For want of a few cents’ worth of morphine, almost 26 million people die in pain around the world, according to a new Lancet Commission report.
October 11, 2017
Ads can help people change behavior, but the CDC’s new anti-opioid campaign (tagline: "It only takes a little to lose a lot") misses the mark, skeptical public health experts charge. “Everyone pointed to the same fatal flaw: The ads tell viewers that prescription opioids…
October 2, 2017
“Micro-manufacturing” may be the future of pharmaceuticals: Researchers at the University of Michigan invented a new vaporizing technique that allows them to “print” custom-mixed medications.
September 20, 2017
A rare-disease exclusion in the Affordable Care Act is making it difficult for rural hospitals to keep costly, lifesaving drugs in stock. Though the ACA folded rural hospitals into a federal program that discounts drugs for hospitals with primarily low-income patients, the…
July 25, 2017
Existing US law has hampered the FDA’s ability to provide effective oversight to the nonprescription drug market, writes Joshua Sharfstein, former Maryland health secretary and director of Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg American Health Initiative. The difficulty arises,…
July 19, 2017
The Georgetown University Medical Center invites applicants for a fellowship to study substandard, falsified medicines. The opportunity, co-sponsored by the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention Quality Institute, is open to qualified candidates with advanced degrees. See RFA for…
July 19, 2017
When drugs in hospital and retail pharmacies reach their expiration date, they must be destroyed. But when drugs in the US Department of Defense stockpile expire, their expiration dates are often extended through a program developed with the FDA.Testing by government and…
June 6, 2017
Which medicines should everyone on earth have access to? The WHO will reveal the answer this week when it releases the latest iteration of its biannual essential medicines list. Countries use the list of hundreds of medications to prioritize spending and as a model for…
May 24, 2017
Supply of sodium bicarbonate solution, a vital drug used for open-heart surgery, organ failure and chemotherapy, is running dangerously low in the US. It’s an ironic situation because the drug’s base ingredient, regular baking soda, is found in most people’s kitchens. The…
May 11, 2017
Nearly 1/3 of drugs that obtain FDA approval are subsequently found by the agency to pose safety risks, according to a new study in JAMA.