The use of antihypertension medication during the coronavirus pandemic has been a subject of hot debate but people should be cautious about simple conclusions.
Drug shortages occur regularly in the US, even in the best of times. The pharmaceutical supply chain embodies ‘just in time’ shipping and has little built-in redundancy.
Prominent GP and former MP Kerryn Phelps has weighed into the doctor-pharmacist turf war, saying pharmacists shouldn’t prescribe because of their financial interests. But the evidence says otherwise.
Clinical trials are used to establish that medicines work. But these don’t take into account the genetic differences between us that can mean very different outcomes for different patients.
National drug regulators use evidence from clinical trials to decide whether new cancer drugs will be approved for use. But these studies are often flawed.
The cost of a life-saving drug in Canada is rising by 3,000 per cent. A national pharmacare plan could bring order to this chaotic world of Canadian drug prices.
There’s a common, popular and well-studied method to ensure new technologies are safe and effective for public use – even if researchers don’t fully understand how they work.
Researchers use an algorithm designed to help robots move to figure out what’s possible when designing new molecules in a promising class of pharmaceuticals.