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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
China is in the midst of conducting a series of corruption investigations of pharmaceutical companies that have been operating in the country. It all started with the investigation of officials from pharmaceutical…
In 2001 I met David Graham, an official from the US Food and Drug Administration, in a car park in Washington. I wanted him to shed light on why the diabetes drug troglitazone, or Rezulin, had been available…
A study published today shows that clinical trials with industry sponsorship report greater benefits and fewer harmful side effects. In the discussion, the authors note that most reviews and guidelines…
You’ve probably given little thought to the slip of paper your GP hands you when she sends you off for a blood test. After all, you’re likely to have more important things to worry about. But the next…
The earthquake in the Northern Italian town of Medolla this May devastated the local community, killing 17 people and leaving 14,000 homeless. Because Medolla is the manufacturing epicentre of the Italian…
New medicines must be approved as safe, efficacious and of good quality before they can be prescribed. But authors of two recent articles in the British Medical Journal argue that governments should introduce…
If it involved the record industry we’d call it payola: undisclosed kickbacks to radio station executives, owners and disk jockeys to boost broadcasts and thus record sales. In the pharmaceutical industry…
Pharmaceutical companies will be required to disclose more details about their financial ties to doctors under a revised self-regulatory code, but they have resisted calls to name doctors individually…
Two large multinational pharmaceutical companies are fighting for patents and monopoly pricing in Indian courts. The outcomes of the cases – involving Novartis and Bayer – are likely to determine the country’s…
Professor of Bioethics & Medicine, Sydney Health Ethics, Haematologist/BMT Physician, Royal North Shore Hospital and Director, Praxis Australia, University of Sydney