Free Republic

Quote the article: "Prosecutors in Belgium have recently announced that executives with pharmaceutical companies based in the country will be charged with knowingly providing drug cartels with prescription drugs that were used to manufacture methamphetamine. . . . accused of providing the Mexican drug kingpin Ezio Figueroa Vazquez with several tons of ephedrine . . . seven executives who were charged with crimes . . . company made two shipments of two million pills containing pseudoephedrine in 2006 . . . big pharma drug Adderall is nearly identical to crystal meth . . .the only place to get massive quantities...

Amgen Chief Executive Robert Bradway told President Trump on Tuesday that the company would soon be adding 1,600 jobs. The news of hiring by the Southern California biotech giant came as the president met with a group of pharmaceutical executives at the White House, where he told them their pricing “has been astronomical.” “You folks have done a very great job over the years,” Trump told the executives, “but we have to get the prices down.” Kristen Davis, an Amgen spokeswoman, confirmed that the Thousand Oaks company plans to hire 1,600 skilled workers across the U.S. this year....

President Trump told pharmaceutical executives Tuesday he wants lower drug prices, and he pledged that the government will speed up approval times for new medicines. “You folks have done a terrific job over the years, but we have to get prices down for a lot of reasons,” Mr. Trump said at the White House. “We have no choice. For Medicare, for Medicaid, we have to get the prices way down.” The president urged the executives around a conference table to bring back their manufacturing operations to the United States, promising to cut regulations and speed up the Food and Drug...

As someone who has written about FDA reform for many years it’s gratifying that all of the people whose names have been floated for FDA Commissioner would be excellent, including Balaji Srinivasan, Jim O’Neill, Joseph Gulfo, and Scott Gottlieb. Each of these candidates understands two important facts about the FDA. First, that there is fundamental tradeoff–longer and larger clinical trials mean that the drugs that are approved are safer but at the price of increased drug lag and drug loss. Unsafe drugs create concrete deaths and palpable fear but drug lag and drug loss fill invisible graveyards. We need an...

German-based Bayer AG has committed to President-elect Donald Trump that it will invest $8 billion in American research and development as part of its deal to acquire Monsanto, Trump's transition team said Tuesday. Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that Bayer will also protect all of Monsanto's 9,000 American jobs while creating an additional 3,000 high-tech positions in the country. That agreement, he added, came after Trump met with CEOs from both companies last week.

OxyContin is a dying business in America. With the nation in the grip of an opioid epidemic that has claimed more than 200,000 lives, the U.S. medical establishment is turning away from painkillers. Top health officials are discouraging primary-care doctors from prescribing them for chronic pain, saying there is no proof that they work long-term and substantial evidence that they put patients at risk. Prescriptions for OxyContin have fallen nearly 40 percent since 2010, meaning billions of dollars in lost revenue for its Connecticut manufacturer, Purdue Pharma. So the company's owners, the Sackler family, adopted a new strategy: Put the...

I believe that President-elect Donald Trump will succeed in bringing down health care costs, and tackling soaring drug prices will be at the forefront of his battle. This may have come as a shock to the industry, who likely believed that they’d be given a free pass under a Republican presidency and Republican-controlled Congress. It is likely that on Election Day the Big Pharma companies prematurely let out a collective sigh of relief believing that a Republican-led government would never allow for imported medicines or for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, but it appears that the well-deserved panic is starting...

An experimental Eli Lilly & Co. drug failed to significantly help Alzheimer’s disease patients in a closely watched clinical trial, dealing another blow to the pharmaceutical industry’s long quest to find a better treatment for the condition. The disappointing outcome also may revive doubts about an entire branch of Alzheimer’s research that has dominated the industry’s efforts in the past decade. Lilly and other companies have developed drugs that try to stop the buildup of a sticky protein in the brain known as beta amyloid—believed by many to be the primary culprit in the disease. But none of these drugs...

In a new posting, Dr. Ted Noel: - points to recent evidence of Hillary Clinton symptoms of Parkinson's disease and its treatment, such as eye dyskinesia and gait - explains the difficulty of managing her condition with dosing of Levodopa, as to the daily cycle of effectiveness of the drug and side effects and - discusses the cognitive problems of people with this condition under this medication and why this is very important for a president, specifically the daily timing of "off states"

Third Way, a progressive think tank with ties to the Democracy Alliance, has removed newly appointed Ebola czar Ron Klain from its website, following a Washington Free Beacon report. The Free Beacon reported Friday on Klain’s status as a trustee for Third Way, and his past experience lobbying on behalf of a drug company that was accused of denying life-saving drugs to dying cancer patients. The choice of Klain to head the administration’s emergency response to Ebola was criticized as a political move. Klain is a political operative with no medical experience and a former advisor to former Vice President...

