Author: Lynne Taylor

Terminally-ill patients in the USA have lost their long-running battle for the right to be treated with experimental new drugs. Last week, the US Supreme Court turned down a request for it to review earlier court rejections of the claim by the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs that “a terminally-ill patient with no approved treatment options has a right to decide for himself, in consultation with his own doctor, whether to take a drug that the FDA concedes is safe and promising enough to be tested in substantial numbers of human subjects.”

The European Commission is to prioritise and speed up moves to deal with the issue of counterfeit drugs in parallel trade and will launch a legislative initiative on the issue after the summer break, Commission Vice President Guenter Verheugen has announced in the European Parliament.

Europe’s generic drug industry says it is ready provide the European Commission’s new investigation into possible anticompetitive practices in the pharmaceutical market with “a detailed overview on current barriers to competition from generic medicines.”

GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-Aventis, Pfizer, Wyeth and Teva are among a number of drug manufacturers that received “unannounced” visits early yesterday morning from European Commission officials, as they began an investigation into alleged anticompetitive behaviour.

Ahead of the India’s Union Budget for 2008-2009, which is expected to be presented by Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram at the end of February, leaders of the national pharmaceutical industry have reportedly petitioned the Department of Science and Technology to create more tax incentives for research-based firms.