Is it possible to help each other out for the next election? Could we talk about and make each other aware of the health issues we are facing?could we quote our sources? could we limit the posts to medical/health/treatment/pharma and how we dig into whether pharma will even be phased?

How's our chance. No war talk please.

In general, I would like to know who is making it hard for me to get a treatment with all the money being spent. It pains me to say- but I have to -that this also occurs at the organization level.

What information can we bring here that can help us track some of this stuff?

I don't expect you to jump in right away and post. This takes time, thought - certainly no rush.

This is not agitating - this is part of the solution....be positive.

Adding this for starters: http://www.pdpipeline.org/advocacy/l...tion_bills.htm

Paula

Paula-

I'm not sure that I understand what you are asking for - personal health issues, or personal stories of interaction with the Military/ Industrial - oops, I mean Medical/Pharmaceutical Complex (those of you that live outside the US, or are much less than 60 probably won't know the original reference, so don't worry, just ignore the preceding 37 words), or ...?

I'm also not sure what you mean by "also occurs at the organizational level". I am probably just being obtuse , but can you please expand on these a bit?

Thanks.

Hi Kris,

I seem to be in a pattern of going to sleep early and awakening at 3 am. Sorry the post isn't clear - I agree it isn't.

I was thinking if we brought resources to the forum, it might help us decide when it comes time to vote, who can help us more if elected. In the case of big pharma, I don't know if it matters whom you elect, but watching what is happening right now in this congress would at least make us aware of what is at the table now in terms of legislation that could have an important effect on our lives.

The embryonic stem cell issue is not the only issue, so I was hoping it wouldn't become another ESCR debate.

There are groups out there, who are working hard to get experimental drugs available for people with terminal illnesses. We need to help each other,(cross illnesses and conditions).

For example, on the PIEN listserve, some of the participants have been included in a book that is soon to come out called "Right to Recover", and I only know this because someone forwarded the post to me.

There are other issues, big ones, that do not involve the ESCR vote. Just a short while ago, an article came out from Finland saying how important GDNF was. One of the trial investigators here contacted them (Finland) to ask if the fact that Amgen still has not published the toxicology reports from their halted trial (Amgen keeps saying it's coming and now are saying it's been accepted by a journal - ridiculously long wait) was holding up their research. They knew nothing of the cancellation or the huge fight that came from it, but were glad to hear about it, because they believe in it too.

There are groups out there trying to prevent that from happening again and legislation being introduced that is directly or indirectly related.

My personal worry, and understandably so because I do not believe that ESCR will affect my personal health care, is that no one is going to spend the time and money on treatments for now. We also have a right to recover. I wish people would put some of the time and energy that is spent on getting ESCR into also getting treatments that can help people now.

Then there is the whole issue of health care in general.

The information does not have to stay in this thread. I see Carolyn started a medicare thread and Thelma's pharma thread has made us aware of an issue that we need to support for ALS. Jean made it easy and I sent emails as a result of how easy she made it.

I guess I'm just asking for more of that, but some of it is bound to be about ESCR. If so, hatespeak will accomplish nothing. To me, it seems that we are down to the vote now, and need to be completely aware of what our representatives are proposing and voting for. Each state has its own thing going, as well as federal bills.

So, to answer your question longer than you asked for...lol...I think legislation is important to know about (if boring to read), but I think personal stories only add to the need for the legislation so the only limit set upon this thread or any other resulting is a request to try not to offend.

Thank you for asking Kris.

Here's another pipeline link with expanded resources and the Goozenews link again:

http://www.pdpipeline.org/advocacy/legislation.htm

http://www.gooznews.com/

Paula

Just reread this and realized I didn't answer your question about organizations. I do not want to name organizations, this issue can be researched by anyone who is interested. But there are ways that many of them could reduce spending and better use it for research and quality of life for pwp. Large reserves make one wonder what they are to be used for. An organization's mission should have something to do with either putting themselves out of business, or building places for pwp to receive care IMHO.