As Election Day draws near, it looks like a slim majority of Drug Store News readers would prefer to see Donald Trump in the White House, according to our most recent online reader poll. Though the candidates are separated by fewer than 100 votes, at press time, 51% of readers (1163 votes) said they would vote Trump if the election were tomorrow, whereas 49% (1101 votes) said Hillary Clinton was their pick. These are the most recent results, but Drug Store News has been asking readers all year for their opinions on which candidate’s policies they would favor. We began...

Big pharma is spending millions to fight limits on opioids like OxyContin, Vicodin and fentanyl The pharmaceutical industry has spent more than $880 million over the past decade to fight laws that would limit the availability of powerful opiods such as OxyContin, Vicodin and fentanyl in the United States, according to an investigation by the Associated Press and the Center for Public Integrity published Sunday. Often, these lobbying expenditures are funneled through groups like the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network and other advocacy groups that represent the interests of patients with terminal cancer or chronic pain, whose conditions can...

Chemotherapy warning as hundreds die from cancer-fighting drugs (cancer drugs may kill up to 50 % patients) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/08/30/chemotherapy-warning-as-hundreds-die-from-cancer-fighting-drugs/ Sarah Knapton, Science Editor 30 August 2016 Patients should be warned about the dangers of chemotherapy after research showed that cancer drugs are killing up to 50 per cent of patients in some hospitals. For the first time researchers looked at the numbers of cancer patients who died within 30 days of starting chemotherapy, which indicates that the medication is the cause of death, rather than the cancer. In Milton Keynes the death rate for lung cancer treatment was 50.9 per cent,...

CEO who gouged price of EpiPen is daughter of Democrat senator CHARLESTON, W.Va. — As a pharmaceutical company run by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin’s daughter faces scrutiny for hiking prices on life-saving allergy injection pens, Manchin is remaining mum. The Democratic West Virginia senator’s daughter, Heather Bresch, is CEO of Mylan, which manufactures EpiPens. A two-dose package cost around $94 nine years ago. The cost averaged more than six times that in May. Manchin spokesman Jonathan Kott said Wednesday the senator had no comment.

One striking chart shows why pharma companies are fighting legal marijuana There's a body of research showing that painkiller abuse and overdose are lower in states with medical marijuana laws. These studies have generally assumed that when medical marijuana is available, pain patients are increasingly choosing pot over powerful and deadly prescription narcotics. But that's always been just an assumption. Now a new study, released in the journal Health Affairs, validates these findings by providing clear evidence of a missing link in the causal chain running from medical marijuana to falling overdoses. Ashley and W. David Bradford, a daughter-father pair...

Human rights campaigners warn action is needed to stop use of unlicensed drugs or other legally unsatisfactory methodsHuman rights groups have welcomed news that pharmaceutical firm Pfizer is to block the sale of its drugs in the US to perform executions, but warned that legally dubious alternatives could take their place. All companies licensed by the US government to manufacture drugs for state executions have now blocked their use in lethal injections. Pfizer’s withdrawal follows a campaign targeting pharmaceutical companies and their shareholders. The company said: “Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we...

Total US spending on prescription drugs in 2015, at the manufacturers’ level and as measured by “invoice pricing,” jumped by 12.2% to $424.8 billion, after having already soared 14.2% in 2014! A two-year increase of 28%! So you’d think we’d get some results for all this moolah. But no. This $424.8 billion in prescription drug spending at “invoice pricing” isn’t based on what Americans or their health insurers pay. According to IMS Health, which released the report, it reflects invoice pricing by drug companies to distributors. It includes neither price concessions by drug companies nor the “mark-ups and additional costs”...

It starts like a joke — Gov. Rick Scott walks into a Gainesville Starbucks — but one patron wasn’t laughing. Scott stopped in at the coffee chain for a cup Tuesday after touring the recently opened factory and headquarters for biopharmaceutical company Nanotherapeutics. Cara Jennings, a former Lake Worth city commissioner, saw Scott in the downtown store and ripped into him, from her seat, over health insurance and cuts to women’s health services, and calling him an expletive

New Jersey hospital emergency room becomes first in U.S. to end use of opioid painkillers PATERSON, N.J. -- St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center announced it has become the first hospital in the country to implement a program that will manage patients' pain in the emergency room without the use of opioid painkillers. Painkillers most frequently used in the emergency room in the past were oxycodone, vicodin and percocet, according to Dr. Mark Rosenberg, the Emergency Department chair. “Our job here together is to look at the whole equation and understand how we can stop people from going from a prescription,...

I know, the headline sounds dramatic. It's true. Trump has just released his health care reform proposal. He is the only candidate that has put forward a plan that will force down the cost of medical care by as much as 80%, rendering Obamacare unnecessary along with Medicare. Require price transparency from all healthcare providers, especially doctors and healthcare organizations like clinics and hospitals. Individuals should be able to shop to find the best prices for procedures, exams or any other medical-related procedure. .... Remove barriers to entry into free markets for drug providers that offer safe, reliable and cheaper...