This week saw the biggest ever settlement involving the pharmaceutical industry. Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) agreed to pay the US government 3 billion dollars in fines and penalties relating to the marketing of three drugs. Whilst this is a massive amount of money it is...
Children are seen as a group where medication use is low and hence a potential group for increased use (sales) of medications. Two crazy ideas have been floated in different parts of the world. In the USA the latest idea is for cholesterol level screening in children....
Some interesting figures have been posted on the Medicines Australia website. In the six months to September 30, 2011 37 pharmaceutical companies spent AUD$ 40 million on 18,174 educational events which attracted 423,516 attendees. The average cost per head re event...
It is way to easy to create a crisis in health. I could very simply create a crisis about headaches by using alarming figures. Each year well over 90% of the population experiences a headache but less than 1% will get treatment from their doctor. Sounds really bad. A...
This week on my segment on the Paul Murray show we spoke about the way new drugs are viewed and used a “live” example of how this plays out. A study has shown that 25% of people believe that the FDA only approves drugs, which do not have serious side effects, and that...
