Pharmaceutical industry

Monday

Ross Clark

Will Trump’s war on Big Pharma work?

From our US edition

Cynics will scoff at Donald Trump’s latest initiative: issuing an executive order forcing pharmaceutical companies to lower the prices of medical drugs used by US patients by between 30 and 80 percent. The President wants to impose what he calls a “most favored nation” rule, under which drugs companies would be allowed to charge US consumers no more than they charge in the lowest-priced country where they sell their product. That could have serious consequences for campaigns to fight disease globally, given that cheaper versions of drugs are often sold in developing countries which might not otherwise be able to afford vaccination programs and the like. Isn’t Trump supposed to be against price-fixing?

Trump

Sunday

Chris Mondics

Will the opioid enablers ever pay?

From our US edition

More than two decades into America’s catastrophic opioid epidemic, the demographics of this unprecedented tragedy are clear. By far, the brunt of the harm has been borne by America’s poor and working classes. Multiple studies show a strong correlation between lack of employment, economic distress and overdose fatalities. Indeed, a 2021 study by the National Academy of Sciences concluded most of the decline in life expectancy beginning in the mid-1990s among working-age men and women was attributable to drug poisonings of people with a high school education or less. Standing in sharp relief to portraits of its primary victims are its perpetrators. Those most responsible for this epidemic are part of America’s best educated and economically privileged classes.

opioid

Thursday

Ian Birrell

The scandal of OxyContin, the painkiller that caused untold pain

Last week I was staying in a cool hotel in the middle of San Francisco. When I walked out to find coffee in the morning, I came across a man with his trousers lowered as he injected himself in the groin. An older fellow nearby used the street as a toilet, adding to the human excrement on the pavement. A woman lay crashed out, hair matted over her face in the heat. Returning later in the day, passing the clusters of tents and people chasing dragons from foil, I was asked: ‘Do you want anything?’ These disturbing scenes of human despair were beside a smart shopping mall in the city with the most billionaires per capita on the planet.

Monday

Dr Kristina M.L. Acri

Criminal gangs are making billions from fake medical supplies during COVID

From our US edition

While it’s great news that Pfizer, BioNTech, AstraZeneca and other pharmaceutical companies are developing vaccines to prevent people from getting the coronavirus, we should remember that international criminal entities are taking advantage of the fear, uncertainty and desperation created by the coronavirus pandemic to expand their illicit footprint. Since early June, Customs and Border Protection has seized more than 107,000 FDA-prohibited COVID-19 test kits, 750,000 counterfeit face masks, thousands of EPA-prohibited anti-virus lanyards, 11,000 FDA-prohibited chloroquine tables and more than 67,000 ACCU-CHEK test strips. When demand outstrips supply, it creates an environment in which substandard and counterfeit medical supplies proliferate.

fake medical