[AP, PharmPro] Novartis is taking legal action in Britain to make state-run hospitals use an eye drug that costs about 700 pounds ($1,130) per shot instead of a cheaper one that costs 60 pounds ($97).
In a statement, Novartis said it was calling for a judicial review “as a last resort” because it believed patient safety [...]

[Nytimes] IN the fall of 2009, at the height of fears over swine flu, our research group discovered that a majority of clinical trial data for the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu — data that proved, according to its manufacturer, that the drug reduced the risk of hospitalization, serious complications and transmission — were missing, unpublished and [...]

[MSNBC, Thomson Reuters] According to a signal from the electronic tag around his ankle, Nenad Borojevic last left his apartment building at 6.25 p.m. on January 10. It was the festive season in Serbia; the capital was enjoying the lull between Orthodox Christmas and New Year.

Police said Borojevic, a doctor, headed to Kosutnjak park, a popular [...]

[By Andrew Jack and Kerin Hope, FT.com] Antonis Karokis’ medicines business is being squeezed by price cuts and unpaid hospital debts. But he is stoical – after all, he enjoyed the years of excess when Greece was an unusually large market for drugs.
“There were no controls on spending in the past, the whole system favoured [...]

[Geoffrey Rogow, WSJ] —Marijn Dekkers, head of German drug-and-chemicals giant Bayer AG, says consumers don’t give pharmaceuticals enough credit.
The outspoken chairman of the board of management—the German equivalent of CEO—says patients often thank doctors and nurses but not the companies that made the medicines that helped cure them.

Bayer’s Marijn Dekkers, shown in Sydney last month, [...]

As a rule I doesn’t usually re-post blog entries, however this one by pharmamkting  is an interesting read. ——
[pharmamkting] That’s my takeaway from this comment by Marijn Dekkers, “outspoken” head of Bayer Pharmaceuticals, in which he not only disses patients but claims to have cured cancer!
“If you have cancer, you get a pharmaceutical product, and your cancer [...]

[The New York Times]To head off medical conflicts of interest, the Obama administration is poised to require drug companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors for research, consulting, speaking, travel and entertainment.
Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use [...]