The opioid epidemic in 6 charts
Your guide to a public health crisis that's likely to get worse.
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Articles on Big Pharma
Displaying 1 - 20 of 53 articles
Don’t take opioids off the market - make it harder to abuse them
How can we fight the opioid epidemic? Redesign the drugs, rethink how we assess patients and mandate prescription monitoring.
New Zealand steamrolls Australia on the pharmaceutical paddock too
Drug prices in Australia are three times higher than in New Zealand. A key reason is the lack of transparency about taxpayer subsidies for Big Pharma and the companies' own finances.
Public health at risk when opinion trumps evidence
In an era when opinion often trumps evidence in public health issues, it's time to support and invest in evidence-based medicine to protect the public from dangerous, poorly informed beliefs.
A look inside Ohio’s lawsuit against opioid manufacturers
The state of Ohio filed a lawsuit against opioid manufacturers. Will their legal arguments hold up in court – and what will it mean for other cities and states going after big pharma?
Who’s paying for lunch? Here’s exactly how drug companies wine and dine our doctors
Drug companies funded more than 116,000 educational events for doctors over four years. Now you can find out exactly which companies footed the bills and how much they paid.
How to rein in the widening disease definitions that label more healthy people as sick
More of us are labelled as sick with the constantly changing diagnostic cut-offs for diseases. Now an international expert panel has drafted a list of things to consider before setting new thresholds.
Faster access to new drugs doesn’t always mean better treatment
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.
Drugs from bugs: the next blockbuster medicine could be lurking inside an insect
We have barely begun to tap into the pharmaceutical potential of the most diverse animals of all.
We need better treatments for childhood cancer, with fewer side effects
Children's cancer is a rare disease, which means the market is small and pharmaceutical companies have few incentives to develop drugs for these cancers.
The real reason the EpiPen and other off-patents are so expensive
The maker of the EpiPen has raised the price of two injectable treatments to about US$600, six times the price nine years ago. Why do drug companies do this? Because they can. The FDA ends up helping.
How social investment projects started making sense for big companies
Feel-good fudges designed to boost staff morale are giving way to tangible projects which can be reported to shareholders.
Drug companies are buying doctors – for as little as a $16 meal
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.
Drug prices post-Brexit – an expensive pill to swallow?
What will happen to immigration, wages and the economy has been discussed at length. But the price of drugs may also be affected.
Oxycontin: how Purdue Pharma helped spark the opioid epidemic
The sources of the opioid epidemic are complex, but one powerful motivator has been the pursuit of profit.
Martin Shkreli and the outrage of inequality
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.
Regulations have improved since thalidomide but drug scares are still possible
Tighter regulations of medicines and devices have prevented countless deaths and disabilities. But regulation can't always protect us from harm.
Pharma use loophole to hike up the price of drugs – so why doesn’t the NHS stop it?
Pharmaceutical companies aim to make a profit, but it took an industry insider to blow the whistle on some exorbitant drug costs the NHS was paying.
Little farmer, big pharma: the quest to modify plants to ‘grow’ medicines
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.
Clinton’s anti-drugmaker rhetoric may win votes, but does it threaten our long-term health?
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.
Top contributors
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Senior Research Fellow, Bioethics, University of Sydney
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Senior Research Fellow, Bond University
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Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of Canberra
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Professor of Bioethics & Medicine, Centre for Values and Ethics and the Law in Medicine, University of Sydney
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Ken Harvey is a Friend of The Conversation.
Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
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Associate Professor Politics and Policy Studies, Deakin University
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Doctoral Researcher, Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, University of Sydney
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Lecturer in Accounting & Management, Lancaster University
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Brett Montgomery is a Friend of The Conversation.
Senior Lecturer in General Practice, University of Western Australia
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Adjunct Professor, Murdoch University
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Head of School and Professor of Health Economics, School of Public Health, University of Sydney
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Professor; Head, School of Clinical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology
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Research Leader, Critical and Ethical Mental Health research group, Robinson Research Institute, University of Adelaide
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Professor of Accounting, Durham University
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Asssociate Professor, University of Melbourne
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