its intentions to not manufacture an abortion pill? Answer: shareholders. |
| US: Medco Health to Settle Complaints
Associated Press
April 27th, 2004
In a case that could alter how prescriptions are filled, the nation's largest pharmacy benefits manager said Monday that it would pay $29 million to settle allegations by 20 states, including California, that it pressured doctors to switch patients' medications to benefit its bottom line. |
| US: Strengthening Bones, Raising Questions
by Denise Gellene, New York Times
April 23rd, 2004
Last fall, the National Kidney Foundation for the first time set treatment guidelines to prevent a complication from kidney failure that causes damage to bones. The guidelines were tough, and there was no drug on the market that would easily help a patient meet them. |
| USA: Cynical Politics and the Global HIV/AIDS Emergency
by Bill Fletcher Jr., FinalCall.com News
August 6th, 2003
National Public Radio (NPR) recently reported on the dramatic increase of HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean. This story reminds one that fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS is directly related to overcoming poverty and challenging globalization. It also reminds one that cynical politics are afoot on the part of those in power more concerned with corporate profits than with the misery of millions. |
| USA: Drug Patents Draw Scrutiny as Bush Goes to Africa
by Michael Schroeder, The Wall Street Journal
July 9th, 2003
In a five-Nation African tour this week, President Bush is trumpeting his $15 billion program to fight the continent's AIDS epidemic. But that program's gains could be undercut by a separate U.S. effort to impose strict drug-patent protections that make AIDS drugs more expensive and harder to obtain. The Commerce Department is helping shape patent laws in developing countries such as Nigeria -- where Mr. Bush will visit Saturday -- that go beyond global standards in protecting drug makers. The U.S. Trade Representative's office is seeking similarly strict protections in developing nations world-wide. |
| USA: Bush Delivers Emergency AIDS Relief to Republican Allies
by John Tarleton, Indy Media Center
July 3rd, 2003
George W. Bush signed a five-year, $15 billion global AIDS relief bill to much fanfare last week in advance of the G8 Summit in Evian, France. Besides giving Bush a PR boost, the measure may turn out to be of more help to U.S. pharmaceutical companies, faith-based religious groups and the biotech industry than to the citizens of 14 African and Caribbean countries covered by the initiative. |
| South Africa: Indigenous Group Wins Rights to its Healing Herbs
by Mercedes Sayagues, Inter Press Service
March 28th, 2003
ANDRIESVALE, South Africa, Mar. 28 (IPS) -- In a victory for indigenous groups, a landmark profit-sharing agreement has been signed providing credit and compensation to one of South Africa's oldest groups with extensive traditional knowledge of healing plants and herbs. |
| USA: Pharmaceutical Company Whistle-Blower Tells of 'Illegal' Tactics
by Liz Kowalczyk, Boston Globe
March 12th, 2003
David Franklin, the drug company whistle-blower who has sparked federal and state investigations into the marketing of the top-selling drug Neurontin, said yesterday that he and his former colleagues engaged in a series of inappropriate tactics, including misleading doctors to persuade them to prescribe the drug for unapproved uses. |
| USA: Bush Blocks Cheap Drugs for World's Poor
by Charlotte Denny, Guardian/UK
February 19th, 2003
George Bush's close links with the drugs industry were last night blamed for the failure of talks in Geneva aimed at securing access to cheap medicines for developing countries. |
| Brazil: Hopes Lift at WTO Drugs Talks
by Bayan Rahman, Financial Times
February 17th, 2003
Brazilian proposal at the weekend has raised hopes of a breakthrough in the World Trade Organisation's deadlocked talks on poor ountries' access to essential medicines. |
| USA: Drug Industry Poised to Reap Political Dividends
by Vicki Kemper, Los Angeles Times
November 8th, 2002
Few industries campaigned harder than pharmaceutical manufacturers to elect Republicans to the new Congress, and few industries are better positioned to reap the rewards of the election returns, analysts said Thursday. |
| USA: Feds Pushing Toxic Anthrax Drug?
