K en johnson of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and Myrl Weinberg of the National Health Council take issue with findings from our survey of drug company–sponsored patient assistance programs (PAPs).1 Our disagreement is partly the result of a healthy debate on how best to structure our health care system. More problematic are the commentaries’ mischaracterizations ...

As recent advances have been made in developing tools to fight tuberculosis (TB), there is also a trend towards increasing advocacy by the civil society for TB research and access. One recent successful effort to increase access to treatment options for TB involved a collaborative effort to identify the need for and barriers to the use of rifapentine (RPT) use in the United States. Survey respo...

Very little real therapeutic progress was made in 2015, while a large number of unsafe or poorly evaluated drugs were authorised. The exorbitant prices for some drugs endanger universal healthcare, sometimes obliging health professionals to choose riskier options for their patients. Health professionals, health authorities and drug companies are jointly responsible for guaranteeing access to qu...

Bryant Pharmaceutical's flagship product, a popular arthritis medicine called Seflex, is selling well--but not well enough. With generic versions due on the shelves in a couple of years, the drug company is looking for a dramatic sales increase. No wonder marketing VP Laura Goldenberg feels the pressure. She knows she has to reach more consumers, but in an environment where people bombarded wit...

THIS is a sociological and not a medical book. It would be well to define and describe "The Problem of Medical Knowledge" before discussing whether social forces have effects on its formation. Certainly religion, morals, ethics and the law have their effect on the practice of medicine but that is not the subject of this book. Here the difficulties of medical knowledge are not perceived nor desc...

Effective medicines exist to treat or alleviate many diseases which predominate in the developing world and cause high mortality and morbidity rates. Price should not be an obstacle preventing access to these medicines. Increasingly, drug donations have been established by drug companies, but these are often limited in time, place or use. Measures exist which are more sustainable and will have ...

Classical single-factor comparable company valuation (CCV) like e.g. valuation using the price-earnings ratio is associated with several shortcomings. The two most important are the non-applicability of negative values in the basis of reference and the high requirements to the qualitative characteristics of comparable companies. This paper develops a multi-factor CCV model based on substance an...

PURPOSE Medical students are at-risk to the influence of pharmaceutical company (Pharma) marketing. As interactions with the industry come under increasing scrutiny and regulation, previous studies on student-Pharma relations no longer may be accurate. This study assessed students' attitudes toward and interactions with Pharmas at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health...

the objective of this paper is to determine the efficiency of manufacturing companies in kenya over the period of 2009 to 2011 as well as suggesting appropriate policies to be employed by the manufacturing companies in kenya based on the findings of the study. three critical inputs variables (raw materials, staff expenses and plant and machinery) and two output variables (net sale and earnings ...

In this issue of the journal we highlight important and controversial issues which affect patient management. There is currently an ongoing debate about the use of Dabigatran and the lack of need for monitoring the level of anticoagulation, which has previously been claimed to be one of the most important advantages of the drug. Furthermore, the RELY study has come under scrutiny, as has the dr...