Unfortunately, I am not that far under 60 and know Ike's feelings on the matter, if I understood you correctly.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...opinion-center

RONALD BROWNSTEIN

Who's watching the president?
The GOP abandoned White House oversight, and the results were disastrous.
Ronald Brownstein

March 21, 2007

AT TIMES, President Bush's second term has resembled a laboratory test of what happens to a large institution when all mechanisms of accountability are disabled.

The results have not been pretty.

Hurricane Katrina, the chaotic occupation and reconstruction of Iraq, the breakdown at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the FBI's abuse of Patriot Act powers, the troubling dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys — everywhere, the administration has been plagued by an epidemic of incompetence.

Bush has stumbled so badly at managing the basic responsibilities of government that even the National Review, the flagship magazine of the conservative movement and hardly a traditional critic of the president, used its latest cover to plaintively ask: "Can't anyone here play this game?"

How did it come to this for an administration that, as the National Review noted, initially portrayed itself as buttoned-down "adults" returning to Washington after President Clinton's baby boom bacchanal?

The answer begins with Bush's management style. He combines a distaste for details with a tendency to prize loyalty over performance.

Shaped by those attitudes, Bush typically worries more about signaling resolve to his critics by denying failures inside his government than demanding excellence by punishing it. That impulse explains how Bush could present a prestigious medal to George J. Tenet — who had resigned months earlier as CIA chief — after his agency's declarations about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction crumbled like sand, and how Donald H. Rumsfeld survived so long as Defense secretary while Iraq disintegrated.

Bush's instincts were dangerously reinforced by the Republican-controlled Congress, which viewed itself less as an independent branch of government than as a junior partner to the White House in the American equivalent of a parliamentary system.

The Republican majority so completely abdicated its responsibilities to conduct oversight on the executive branch that its governing motto might have been "don't ask, don't tell."

Key House and Senate committees sometimes went months without oversight hearings on Iraq. Neither chamber managed more than a glancing review of the increased police powers the administration acquired for the war on terror. Congress barely noted the collapse in care for many veterans at Walter Reed, and it almost completely avoided issues uncomfortable for Bush, such as global warming and declining access to health insurance.

This deference reflected the widespread tendency among congressional Republicans "to think that your political welfare is tied up with the president, and you don't want to make him look bad," as Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), one of the few GOP leaders who maintained some independence from the White House, told The Times.

But the abandonment of oversight had the opposite effect. By refusing to challenge the administration's performance, the Republican majority allowed problems to fester and dysfunction to deepen. One senior House Republican said this week that nothing hurt the GOP more in 2006 than the collapse of its reputation for competent governance.

Many of the decisions now causing Bush grief could have been made only by a politician who did not believe anyone was looking over his shoulder. It's inconceivable that the administration would have been so cavalier about planning the postwar occupation of Iraq — or so dismissive of the Army warnings that it had not deployed enough troops to ensure order — if it knew that Congress would closely examine its plans.

Likewise, it's difficult to imagine that an administration accustomed to serious scrutiny would have dismissed U.S. attorneys involved in sensitive decisions on whether to prosecute political corruption and fraud cases the way Bush's Justice Department did in December.

Depending on how they apply oversight power, the Democratic congressional majority could restore badly needed accountability to the system.

If Democrats focus on settling scores, they will succeed only in igniting partisan firefights. They veered dangerously close to that mistake Friday with the hearing flogging the Valerie Plame case, which the criminal justice system had already adjudicated. But congressional oversight aimed at legitimate targets will serve the country by increasing pressure on the administration to demonstrate results — beginning in Iraq, but also at home. Already, tough congressional questioning is forcing Bush to change the way he operates.

In the four months since Democrats won control, perhaps more administration officials linked to failure or ethical missteps — Rumsfeld, officials directly responsible for Walter Reed, the Army secretary, the Justice Department chief of staff — have resigned under fire than during the six years when the GOP majority averted its eyes. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, even after Bush's vote of confidence Tuesday, may be the next to fall to the new breeze.

