Drug Companies

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Lynn Schenk, D-Calif., won a significant break for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries yesterday in behind-the-scenes negotiations over the shape of sweeping health legislation.In a letter to Ms. Schenk, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Dingell, D-Mich., promised that he would work to eliminate President Clinton's proposed Advisory Council on Breakthrough Drugs.Mr. Dingell's panel is considered the most difficult battleground for health reform in the House, and he is having to use every ounce of his much-vaunted legislative horse-trading abilities to cobble together a majority.

The staff at Anne Arundel Medical Center considered canceling some surgeries on a recent weekend because the hospital was running low on a common drug used to help bring people out from under anesthesia. It is the kind of problem hospitals and doctors around the country continue to face as drug shortages that began a few years ago threaten the way everyday medicine is practiced. The problem has persisted even after calls from Congress and President Barack Obama to find a solution and a federal investigation that found widespread abuses in the drug manufacturing and distribution system.

WHEN SmithKline Beecham PLC said it had entered merger talks with Glaxo Wellcome PLC, it sent shares of drug companies soaring on expectations that more mergers were on the way.SmithKline announced its talks with Glaxo at the same time it stopped negotiations with American Home Products Corp., giving traders the impression that SmithKline was serious about increasing its size.But smaller pharmaceutical companies have been a success even without huge investments in genetic research, and some of the conglomerates are still trying to boost profits.

The Food and Drug Administration released a new list of more than 3,000 hospitals that bought drugs from the company at the center of a nationwide fungal meningitis outbreak, including 89 facilities in Maryland. The drugs bought by Maryland facilities from the New England Compounding facility include those other than the steroid that has been linked to the meningitis outbreak that has sickened 308 people and killed 23 in 17 states. In Maryland 17 people have been sickened and 1 has died.

Drug companies are on the defensive. Open almost any magazine and you will find an ad or two touting the wonders of modern pharmaceuticals.There's the picture of the feisty fellow who's grinning broadly although he has his fists up, ready to duke it out "if you took away the ulcer drug that's saving him from a $25,000 operation."Then you have a woman, smiling happily with her cat snuggling on her shoulder. She appears grateful that the drug she takes to prevent a stroke "lets her hold onto her independence and life's savings."

AUSTIN -- A story finally getting some attention is the hideous case of the U.S. trade representative trying to force African countries not to manufacture cheap generic substitutes for the drugs used to treat AIDS.Our government aims to protect the profits of multinational drug companies. Obviously, practically no one in Africa, where the disease is rampant, can afford the $15,000 a year that the drug companies now charge for the full AIDS "cocktail." And 85 percent of all AIDS sufferers live in third world countries.

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks were mixed yesterday as oil issues slumped for a second day, offsetting gains in the shares of steady-earning beverage and drug companies.Stocks of oil producing companies slid amid concern that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will boost production next year. Supplies of oil from outside the 12-nation group have hit record levels, leading some investors to speculate that OPEC will increase production to meet the competition."OPEC is talking about trying to regain market share,which means more production, more supply, and lower prices," said Kevin Means, chief equity officer at Aetna Life Insurance and Annuity Co. in Hartford, Conn.

VIAGRA could use a little Viagra.At least the company that makes the impotence drug, Pfizer Inc., could use a dose of its own medicine. For that matter, many of the big drug companies could also stand a pill or two.These once white-hot drug stocks have cooled off, and some experts are staying away from them because, while their prices have swooned -- in some cases by 30 percent -- they have not fallen far enough."

WASHINGTON -- In the national health care debate, President Clinton repeatedly casts the health insurance and pharmaceutical manufacturing industries as the villains.Some executives in the two industries accuse the president of scheming to destroy their profitability and to force some firms out of business.But behind the cross-fire, one of the best-kept secrets of the president's proposal is that it also offers these "black hats" some extraordinary opportunities. Some drug and insurance firms could profit handsomely from reform, especially if -- as expected -- they persuade Congress to ease up on the most onerous features of the health care blueprint.

The news this week that Merck & Co. conducted research on its own drug and paid prominent scientists to lend their names to the studies came as no surprise to many people in medicine. Researchers and ethicists say scientists are often paid to be listed as authors of ghostwritten studies in scientific journals, a practice they say undermines the public's already sagging confidence in research. "We've got to stop this," said Dr. Catherine D. DeAngelis, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, which had an article on the topic this week.

