Pharmaceuticals

Drug makers have manipulated America’s Orphan Drug Act — enacted in 1983 to help people suffering from rare diseases — for their own financial gain, according to a Kaiser Health News investigation.     To encourage development of drugs that will benefit very few patients,…

The history of modern-day drug regulations can be traced all the way back to several ancient cure-all drugs. King and toxicologist Mithridates, who ruled on the southern edge of the Black Sea from 120 to 63 BCE, invented what would later be called mithridatium as a…

Any day now, the US Senate is expected to pass the $6 billion 21st Century Cures Act, which includes a provision expanding evidence the FDA can consider when evaluating new drug treatments.   Proponents say this change will allow the FDA to speed life-saving therapies to…

Essential medicines need to be front and center in the quest to improve global health, a new Lancet Commission report argues.  

Remember Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical executive who suddenly and dramatically increased the price of a lifesaving drug for HIV patients? I know it’s not very public healthy, but at least once you probably thought about punching him in the face.   Well…  

A new UN high-level panel report out today calls for greater transparency of R&D costs and recommends that “innovative financing methods … delink the costs of R&D from the end prices of health technologies.” The panel—which included GlaxoSmithKline’s chief…

Findings from the Frontlines Public health officials are looking to the global response to HIV/AIDS for lessons to advance universal health coverage (UHC) in low- and middle-income countries. The HIV response had to address similar obstacles facing UHC delivery in weak…

As public anger swells over EpiPen extreme price increases, focus has shifted to the company responsible, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, and its CEO Heather Bresch. As revealed in a STAT article, the EpiPen uproar is not Bresch’s first controversy.

The costly and risky process of bringing new drugs to market is typically cited to explain away rising prescription drug costs—but new research chips away at this argument. Harvard Medical School researchers found that market forces, such as government-protected monopolies…

70% of Ghana’s population relies on centuries-old herbal medicines. However, a dramatic increase in demand has turned time-tested medicines into sometimes-dangerous big business and prompted the government to regulate the industry. According to Edith Annan, the country…