Tuesday's stormy news conference suggests that Bush will push back against tough oversight. But his presidency might have turned out a lot better if he hadn't spent his first six years virtually immune from it.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

Doctors’ Ties to Drug Makers Are Put on Close View


Published: March 21, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/yrnpss

Dr. Allan Collins may be the most influential kidney specialist in the country. He is president of the National Kidney Foundation and director of a government-financed research center on kidney disease.
In 2004, the year he was chosen as president-elect of the kidney foundation, the pharmaceutical company Amgen, which makes the most expensive drugs used in the treatment of kidney disease, underwrote more than $1.9 million worth of research and education programs led by Dr. Collins, according to records examined by The New York Times. In 2005, Amgen paid Dr. Collins at least $25,800, mostly in consulting and speaking fees, the records show.
The payments to Dr. Collins and the research center appear in an unusual set of records. They come from Minnesota, the first of a handful of states to pass a law requiring drug makers to disclose payments to doctors. The Minnesota records are a window on the widespread financial ties between pharmaceutical companies and the doctors who prescribe and recommend their products. Patient advocacy groups and many doctors themselves have long complained that drug companies exert undue influence on doctors, but the extent of such payments has been hard to quantify.
The Minnesota records begin in 1997. From then through 2005, drug makers paid more than 5,500 doctors, nurses and other health care workers in the state at least $57 million. Another $40 million went to clinics, research centers and other organizations. More than 20 percent of the state’s licensed physicians received money. The median payment per consultant was $1,000; more than 100 people received more than $100,000.
Doctors receive money typically in return for delivering lectures about drugs to other doctors. Some of the doctors receiving the most money sit on committees that prepare guidelines instructing doctors nationwide about when to use medicines. Dr. Collins, who received more money than anyone else in the state, is among a limited number whose payments financed research.
In dozens of interviews, most doctors said that these payments had no effect on their care of patients.
Dr. Collins said his sole focus was the health and well-being of patients. “Just because I might do consulting work doesn’t mean I don’t press the agenda of the public health,” he said.
Ken Johnson, senior vice president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said interactions between drug companies and doctors were beneficial. “In the end, patients are well-served when technically trained pharmaceutical research company representatives work with health care professionals to make sure medicines are used properly,” he said.
There is nothing illegal about doctors’ accepting money for marketing talks, and professional organizations have largely ignored the issue.
But research shows that doctors who have close relationships with drug makers tend to prescribe more, newer and pricier drugs — whether or not they are in the best interests of patients.
“When honest human beings have a vested stake in seeing the world in a particular way, they’re incapable of objectivity and independence,” said Max H. Bazerman, a professor at Harvard Business School. “A doctor who represents a pharmaceutical company will tend to see the data in a slightly more positive light and as a result will overprescribe that company’s drugs.”
In an e-mail message, Dr. Collins said he personally received in 2004 less than $10,000 from Amgen for educational presentations. “The contract amount of $1.9 million from Amgen was paid to the Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation (MMRF) for the research contract, on which I am the designated senior researcher,” Dr. Collins wrote. He wrote that he did not work for or serve on the board of directors of the foundation. Dr. Collins discloses on his Web site and research papers that he is a consultant to Amgen, among other companies.
Dan Whelan, an Amgen spokesman, said the company paid the Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation “to conduct sophisticated research and data analyses that have enhanced the understanding of health care delivery” for kidney patients.
But Dr. Daniel Coyne, a kidney specialist at Washington University, said he was troubled by the payments.