Congressional lawmakers investigating the shortage of lifesaving drugs used to treat cancer and other illnesses are looking into three companies in North Carolina and Maryland that they believe set up "fake pharmacies" to access the drugs that they then sold at a markup. The lawmakers, led by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a Baltimore Democrat, said Wednesday that they sent letters to the three pharmacies that they believe sold drugs to wholesalers that they also owned, which then sold the drugs on the "gray market" to entities that do not manufacture drugs or treat patients.

A host of prescription drugs have been in low supply around the United States for some time, but doctors have been warning about a particularly acute shortage of a set of life-saving cancer drugs. Now the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said today that it has taken steps to boost the supply of those cancer drugs -- Doxil, or doxorubicin hydrochloride liposome injection, and methotrexate. On Doxil , the FDA plans to import temporarily a replacement drug called Lipodox to meet patient needs in coming weeks.

Dava Pharmaceuticals Inc. will pay about $11 million to settle federal claims that it misreported drugs prices so it could charge more of the state-federal Medicaid program, according to U.S. Attorney for Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and others in the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The settlement, under the False Claims Act, resolves allegations that Dava and corporate predecessors knowingly bucked the Medicaid rebate program between Oct. 1, 2005 and Sept.

Editor: It was with a mixture of bemusement and surprise that I read Andy Harris' ad in the Aug. 3 Aegis . He is attempting to portray himself as Medicare's savior. However, I have a letter from Representative Harris dated July 18 in which he supports Representative Ryan's Voucher system for Medicaid. This would in fact decimate the program. The vouchers would pay for a diminishing portion of health insurance premiums and seniors, if they can get coverage at all, would pay increasingly higher percentages for Medicaid care.

In the scramble to cut the nation's debt burden, President Obama, congressional Democrats and even some Republicans have proposed squeezing money out of Medicare by changing the way it pays forprescription drugs. They claim this would save $112 billion over 10 years. But if passed it would be a disaster, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs in the biopharmaceutical industry - an important contributor to the Maryland economy - driving up drug prices and discouraging drug innovation.

Hundreds of Maryland doctors have accepted fees, some exceeding six figures, from pharmaceutical companies in the past two years to promote their drugs to other doctors — a practice that is not illegal but raises ethical questions about the industry's influence over patient care. Large companies such as Merck and Eli Lilly have disclosed $258 million in payments nationwide in 2009 and the first half of 2010, with about $6 million going to Maryland physicians and a handful of nurses.

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks soared to record highs yesterday as optimism spread that makers of consumer goods -- such as household products and drugs -- will post steadily increasing profits in coming quarters.The Dow Jones industrial average surged 50.94 to 4,922.75, breaking through the 4,900 mark for the first time. The latest rally came just nine months after the average first crossed 4,000.Procter & Gamble Co., Philip Morris Cos., Colgate-Palmolive Co., Eli Lilly & Co. and Walt Disney Cos. were among the stocks leading the advance.

WASHINGTON -- A senior researcher at the National Institutes of Health engaged in "serious misconduct" by entering into dozens of unauthorized private arrangements with drug companies and failing to report annually the outside income, totaling more than $100,000, a confidential internal review by the agency has found. Officials at the NIH concluded late last year that the actions of Dr. Thomas J. Walsh, who has helped lead major clinical trials involving cancer patients, might result in dismissal from federal government service.

The Food and Drug Administration is calling on pharmaceutical firms to give more attention to the potential for abuse of new drugs when subjecting them to pre-market testing. The agency this week released a draft of new voluntary guidelines to assist drug makers in figuring out which compounds should be placed under the Controlled Substances Act, which regulates the handling, record-keeping and dispensing of controlled substances. The guidelines urge researchers to look beyond traditional indicators such as whether a compound is addictive to other characteristics that could lead to abuse.

To a self-described "old feminist" such as Hadassah Lieberman, the recent blog-inspired attack against her - all related to husband Joe Lieberman's obstruction of the Democrats' health care agenda - has been a surreal mix of "McCarthyism" and a "snowball fight on the playground." Actually, ambush is a better word. Blogger Jane Hamsher, a movie producer ("Natural Born Killers") and political activist, went after Mrs. Lieberman as Senator Lieberman was refusing to vote for a health care reform bill that included expanding Medicare to people as young as 55. Ms. Hamsher claimed that because Mrs. Lieberman was a lobbyist and had worked for the pharmaceutical industry, she should be fired from her position as global ambassador for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer charity.