[BBC] Another Danish pharmaceutical company is withdrawing products from Greece in protest at the government’s decision to cut the prices of medicines by 25%.
The Leo Pharma company says it is suspending sales of two popular drugs because the price reductions will cause job losses across Europe.   The Greek government is struggling with a debt crisis.  [...]

(Bloomberg) — Drugmakers face $105 billion in costs over 10 years, $25 billion more than the industry first estimated, from discounting medicines sold through government health programs, according to Leerink Swann & Co.
The extra costs will come from expanding drug rebates through Medicaid, the U.S. insurance program for the poor, Leerink’s John L. Sullivan said [...]

[Boston.com] Top executives of the state’s two largest biotechnology companies offered diverging views today on the health care bill signed into law by President Obama, with one contending it protects innovation and the other insisting it does little to control costs. “I don’t think this health care reform really addresses the fundamental underlying issues that [...]

[AP]  An American infertility clinic is offering free human eggs to one British participant for attending an informational seminar Wednesday in London.
The promotion, which has been described by some as a raffle, has sparked an ethical debate in Britain about whether women should be paid for their eggs — which is illegal in the European [...]

[NEJM] Early in 2009, members of major health care–related industries such as insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, medical device makers, and hospitals all agreed to forgo some future profits to show support for the Obama administration’s health care reform efforts. Skeptics have questioned the value of these promises, regarding at least some of them as more [...]

[Reuters] Patents on two human genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer should be declared invalid because they stifle the free flow of information and hamper research, lawyers told a New York judge on Tuesday.
A lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups last May posed a broad challenge to gene patenting [...]

[Economist] MORE than a week after the earth convulsed beneath it, Haiti has still to plumb the depths of suffering and want. The numbers are still only more-or-less informed guesses, but their magnitude is grim: perhaps 200,000 killed, 250,000 more injured and some 3m in desperate need of help. The generosity of the world’s response [...]

[dailymail] A car crash victim has spoken of the horror he endured for 23 years after he was misdiagnosed as being in a coma when he was conscious the whole time.
Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them [...]

[AP] Britain is using genetic tests on some African asylum seekers in an effort to catch those who are lying about their nationality, drawing criticism from scientists and provoking outrage from rights groups.
The United Kingdom Border Agency launched the pilot project in September amid suspicions there might be a large number of asylum applicants lying [...]

[medscape] Every day, doctors face pressure to choose between practicing defense medicine or trying to lower healthcare costs.
Your patient comes in, and even if you think the treatment is ‘wait and see,’ you can’t do that. If you miss diagnosing a disease and the patient sues, his attorney will hammer you for not having done [...]