Gender & Health

Are Africa and South East Asia just suffering from a deluge of fake medicines that is causing disease resistance to rise? Or are they also suffering from a deluge of poorly informed media articles, encouraged by the pharmaceutical industry that wants to make war on generic drugs? Read More

KLM, the Dutch airline, has been forced to backtrack from a plan to use oil from jatropha seeds grown in Indonesia for commercial flights, after Friends of the Earth Netherlands put out a report criticizing the potential impact on local food supplies. Read More

Why don't drug companies invest enough money in treating malaria and tuberculosis? A recent study published in the Lancet magazine estimates that 1,238,000 people died from malaria in 2010. Surely a wonder drug that stops these diseases would be wildly profitable? Read More

Should lobbyists for biotech and food companies make the rules on what kind of food you have in your kitchen? Meet Mella Frewen, Suzy Renckens and Harry Kuiper: Three examples of how the industries take advantage of the European Food Safety Agency(EFSA) failure to properly regulate conflicts of interest. Read More

Johnson & Johnson has been fined $1.2 billion in Arkansas over the sales of Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug. A circuit judge ruled that the company did not warn patients that the drug places elderly patients with dementia at an increased risk of major weight gain, possible diabetes and potential death. Read More

U.S. imports of sodium thiopental have been banned by a federal judge because of the poor quality of imports. The ruling has struck a serious blow against the death penalty because of the key role the drug plays in lethal injections. Not surprisingly, the state of Texas is furious. Read More

GlaxoSmithKline boss Sir Andrew Witty's pay package more than doubled to £6.7m last year - but the drugs group reckons he remains underpaid and has awarded him a new deal which could generate up to £10.4m this year. Read More

The decision by PH Kurian, the controller general of patents, designs and trademarks in India, to allow a local company to manufacture Sorafenib, a drug used to treat advanced kidney cancer and liver cancer, is a welcome move that supports the access of poor people to cheap life-saving drugs. Read More

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. Read More

Scalpers are doing a booming business in key medical drugs by taking advantage of U.S. patients and hospitals when they are desperate for supplies from the poorly regulated $46 billion global contract-manufacturing industry. Read More