drug industry
scientificactivist | April 29, 2009Yesterday, the Institute of Medicine released a report entitled "Conflict of Interest in Medical Research, Education, and Practice". As far as I can tell, the full report is only available for a fairly substantial charge, but these are some of the main recommendations summed up in the report's press release:
All academic medical centers, journals, professional societies, and other entities engaged in health research, education, clinical care, and development of practice guidelines should establish or strengthen conflict-of-interest policies, the report says. Disclosure by physicians and…
scientificactivist | October 5, 2008Yesterday, The New York Times reported on the latest prominent medical doctor to be outed for not reporting the vast sums of money he was receiving from drug companies:
One of the nation's most influential psychiatrists earned more than $2.8 million in consulting arrangements with drug makers from 2000 to 2007, failed to report at least $1.2 million of that income to his university and violated federal research rules, according to documents provided to Congressional investigators.
The psychiatrist, Dr. Charles B. Nemeroff of Emory University, is the most prominent figure to date in a series…
scientificactivist | July 22, 2007Today's New York Times includes a profile of drug safety advocate Dr. Steven E. Nissen by medical business writer Stephanie Saul:
His questioning of the safety of the Avandia diabetes medication in late May, for example, prompted a federal safety alert and led to a sales decline of about 30 percent for the drug, which brought in $3.2 billion for GlaxoSmithKline last year. Now, with a federal panel soon to decide whether it can remain on the market, Avandia's future is uncertain.
The drug is the latest example of why Dr. Nissen, 58, whose day job is chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the…
scientificactivist | July 16, 2007The Corpus Callosum has more on the currently unfolding CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) fiasco:
In the context of the pro and con lobbying over the proposed expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, pharmaceutical companies decided to join the pro side. After all, if more children are insured, more of them will get prescription medication. But is is not just the drug companies, it is a broad-spectrum coalition....
And the response of the Administration? ...
Bush administration officials recently advised drug company executives not to support a major expansion of…
scientificactivist | July 27, 2006From the archives:
(13 March 2006) If sellers are allowed to compete freely without any regulations, market forces will inevitably drive down prices and improve the quality of services so that everyone wins, even the consumer--or so the dogma goes. Life is rarely so simple, and markets don't always behave so predictably. In the case of energy, in fact, deregulation has had the opposite effect, catalyzing massive price increases.
Although this is not a new phenomenon, Sunday's Washington Post details some of the more recent problems consumers have faced after buying into deregulation…
scientificactivist | July 26, 2006From the archives:
(17 February 2006) I'll be honest with you: I really don't know what to think about drug companies. I'll give them some credit, since unlike many of their peers they produce a product that is useful to society and has important humanitarian implications. I want to like them--I really do--but when I read about things like this, it becomes pretty difficult.
On 15 February, The New York Times published a detailed account in its business section on the exorbitant prices some pharmaceutical companies are willing to charge for their therapies. The report focused on Avastin,…
scientificactivist | June 24, 2006As my own department faces budget shortfalls and considers increasingly extreme measures to improve the situation, I thought it would be appropriate to bring back this post from the archives. The following post explores the results and interpretation of a recent study that found that university scientists are turning their laboratory results into profits more than previously thought.
(13 April 2006) According to a study released earlier this week, more scientists are commercializing their work that previous measures indicated. In a study funded by the pro-entrepreneurship Kauffman…