“Amgen’s funding for Dr. Collins’s MMRF is another huge financial connection to individuals at the National Kidney Foundation,” Dr. Coyne said. “The foundation’s recent pro-industry anemia guidelines — and the revisions due next month — have to be viewed with great skepticism.”
Dr. Coyne recently wrote an editorial in an influential journal decrying guidelines written last year by the kidney foundation that encourage doctors to use more of Amgen’s drugs to treat anemia in kidney patients despite studies showing that increased use led to more deaths.
Ellie Schlam, a spokeswoman for the National Kidney Foundation, said the foundation sought out the world’s foremost experts. “These are the same people that are wanted by government and industry,” she said. “We really work hard to separate the financing from the content.”
Drug makers listed Dr. Collins and the research group as the recipient of payments totaling more than $2 million between 1997 and 2005. Most doctors on the list are far less prominent than Dr. Collins.
Ten doctors and one dentist in Minnesota received more than $500,000. Because the records are incomplete, these sums likely underestimate the providers’ earnings. Device makers and Wall Street firms tracking medical research were not required to report, although consulting arrangements between such companies and doctors are common.
More than 250 Minnesota psychiatrists together earned $6.7 million in drug company money — more than any other specialty. Seven of the last eight presidents of the Minnesota Psychiatric Society have served as consultants to drug makers, according to the Times examination.
After psychiatrists, doctors who specialized in internal medicine garnered the most money, followed by cardiologists, endocrinologists and neurologists.
Unknown to Most Patients
Doctors in Minnesota said they generally did not tell their patients about these arrangements. Indeed, few patients are aware of the financial connections between those prescribing drugs and the companies making them.
A New York Times/CBS News poll last month found that 85 percent of respondents thought it “not acceptable” for doctors to be paid by drug companies to comment on prescription drugs. Eighty-five percent also said such payments would influence the decisions that doctors made about patient care.
In addition to Minnesota, legislators in Vermont, Maine, West Virginia, California and the District of Columbia have passed laws requiring some level of disclosure of drug company marketing efforts. In Vermont, the state has collected three years of data on payments to doctors, but drug makers are allowed to keep the records private by declaring them trade secrets.
In the 2005 fiscal year, the most recent year for which figures are available, drug makers declared 73 percent of payments to doctors in Vermont as trade secrets. The Journal of the American Medical Association today is publishing data summarizing physician payments from drug makers in Minnesota and Vermont. The study concludes that many payments exceeding $100 were made but that the records were difficult to decipher and all but impossible for individuals in either state to interpret.
Dr. David Blumenthal, director of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital, said, “We have given physicians a lot of freedom and self-governance because of their professional reputation and a sense that they know how to help their patients.”
Doctors said their lectures about drugs to other doctors in return for the payments were gentle marketing pitches that adhered strictly to messages approved by drug makers and federal drug regulators.
Drug companies “want somebody who can manipulate in a very subtle way,” said Dr. Frederick R. Taylor, a headache specialist in Minneapolis who earned more than $710,000 between 1997 and 2005, much of that from GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of the migraine drug Imitrex.
Dr. George Realmuto, a psychiatrist from the University of Minnesota, said most of the marketing associated with his lectures was packaged around his talks.
“It’s at a wonderful restaurant, the atmosphere is very conducive to a positive attitude toward the drug, and everyone is having a good time,” said Dr. Realmuto, who compared the experience to that of buying a car in a glitzy showroom. He earned at least $20,000 between 2002 and 2004 from drug makers.
Doctors said that lectures were highly educational, and that drug makers hired them for their medical expertise and speaking skills. But former drug company sales representatives said they hired doctors as speakers mostly in hope of influencing that doctor’s prescribing habits.
