Would you trust a complementary medicine described as “vermifuge”, “vulnerary” or “emmenagogue”? That’s what new labelling proposes and not everyone’s happy about it.
Regulatory bodies approved some medical devices to treat pelvic organ prolapse and urinary incontinence before having data to prove their safety and efficacy.
Intuitively, it might seem desirable to speed up access to medicines. But this means more drugs will be approved that may subsequently prove unsafe or ineffective.
If the Therapeutic Goods Administration implements new proposals to regulate complementary medicines, you can be more confident they actually do what they say on the packet.
Classing e-cigarettes as quit smoking aids could help rebrand the tobacco industry as a legitimate player in health policy. Here’s why we should be concerned.
Before the last round of negotiations, only a handful of issues remained in the way of concluding the TPP. A potential deal-breaker for Australia was intellectual property protections for biologics.
The off-label use of medicines is not illegal and it doesn’t mean regulators have specifically “disapproved” its use. But there are a number of issues to consider before using a medicine off-label.
Over the next few weeks, the trade minister will be under intense pressure to renege on the government’s commitment to reject anything in the Trans Pacific Partnership that could undermine the PBS.
The latest part of the TPP to be leaked is its investment chapter. And like almost everything we know about the secretive negotiations for the agreement, it provides plenty of cause for concern.
One of the much-heralded platforms of the Abbott government is its promise to business to reduce red tape and burdensome regulatory obligations. Pharmaceuticals are a multi-billion dollar global industry…
I submitted a complaint about the promotion of “FatBlaster Reducta” (ARTG no: 176366) to the Therapeutic Goods Administration in March 2011. The product is a “complementary medicine” containing an extract…