More Children Skipping Vaccines In Some States
To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? That is a question that continues to concern parents nationwide. And a new analysis found that, in eight US states, more than 1 in 20 public school kindergartners are not receiving all the vaccines required for school attendance. And in more than half of all states, there has also […]
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Supreme Court To Review Overtime For Sales Reps
After years of conflicting rulings and legal confusion, the US Supreme Court has agreed to review a case in which a pair of pharmaceutical sales reps argue that they were wrongfully denied overtime pay . The implications for the pharmaceutical industry are likely to be far-reaching, given that drugmakers have been laying off thousands of […]
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Facebook Apologizes For Merck Web Page Goof
One week after being sued by Merck KGgA for allowing that other Merck to misappropriate a web page, Facebook is apologizing to the German drugmaker and its US namesake for what it is describing as an ‘administrative error,’ according to a spokesman for the wildly popular social media site. “The transfer of the vanity URL […]
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FDA Okays First Middle-of-the-Night Insomnia Drug
Is there anything worse than waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep? Okay, lots of things, but for people who do it and hate it, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has, for the first time ever, approved a drug to treat middle-of-the-night insomnia. […]
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Mylan Is Warned Over Plant In Puerto Rico
As the FDA attempts to toughen its oversight of manufacturing facilities in far away lands, plants in Puerto Rico are also undergoing added scrutiny. The latest example is a San Juan plant operated by Mylan Laboratories, the generic drugmaker, which received a warning letter last month for significant violations of good manufacturing practices. An FDA […]
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EU Recalls Cancer Meds Made By Boehringer Unit
The manufacturing problems engulfing the troubled Boehringer Ingelheim unit have just grown worse. The European Medicines Agency has just issued a ‘precautionary’ recall for the remaining batches of three cancer meds – Busilvex, Velcade and Vidaza – that were manufactured at its Ben Venue Laborartories facility in Ohio. And no new patients are to be […]
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Abbott Wins Ruling On Overtime Pay For Reps
In yet another twist in the back-and-forth legal battle concerning overtime pay for sales reps, a federal court judge has ruled that a former Abbott Laboratories rep is exempt from relevant provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act and, therefore, should not be paid overtime. The ruling is the latest to underscore a split between […]
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Amgen Patent Ploy Undercuts Healthcare Law
There is an old saying about what a difference a day makes. Well, what about 17 years? For Amgen, or any drugmaker that wins a new patent on an existing med, that can, of course, mean untold amounts of money. And this appears to be in the offing for the biotech, which was just awarded […]
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Merck KGgA To Facebook: Where Is Our Page?
Call this the case of the missing Facebook page. Merck KGgA, the drugmaker based in Germany, has filed a lawsuit in hopes of forcing Facebook to explain how its page on the wildly popular social network was apparently misappropriated by that other Merck – the drugmaker based in the US. Somehow, you see, its Facebook […]
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Thalidomide is still casting dark shadows 50 years on
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the withdrawal of thalidomide from the market. Launched as a drug for treating morning sickness, it unexpectedly gave rise to severe abnormalities, including the absence of limbs in several thousand children around the world. The episode was, undoubtedly, a profound tragedy. Yet its lasting consequence has been to […]
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