EU regulator likely to fine Johnson & Johnson, Novartis next month - sources
By Foo Yun CheeBRUSSELS (Reuters) - EU antitrust regulators are set to fine Johnson & Johnson and Novartis next month for blocking the sale of a generic painkiller in the Dutch market, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday.The sanction, the second against so-called pay-for-delay deals after fines against Lundbeck and eight others in June, underlines the European Commission's determination to crack down on a practice common in the pharmaceutical industry.In pay-for-delay agreements, brand-name firms pay generic companies not to market rival versions of their medicine which usually cost a fraction of the ori...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 22, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
BMJ editor casts doubt on veracity of statin trials funded by the statin makers
- GodleeStatins for all over 50? NoFiona Godlee, editor, BMJBMJ 2013; 347 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f6412 (Published 23 October 2013) Cite this as: BMJ 2013;347:f6412 Should you prescribe statins to everyone over the age of 50, even those at low cardiovascular risk? A new Cochrane review seems to suggest that you should. An article in this week BMJ cries caution (doi:10.1136/bmj.f6123).Current guidance from the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 22, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
A Brand Extension Too Far?
(Source: PharmaGossip)
Source: PharmaGossip - November 21, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Two former MedImmune execs out at AstraZeneca unit - by Bill Flook
http://www.bizjournals.com/washington/blog/techflash/2013/11/two-key-execs-out-at-medimmune.html? (Source: PharmaGossip)
Source: PharmaGossip - November 20, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Doctors Say Heart Drug Raised Risk of an Attack
Cardiologists have accused a small drug company of withholding data from a clinical trial showing that the company’s drug, meant to reduce the risk of heart attacks, increased the risk instead.The cardiologists said that the company, Anthera Pharmaceuticals, did not turn over data to academic investigators, as it was required to do, for more than a year.“Despite a contract that required transfer to the academic authors, the company stonewalled every attempt to acquire the data,” Dr. Steven Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, said in an email on Tuesday.Dr. Nissen was the senior author of a report on the d...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 20, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Hippy Hippy Shake
WASHINGTON – Johnson & Johnson said late Tuesday that it will pay $2.5 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits brought by hip replacement patients who accuse the company of selling faulty implants that led to injuries and additional surgeries.The agreement presented in U.S. District Court in Toledo is one of the largest for the medical device industry.It resolves an estimated 8,000 cases of patients who had to have the company’s metal ball-and-socket hip implant removed or replaced.J&J pulled the implant from the market in 2010 after data showed it failed sooner than older implants.The deal provides roughly $25...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 20, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Two former MedImmune execs out at AstraZeneca unit
AstraZeneca PLC has parted ways with Scott Carmer and Tim Gray, two formerMedImmune executives who most recently held top positions in AZ's newly created specialty care division, the pharmaceutical giant confirmed this week.Both Carmer and Gray left the company on Nov. 8, according to AstraZeneca spokeswoman Michele Meixell. She declined to elaborate on the circumstances of their exit and would not say whether or not they were let go.The two departures are the latest in ongoing structural changes at the Gaithersburg biotech, but are no less complex to explain. London-based AstraZeneca acq...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 20, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Alice what's the matter
(Source: PharmaGossip)
Source: PharmaGossip - November 19, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
The Aristocrats part 1
Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0xglHS2fvMPart 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKwbaQXBbu4Part 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgYgedTH_kMPart 5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR6oneLjPqAPart 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rxPmcgfqCYPart 7 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QMg-BT7VYAPart 8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogExjvqpDtsPart 9 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO8hqjf1H0A (Source: PharmaGossip)
Source: PharmaGossip - November 19, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Held Hostage By Big Pharma
Firms like Celgene make the NHS pay absurd prices for medicines that are cheap to make. They're telling us to pay up or watch people like me die, argues MIKE MARQUSEEIn recent months I've been taking a medication called Revlimid, given as a "late therapy" for multiple myeloma.Since it looks like I may be Revlimid-dependent for a while, I decided to educate myself about the drug. As the chemistry is beyond me, I focused my attention elsewhere.The first thing I discovered was that Revlimid is phenomenally expensive.A single 21-day cycle of treatment at the lowest dose of 5mg daily costs the NHS £3,570. As the dose rises, so...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 19, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
The antibiotics crisis
Why are antibiotics so important?Without them, modern medicine would not be possible. Arguably the most important factor in the 30-year jump in American life expectancy in the 20th century, these "wonder drugs" allow us to fight the whole gamut of bacterial illness, from everyday ear infections to diseases such as syphilis, typhoid, and tuberculosis that used to kill millions of people. Their discovery about 100 years ago also revolutionized the world of surgery: As antibiotics drastically reduced the number of post-operative infections, standard operations that used to be considered perilous — such as appendix removals ...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 18, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Dr James LeFanu writes
There is rather more than is immediately apparent in the recent grudging acknowledgement that the swine flu vaccine increased the risk of the serious sleeping disorder narcolepsy fourteen-fold – and that those affected (mainly children) are entitled to compensation.As many will recall, the threatened swine flu “pandemic” of 2009 proved something of a non-event, with only 10 per cent of the predicted number of cases and a miniscule mortality rate of 0.0005 per cent.This discrepancy between the dire warnings and what turned out to be among the mildest flu outbreaks of the past 100 years prompted an inquiry by...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 18, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
NICE tells pharma: don’t blame us for rejections
The head of NICE has publicly defended his agency against more pharma criticism but admits that it can make changes to its processes that will allow more drugs onto the NHS.In an open letter to the Daily Telegraph newspaper Sir Andrew Dillon, NICE’s chief executive, said he would ‘like to say yes’ to all new medicines but added that “they are not always sufficiently better than the treatments they would replace to justify their cost.”He argued that some “have proved unsafe in general use” and NICE’s “cautious guidance has helped the NHS minimise their impact”.He added: “So it isn’t just because of t...
Source: PharmaGossip - November 18, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
European Antibiotic Awareness DAy - Sneezing Panda, Web Spot (+playlist)
(Source: PharmaGossip)
Source: PharmaGossip - November 18, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
Investigators: Drug study side effects
(Source: PharmaGossip)
Source: PharmaGossip - November 18, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
