Massive global overuse of antibiotics in the farming industry has led to the emergence of terrifying superbugs that beat off all known drugs. Scientists say the threat rivals global warming, whilst drugs’ companies focus on developing more lucrative medicines and governments are slow to react.
Over-zealous regulators in Europe and the US are threatening the growing market for e-cigarettes, reducing their revolutionary potential to save millions of lives in the 21st century by weaning smokers off the poisons in traditional cigarettes.
Clive Bates, the former head of the British charity Action on Smoking and Tobacco (ASH), says e-cigarettes could save hundreds of millions of lives in the 21st century, but only if over-zealous regulators in the EU and the US don’t spoil the party.
The U.S. government has sued Europe’s biggest drug maker Novartis for alleged healthcare fraud, accusing it of providing kickbacks to U.S. clinics to switch patients from generic drugs to the company’s brand-name product.
In a civil-fraud lawsuit filed on Tuesday, U.S. prosecutors said Novartis used a programme of rebates and discounts to boost the sales of its immunosuppressant drug, Myfortic, in a scheme that resulted in Medicare and Medicaid paying out “tens of millions of dollars” in reimbursements based on false, tainted claims.
The pharmaceutical industry has for years consolidated profits by advocating a stronger and ever inequitable global intellectual-property regime. The Indian Supreme Court’s refusal to uphold the patent on a blockbuster cancer drug, though only a small reversal for the Big Pharmas, sets a good precedent for other developing countries and frees up money and resources that can contribute to growth and poverty reduction efforts.
Counterfeit medicines are dangerous by their very nature and is on the rise in the United States and globally, putting patients as well as the pharmaceutical industry at risk.
Counterfeiting of medicines is a hugely lucrative business due to the continued high demand for medicines and low production cost. At the same time, the absence of deterrent legislation in many countries encourages counterfeiters since there is no threat of prosecution.
British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to pay $3 billion in fines to the U.S. Justice Department for misrepresenting drugs to consumers, reported Reuters on Monday, in what is believed to be the largest case of healthcare fraud in U.S. history.
