[WSJ] Biotechnology companies, in a sign of the industry’s maturity, are increasingly coming under the microscope of shareholder activists, who want the sector to act more like traditional businesses.
In recent years, well-known activists like Carl Icahn and Ralph Whitworth have questioned whether larger biotechs, which tend to have good cash flow and diminished competition, are [...]

[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 [...]

[The Independent] All research involving the controversial creation of animal-human “hybrid” embryos has been refused funding in Britain and one of the three scientists licensed to carry out the work has left the UK for a job in Australia.
Every one of the three projects to develop embryonic stem cells from cloned embryos created by fusing [...]

Congress can encourage competition within an increasingly important class of prescription drugs.
[Washington Post] With a name like the Affordable Health Choices Act, you’d think the health-care reform bill that passed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee this month would have made an effort to provide affordable health choices. But instead, the bill includes [...]

Amid controversies over embryonic stem cell research, drugs using adult cells are already bearing fruit
[Fortune] When it comes to stem cells, the public — and the media — tend to focus on embryos. But researchers and analysts say marketable therapies already are emerging from less controversial work with adult stem cells.
Adult cells make up the lion’s [...]

[PioneerPress] A bill that would expand the public reporting of gifts, royalties and other payments to Minnesota physicians was tabled Wednesday by a Senate business committee that feared its impact on medical research and job growth.
Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, argued that expanded reporting would expose the conflicts of interest that occur when doctors receive anything [...]

[NYT] As many American companies in the last decade have sent tasks like customer service and computer support to other countries, drug makers have followed suit by outsourcing clinical trials — the human studies that determine the safety and efficacy of medicines.
The New York TimesNow, an article about the globalization of clinical trials, published Thursday [...]

[FoxNews] Their entire genetic sequences will be posted on the internet as part of the Personal Genome Project, a Harvard-based endeavor that aims to discover the genetic basis of hundreds of diseases, conditions and even personality quirks.
The best way to find that out, some scientists believe, is to put everything out there in the open [...]

Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company, is getting into stem cell research to explore the potential of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells (where ordinary cells like those taken from adult skin are coaxed into behaving like embryonic stem cells). Pfizer hopes to build up a team of 50 to 60 scientists specializing in stem cell [...]

The Supreme Court will hear arguments for Wyeth v. Levine, pertaining to whether manufacturers complying with FDA stipulated warning requirements can be held liable under state tort law for not supplying adequate warnings, this November.  Professor Zipursky of Fordham University, my alma mater, provides the following relevant facts: 
Levine’s facts present a shocking tragedy of the sort that can overwhelm [...]