An important new study in the United States has found doctors who receive just one cheap meal from a drug company tend to prescribe a lot more of that company's products.
The lack of transparency and accountability found in the hedge fund world is increasingly finding a home in the pharmaceutical sector, where more people care.
Events disturbingly similar to the thalidomide tragedy continue to occur.
funnyangel/Shutterstock
This project offers the tantalising possibility that plants containing drugs, such as agents to treat HIV, could be farmed on a small scale at low cost by communities that need them most.
Bashing drugmakers can be an easy way to score political points.
Reuters
Clinton, who named drug companies among her enemies in this week's debate, is pushing populist-inspired policies that could hamper the flow of new medicines.
Representatives of the 12 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) member countries at a press conference in Atlanta, after a deal was reached.
EPA/Erik S. Lesser
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 future may not be as bleak as we thought.
Ocskay Mark
Ever wonder how much it costs to develop a new drug? The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development estimates US$2.6 billion. But how accurate is this figure?
Here’s what I remember. It was 14 years ago, and I was a junior doctor working in psychiatry. Some colleagues planned a dinner as an end-of-term celebration and, despite reasonable incomes, they decided…
Pfizer is like Woody Allen’s famous shark. It has to keep moving or it will die. And the drug company seems unable to keep moving by any means other than acquisitions. Its all-time best-selling drug, Lipitor…
Congratulations are in order. The pair have known each other for some time. But the relationship has now been formalised. Living as we do in modern times, both may have other relationships, but it’s still…
Ever since the time of the guillotine, doctors have been at the centre of the death penalty. Joseph Guillotin, the physician who suggested the device be used in 18th-century France, was actually against…
Big pharma: a world of many faces.
Greg Peverill-Conti
With billions to be made on the back of ill health and notable scandals and cover-ups in its history, it’s fair to say that many see the public face of the pharmaceutical industry as a mask for darker…
Drug companies vigorously seek to influence government policy.
Ian Wilson
GlaxoSmithKline, one of the Big Five global pharmaceutical companies, this week gave the world an overdue Christmas present. Glaxo will stop paying doctors to promote its drugs and will no longer pay its…
A large proportion of drug trial data never gets published, skewing our picture of drugs’ effectiveness and safety.
opensource.com
An article published in the journal of the British Medical Association, BMJ, earlier this week illustrates a devastating problem with the “evidence base” in the academic medical literature. A large proportion…
Professor Emeritus of Health Policy and Management, York University, Emergency Physician at University Health Network, Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto
Professor of Bioethics & Medicine, Sydney Health Ethics, Haematologist/BMT Physician, Royal North Shore Hospital and Director, Praxis Australia, University of Sydney