Tag: pharmaceutical industry
A Supreme Court Pharma Case Deals Consumers a Big Loss
From STAT: The U.S. Supreme Court case of Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co. vs. Superior Court of California, in which hundreds of plaintiffs claimed the drug Plavix...
My Grandmother is a Drug Addict—and I Blame Big Pharma
In this piece for Alternet, Joshua Wilkey discusses his grandmother's addiction to opioid painkillers and details the role that pharmaceutical companies have played in Appalachia's opioid...
Dr. Joel Lexchin Says Big Pharma is too Close With Physicians
From The Toronto Star: In his new book Doctors in Denial: Why Big Pharma and the Canadian Medical Profession are too Close for Comfort, Dr. Joel...
There’s Little Evidence Abuse-Deterrent Opioids Work
From STAT: In recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has proposed using abuse-deterrent opioids - those that make it more difficult to crush, snort, or inject...
As Cost of Health Care Skyrockets, So Does Pay of CEOs
From NPR: In the seven years since the Affordable Care Act was passed, the earnings of CEOs of U.S. health care companies, including pharmaceutical companies,...
Report on How Much Congressmen are Getting From Pharma
From MedCityNews: This year, under the threat of legislation that may reduce drug prices, address the opioid crisis, and repeal and replace the Affordable Care...
Significant Growth of Antipsychotics Market Foreseen
From Persistent Market Research: The global antipsychotics market is expected to grow significantly by 2021, with especially high growth rates in Europe and Asia. However,...
Time for Full Transparency on Pharmaceutical Money
From The Toronto Star: Ontario law should require pharmaceutical companies to not only disclose payments to physicians but also make public their contributions to all...
Why Disclosure Policies Don’t Discourage Drug Salesmen
From The Chronicle: The practice of pharmaceutical industry payments to academic researchers to help promote their drugs remains widespread. Requiring scientists to disclose their ties...
Panels That Developed Treatment Guidelines Had Industry Ties
From STAT: A recent analysis found that a large portion of depression treatment guidelines was developed by individuals with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
"Of 172...
New Tool Will Make it Easier to Spot Conflicts of Interest
From Vox: PubMed, a search engine for medical abstracts, has begun displaying conflict of interest data in search results. The abstracts now include a Conflict...
The Changing Role of the Pharmaceutical Representative
From the Center for Health Journalism: Due to drug safety scandals and rising drug prices, pharmaceutical representatives are increasingly being criticized by physicians, medical schools, and...
Swiss Giant Novartis Likely Bribed Thousands in Greece
From Medical Xpress: According to Greece's justice minister Stavros Kontonis, it is likely that the pharmaceutical company Novartis has bribed thousands of medical professionals and state officials...
Medical Community Split on Easing of Drug Company Gift ban
From VTDigger: A new bill has been introduced in Vermont that would scale back the state's law banning pharmaceutical companies from providing certain gifts to health care...
New Group Takes on Drug Prices and big Pharma
From NBC: A new patients' rights advocacy group called Patients for Affordable Drugs is fighting for lower drug prices. Because the group does not receive funding...
Why I Resigned From The Mighty
The apprehensions I'd initially had about joining the team returned to my mind. I'd allowed my original cautious disposition to be overtaken by optimism when I had accepted a position of contributing editor with The Mighty, but my hopes were about to be dashed.
How big Pharma’s Lust for Profit Harms Their Customers
From AlterNet: The increasing pace at which the FDA is approving new drugs can lead to significant risks to patient safety. Drugs that once would have...
I do Hate to Tell you This, but…
In this commentary for In the Pipeline, Derek Lowe highlights the results from a recent FDA report showing that the vast majority of all drugs...
Trump Wants to Blow up the FDA
From STAT: President Trump plans to decrease regulations on the Food and Drug Administration. Medical experts and healthcare professionals have expressed concerns that this could expose...
Ghostwriting has a New Name but Same Problems
A new paper, published in the British Medical Journal, explains how the pharmaceutical industry has publicly denounced ghostwriting while still finding ways to engage...
NIMH Info for Parents on “ADHD” Misleading, Researchers Say
A new analysis of the information that the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) publishes for parents about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) concludes that the children’s experiences and contexts are ignored and that medication is presented, misleadingly, as the only solution supported by research evidence.
“Doctors Call for Drug Advertising Ban in Position Reversal”
On Tuesday, the American Medical Association (AMA) declared its opposition to direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs. The US is one of the few countries that still allows drug companies to advertise prescription drugs in television commercials and magazines.
Gallup: “Americans’ Views of Pharmaceutical Industry Take a Tumble”
“In Gallup's annual measure of 25 major U.S. business sectors, the percentage of Americans with a positive view of the pharmaceutical industry dropped from 40% in 2014 to 35% this year, while the percentage with a negative view rose from 36% to 43%.”
University of Minnesota Psychiatry: A Pattern of Research Abuse
KMSP News has aired a report of yet another mentally ill man pressured to enroll in a study of an unapproved antipsychotic drug, with near-disastrous results. His story bears a striking resemblance to the case of Dan Markingson, who committed suicide in a University of Minnesota study in 2004.
Watchdogs or Show Dogs?
Beginning in the 1990s, a number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies began to set up bioethics advisory boards, ostensibly to obtain guidance about controversial ethical issues. Over the years, the ties between industry and bioethics have gradually grown closer, with companies setting up endowed chairs and hiring bioethics consultants. Yet very little is known about how bioethics advisory boards work. What exactly is their purpose? Do they prevent ethical wrongdoing, or do they provide ethical cover?