“The vast majority of the time that we did any sort of paid relationship with a physician, they increased the use of our drug,” said Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau, a former sales representative for Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson who left the industry in 2002. “I hate to say it out loud, but it all comes down to ways to manipulate the doctors.”
Jamie Reidy, a drug sales representative for Pfizer Inc. and Eli Lilly & Company who was fired in 2005 after writing a humorous book about his experiences, said drug makers seduced doctors with escalating financial inducements that often start with paid trips to learn about a drug.
“If a doctor says that he got flown to Maui, stayed at the Four Seasons — and it didn’t influence him a bit? Please,” Mr. Reidy said.
‘A Silent Quid Pro Quo’
The lectures earn doctors more than cash.
“You’re making him money in several ways,” said Gene Carbona, who left Merck as a regional sales manager in 2001. “You’re paying him for the talk. You’re increasing his referral base so he’s getting more patients. And you’re helping to develop his name. The hope in all this is that a silent quid quo pro is created. I’ve done so much for you, the only thing I need from you is that you write more of my products.”
For many doctors, marketing lectures are also a welcome diversion.
“It beats talking to little old ladies about their bowels,” said Dr. Eric Storvick of Mankato, Minn., who made more than $174,000 between 1998 and 2005 from drug makers.
The number of drug marketing presentations delivered by doctors across the United States rose nearly threefold between 1998 and 2006, according to Verispan, a company that tracks drug marketing efforts.
In some cases, consulting doctors are so well recognized that they offer drug makers far more than the chance to influence their own prescriptions. For drug makers, among the most prized consultants are those who write guidelines instructing their peers about how to use drugs.
Drug Companies’ Nature
This list of top doctors in Minnesota includes Dr. Richard Grimm of the Berman Center for Outcomes and Clinical Research in Minneapolis, who has twice served on government-sponsored hypertension panels that create guidelines about when to prescribe blood pressure pills. Last year, he served on a National Kidney Foundation panel that wrote guidelines about when kidney patients should be given cholesterol pills.
Between 1997 and 2005, Dr. Grimm earned more than $798,000 from drug companies, according to records. In 2003 alone, Pfizer paid Dr. Grimm more than $231,000. Pfizer markets Lipitor, a cholesterol drug that last year had $12.9 billion in sales, more than any other drug in the world. It also markets Norvasc, a hypertension drug that last year had $4.9 billion in sales. Guidelines that suggest greater use of these drugs would be a huge boon to Pfizer.
“Drug companies are like lions,” Dr. Grimm said of his sponsored talks. “For lions, it’s their nature to kill zebras and eat them. For drug companies, it’s their nature to make money. They’re not really trying to improve anybody’s health except if it makes them money.
“On your side, you’re making a bit of money, but you’re also trying to educate the doctors. And in my view, the doctors need a lot of educating.”
Dr. Grimm said that he contributed more than $50,000 between 1997 and 2005 to the Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation, and that his lectures were not biased.
Dr. Donald Hunninghake served on a government-sponsored advisory panel that wrote guidelines for when people should get cholesterol-lowering pills. The panel’s 2004 recommendations that far more people get the drugs became controversial when it was revealed that eight of nine members had financial ties to drug makers. The full extent of those ties have never been revealed.
In 1998 alone, Pfizer paid Dr. Hunninghake $147,000, and he earned at least $420,800 from drug makers between 1997 and 2003. He left the University of Minnesota in 2004 to become a full-time industry consultant. He is now retired.
“Most of my talks did not relate to drugs but the guidelines for treatment,” Dr. Hunninghake said. He said his consulting practice included a variety of activities, including lectures.
A 2002 survey found that more than 80 percent of the doctors on panels that write clinical practice guidelines had financial ties to drug makers.
“It is critical that the experts who write clinical guidelines be prohibited from having any conflicts of interest,” said Dr. Marcia Angell, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. “Since they have no data themselves but are just making judgments based on their expertise, they absolutely must be impartial or it undermines the whole enterprise.”

