pharmaceutical companies

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Latest TPP Leak Raises Burning Questions About Implications for U.S. Health Care System

Press Release | Public Citizen | June 10, 2015

The latest secret document from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations – published today by WikiLeaks – shows that the pact could expose Medicare to pharmaceutical company attacks and constrain future policy reforms, including the ability of the U.S. government to curb rising and unsustainable drug prices, according to Public Citizen. The concerns about the U.S. health care system arising from this latest leak add to the litany of reasons that nearly all Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and a substantial bloc of House GOP oppose Fast Track trade authority for the TPP.

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Leaked TPP Chapter: 5 Scary Provisions In WikiLeaks' Trans-Pacific Partnership Release

Connor Adams Sheets | International Business Times | November 13, 2013

WikiLeaks broke the seal on key parts of the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership on Wednesday, when it released the agreement's intellectual property chapter online. Read More »

Lowering the Bar: Medicine in the 21st Century

John Fauber and Kristina Fiore | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and MedPage Today | May 22, 2016

As many as 16 million Americans are prone to screaming and pounding on the dashboard when someone cuts them off in traffic. There are 14 million men with low testosterone, 9 million women with low sexual desire -- and tens of millions of people with bladders that are too active and blood sugar that's a little too high. The common thread: All have non-life-threatening conditions that for most of the 20th century were not considered a part of mainstream medicine...

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Major Patent Pool Opens Up Research On Neglected Disease

Yojana Sharma | SciDev.Net | October 31, 2011

Research on drug development for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), tuberculosis and malaria will receive a boost from a major initiative launched by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) last week (26 October). Read More »

Merck 'Evergreens' Off-Patent Lipitor By Creating Combination Drug With No Additional Benefit

Glyn Moody | Techdirt | July 8, 2013

Big pharma often gets a rather rough ride here on Techdirt, what with its attempts to stop governments granting licenses for life-saving and low-cost generics in emerging countries, engaging in legal action to prevent drug safety information being released, and paying kickbacks to doctors. Read More »

Merck To Bristol-Myers Face Threats On India Patents (Correct)

Ketaki Gokhale | Bloomberg Businessweek | January 28, 2014

Pharmaceutical companies from Merck & Co. (MRK:US) to Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (BMY:US) face fresh threats to protecting their patents in India as a government-appointed panel prepares to evaluate more drugs for local makers to copy.  The panel is looking beyond the cancer treatments it studied last year to areas such as HIV and diabetes, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

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New amfAR Report Warns of Trade Agreement’s Potentially Damaging Effects on Global Public Health

Press Release | amfAR | May 8, 2015

The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade agreement currently being negotiated among 12 Pacific Rim countries, threatens the future availability of affordable generic medicines and could undermine the global HIV response in developing countries, according to a new report released today by amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. By expanding intellectual property (IP) protections for existing pharmaceutical products beyond what is required by current international standards, the report warns, the TPP could greatly delay the entrance of generic medicines into the marketplace and keep drug prices high for those who can least afford them.

New Drugs Trail Many Old Ones In Effectiveness Against Disease

Sharon Begley | Reuters | June 3, 2013

Despite the more than $50 billion that U.S. pharmaceutical companies have spent every year since the mid-2000s to discover new medications, drugmakers have barely improved on old standbys developed decades ago. Read More »

NY Attorney General Confirms Real-Life Conspiracy Among Drug Companies

J.D. Heyes | Natural News | February 21, 2014

The office of the New York Attorney General and the American units of Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd. and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. have come to terms on a settlement involving claims that an agreement between the two Big Pharma companies restricted competition unlawfully. Read More »

On the Financial Conflicts of Interests of Medical Societies and Rising Drug Prices

The notion that health care prices are high and are rising continuously in the US should hardly be novel...We first posted about high drug prices in July, 2005, with the example of BilDil...But only a few days later we noted that three cancer costs had yearly costs in the five figures, and one, Erbitux, cost as much as $100,000.  Most amazingly we noted that Thalidomid was priced at $25,000  a year...Since then, the ridiculously high prices of many tests and treatments, but most notably new drugs and devices, has been so widely covered, our discussion has been limited to special cases.,,

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Open PHACTS: Semantic Technologies And Drug Discovery

Claire Bower | BMJ Web Development Blog | April 26, 2013

Research and discovery in the life sciences is a pretty complicated business. The complexity of the modern scientific process seems to be a reflection of the intricacies of life and the processes associated with disease and its treatment. Furthermore, as technologies become more advanced, so too does the problem of managing the ever expanding quantity of data being generated. Read More »

Other Resource 530 Chefs Call On White House To End Antibiotic Overuse On Industrial Farms

Staff Writer | Pew | September 27, 2013

This week, The Pew Charitable Trusts delivered a letter signed by 530 chefs (PDF) to Sam Kass, executive director of Let’s Move! and senior policy advisor for nutrition at the White House, urging the Obama administration to finalize policies to preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics and to protect people from resistant superbugs. Read More »

Pharmaceutical Giant 'Plotted to Destroy Cancer Drugs to Drive Price Up 4,000%

Katie Forster | Independent | April 15, 2017

Leaked internal emails appear to show employees at one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies calling for “celebration” over price hikes of cancer drugs, an investigation has revealed. Staff at Aspen Pharmacare reportedly plotted to destroy stocks of life-saving medicines during a price dispute with the Spanish health service in 2014. After purchasing five different cancer drugs from British firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the company tried to sell the medicines in Europe for up to 40 times their previous price, reported The Times...

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Prescribable Mobile Apps Huge Threat For Pharma

Dave Chase | Forbes | May 14, 2012

With the proliferation of mHealth apps, it was only a matter of time before healthcare providers would start prescribing apps as soon as apps proved to be as or more effective than prescription drugs. Read More »

Sequencing, cloud computing, and analytics meet around genetics and pharma Bio-IT World Shows What is Possible and What Is Being Accomplished

Bio-IT World shows what is possible and what is being accomplished...last week I took the subway downtown and crossed the two wind- and rain-whipped bridges that the city of Boston built to connect to the World Trade Center. I mingled for a day with attendees and exhibitors to find what data-related challenges they’re facing and what the latest solutions are. Here are some of the major themes I turned up...

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