by Elliot Borin, Wired.com
October 24th, 2002
Many veterans' advocates believe a certain anthrax vaccine to be a major cause of Gulf War sickness. The company manufacturing it has launched a massive lobbying campaign to persuade the Bush administration to stockpile the controversial drug so it can be administered to civilians. |
| World: AIDS Activists Mobilize Against Coca-Cola
by Jim Lobe, OneWorld US
October 17th, 2002
AIDS activists are preparing rallies and demonstrations Thursday in several cities around the world to protest against global soft-drink giant Coca-Cola, which they charge must do more to help and treat its HIV-infected workers and their families in sub-Saharan Africa. |
| USA: Hormone Replacement Only the Tip of the Iceberg
by Lynn Landes, AlterNet
July 31st, 2002
The HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) scandal is bigger than most think. It's not just about menopausal women, like me, getting bad information from their physicians and the pharmaceutical industry for over 40 years, while the federal government stood by and did nothing. The scandal is much bigger than that. |
| USA: Hormonal Outrage at Pharmaceuticals
by Sharon Lerner, Village Voice
July 16th, 2002
Last week, after its findings revealed that the combination of hormones taken by some 6 million women was doing more harm than good, causing an increase in heart attacks, breast cancer, blood clots, and strokes, a national study was halted mid-stream. Wyeth, which has raked in more than $2 billion a year from its top-selling hormone therapies is now watching its stock price dive. |
| Kenya: HIV Drug Shortages 'Critical'
IRINNEWS.org
April 9th, 2002
JOHANNESBURG -- A severe shortage of two antiretrovirals (ARVs) produced by leading pharmaceutical Bristol-Myers Squibb in Kenya, could have critical repercussions for patients, says Medecines sans Frontieres (MSF). |
| Bayer Won't Pull Poultry Antibiotics
BayerWatch.com
November 1st, 2001
Recent threats of bioterrorism have highlighted how important it is to safeguard the effectiveness of America's antibiotics supply. But when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently proposed a ban on the use of certain antibiotics to treat sick chickens and turkeys, Bayer Corporation refused to comply. |
| India: Kerala to Protect Tribal Intellectual Property Rights
by Liz Mathew, Indo Asian News Service
September 22nd, 2001
NEW DELHI -- The Kerala government has decided to introduce legislation to protect the intellectual property rights of its tribespeople who have been practising traditional nature-based medicine for centuries. |
| UN: African Leaders Say Debt Hampers Fight Against AIDS
by Lewis Machipisa, Inter Press Service
June 25th, 2001
African leaders used the opening of the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV-AIDS Monday to assail the international community's response to the deadly epidemic for failing to match the speed and seriousness with which the disease is infecting their citizens. Official after official rose to drive home the message that the death of more than 20 million people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, demands that more money be committed to the fight. |
| South Africa: Drug Companies Drop AIDS Suit
by Ravi Nessman, Associated Press
April 19th, 2001
In a move activists hoped would lead to a flood of affordable AIDS medication to Africa, the pharmaceutical industry dropped its suit Thursday challenging a South African law many say would allow the government to import or produce generic versions of the drugs. |
| USA: The Pharmaceutical Industry Stalks the Corridors of Power
by Julian Borger, The Guardian Unlimited
February 13th, 2001
In this pantheon of corporate muscle, no industry wields as much power as the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA), a pressure group breathtaking for its deep pockets and aggression, even by the standards of US politics. |
| USA: Ten Worst Corporations of 2000
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation
January 3rd, 2001
Here is the annual Top 10 Worst Corporations of 2000 list compiled by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman. This year, rushing to the head of the pack of irresponsible biotech companies was the French corporation Aventis, the maker of Cry9C corn, sold under the name StarLink. |
| USA: Health Care Firms Spend Big to Head Off Reforms
by Jeff Leeds, Los Angeles Times
July 23rd, 2000
With billions of dollars in profits on the line, the health care industry is waging the largest national advertising campaign ever conducted by a political special interest, with a price tag for the election cycle that could approach $90 million--more than either of the major presidential candidates is expected to spend. |
| South Africa: AIDS Protestors Picket Pfizer
Associated Press
June 26th, 2000
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa About 100 picketers demonstrated Monday outside the offices of the Pfizer drug company, saying its offer of free treatment for an AIDS-related brain infection was insufficient. |
| UK: A Bitter Pill for the World's Poor
by Isabel Hilton, The Guardian
January 5th, 2000
It is a story repeated daily in towns and villages across the developing world. Whatever the recorded cause of death - leishmaniasis, tuberculosis, pneumonia - the real cause is poverty. Poor people in tropical countries are at risk from a range of diseases for which they cannot get treatment - either because medicines are available at prices they cannot afford or, worse still, because no medicines are available. |
|
|
