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| 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. |
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