Author: Lynne Taylor

Newly-approved prescription drugs should be labelled with a symbol to show that they are new, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising for them should be limited for the first two years after approval, says the American College of Physicians (ACP).

The US Senate Finance Committee has rejected a proposal to abandon the $80 billion cost-saving deal agreed in June between drugmakers and the panel’s chairman, Senator Max Baucus.

US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has pledged that the Senate will, before year-end, look at plans to allow Americans to re-import US-approved prescription drugs, whether or not they come up in the health care reform debate.

The South African government has announced moves to clear the massive backlog of drug approvals and develop a recovery strategy for the pharmaceutical industry.

Innovative incentives are urgently needed for the development of new antibacterials, as the problem of bacteria that cannot be treated with conventional antibiotics is growing, while at the same time the level of research into – and the development of – new effective antibiotics is decreasing, the Swedish Presidency of the European Union (EU) has said.