Our government and big pharma = perfect together. The government has published guidance promoting partnerships between the National Health Service and the pharmaceutical industry, in a new tactic to improve patient care and help the service meet the rapidly changing demands of the 21st century. Given its extensive knowledge on illnesses and innovative medicines, the …
Nursing education fails to prepare graduates to deal with the pharmaceutical industry’s promotional tactics, and many nurses appear to accept promotional materials uncritically, according to an analysis of the nursing literature published in PLoS Medicine. “The pharmaceutical industry recognizes nursing influence on medical prescribing and identifies nurses as a marketing target,” say the authors, Annemarie …
FDA issued a Class I Recall of Medtronic Inc, SynchroMed EL Implantable Infusion Pump Models 8626-10, 8626L-10, 8626-18, 8626L-18, 8627-10, 8627L-10, 8627-18, and 8627L-18. The device administers drugs to a specific site in the body to treat pain, spasticity (continuous muscle contraction), and cancer. The pump is implanted in the patient, either with or without …
I thought this was very interesting and would like to share it with all of you. If you have to come down with a strange disease, this town of 23,000 on the wide-open prairie in southeastern Minnesota is a pretty good place to be. The Mayo Clinic, famous for diagnosing exotic ailments, owns the local …
Merck & Co. is the subject of a federal grand-jury probe into its sales and marketing practices for Vioxx, the painkiller it pulled from the market in 2004, according to a person familiar with the matter. The health-care-fraud unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts is investigating whether Merck promoted Vioxx …
Biovail Corp said on Friday it is being investigated by a U.S. federal grand jury in Boston in connection with the 2003 commercial launch of its Cardizem LA heart drug, and analysts speculated the probe might delve into whether physicians were paid to prescribe the treatment. The company would not elaborate on the exact nature …
The Oregon Supreme Court has again allowed a huge punitive-damages award against Big Tobacco’s Philip Morris to stand after it was twice rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court. In Mayola Williams v. Philip Morris Inc. (docket# S051805) filed last week, the Oregon SC ruled against the USSC on whether the original trial jury should have …
The Food and Drug Administration issued a public health advisory about suicidal thinking and other psychiatric conditions in patients taking the smoking cessation drug Chantix, warning that it “may cause worsening of current psychiatric illness even if it is currently under control. It may also cause an old psychiatric illness to reoccur.” Learn More: Washington …
Chinese-made dumplings containing pesticides sickened 175 Japanese in a scandal the government says may damage relations with its neighbor, which exported $56.7 billion of food to Japan last year. Learn More: Bloomberg.com
WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 — Citing a bad case of poor judgment, an independent reviewer for the New England Journal of Medicine has conceded that he leaked privileged information to GlaxoSmithKline last May on a meta-analysis that cast the company’s diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia) in a bad light. Learn More: Medpage Today