Health Business
Published: March 20, 2007 at 4:42 PM

Analysis: New laws for pharma payments?

By STEVE MITCHELL
UPI Senior Medical Correspondent
http://www.upi.com/HealthBusiness/analysis_new_laws_for_pharma_payments/20070320-035423-4306r/

WASHINGTON, March 20 (UPI) -- Laws in two states requiring disclosure of pharmaceutical company payments to physicians are failing to have their intended effect and may need to be strengthened, according to a study released Tuesday.

The study, which appears in the March 21 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that major pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, Merck and GlaxoSmithKline, made payments and gifts amounting to millions of dollars to physicians in Vermont and Minnesota, but often failed to disclose the details about them as the states' laws require.

The companies circumvented the laws by classifying the payments as trade secrets, not providing the identity of the recipient or failing to file an annual report.

In addition, pharmaceutical companies often made payments to physicians that exceeded the $100 limit recommended by both the American Medical Association and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.

"The laws of these states have not secured the ends they've sought," Peter Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group and co-author of the article, told United Press International.

"They're riddled with holes in terms of trade secret exemptions, lack of standardization of reporting requirements, failure of companies to report as required, and failure of states to enforce the laws," he added.

Lurie noted that despite the underreporting, "we still find large sums of money changing hands including significant amounts that violate rules of both AMA and the pharmaceutical industry."

That revelation "combined with growing evidence that such gifts can influence prescribing raises real concerns about the independence of American physicians," he said.

Lurie called for both tighter laws to shore up the loopholes and intensified enforcement.

PhRMA did not respond to UPI's questions, but issued a statement asserting patients are better served when the pharmaceutical industry collaborates with physicians.

PhRMA, which did not directly refute any of the findings, claimed the study and the Vermont and Minnesota laws were flawed because they lump the activities of pharma sales reps together with research that physicians at academic medical centers are conducting on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

However, Lurie said the Vermont law does not require the reporting of payments related to research activities and his study gave a breakdown of the payments related to research in Minnesota, which accounted for less than 15 percent of the total money and gifts.

"The authors of the JAMA article have compounded the problem by offering a more sophisticated analysis than is justified by the mish-mash of data they had to work with," PhRMA's Senior Vice President Ken Johnson said in a statement. "The writers themselves note that the two different state laws require reporting of inconsistent data and yet they still used the information in their evaluation."

Johnson acknowledged PhRMA's own guidelines call for a $100 limit on payments to physicians.

In the study, the researchers examined data about pharmaceutical company payments and gifts in Vermont and Minnesota from 2002 to 2004.

In Vermont, pharmaceutical companies publicly disclosed more than 12,000 payments amounting to $2.18 million.

However, 61 percent of payments were designated as trade secrets, which meant the details were not made available to the public. Approximately 75 percent of the publicly disclosed payments did not contain enough information to identify the recipient.

Of the 12,227 payments publicly disclosed, 2,416 were for $100 or more.

In Minnesota, companies publicly disclosed nearly 7,000 payments totaling $30.96 million. But only 25 percent of companies reported in each of the three years the study examined. Of the 6,946 payments disclosed, 6,238 were for $100 or more.

In an accompanying editorial, Troyen Brennan, of Aetna, and Michelle Mello, of the Harvard School of Public Health, argue that pharma's failure to police itself may come back to haunt the industry by damaging their credibility.

Noting that pharmaceutical companies' primary interest is creating shareholder value, Brennan and Mello state that "at some point, the leadership of the pharmaceutical industry and their boards of directors must begin to recognize that growing public and professional mistrust could substantially detract from that value."
__._,_.___

Testing times for 'mega-pharma'

16 March 2007
RSC/Sdvancing the Shemical Sciences
Victoria Gill/London, UK
http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/March/16030701.asp

A stern warning and gloomy forecast were delivered to the pharmaceutical industry at the Drug Discovery and Technology Summit in London this week.

Declining drug pipelines and expiring patents were a recurring concern. In his speech at the event, Simon Campbell, former president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, was scathing about the relentless 'march of mega-pharma'. He cited the increasing number of mergers and continual expansion of the huge multi-national drug giants as one cause of the industry's plight. Consolidation, he said, was having a negative impact on the actual process of research and development. Innovation does not scale.

'You can't industrialise drug discovery,' said Campbell. 'It's a personal experience, not a mechanical process, and that needs to be appreciated.'

He called for the industry to be broken down into more manageable chunks and underlined that it was inefficient to attempt to coordinate research groups consisting of hundreds of people working on one topic.

Campbell referred to recent job cuts, at drug companies including Pfizer and AstraZeneca, as an inevitable sign of unsustainable economics starting to bite. 'Unfortunately, I think this is only the beginning,' he said. Campbell was at Pfizer for 26 years before retiring, in 1998, as senior vice president for worldwide discovery and for medicinals research and development in Europe.

He urged companies to stop abandoning new compounds very early in the development process in an attempt to avoid the expense of late stage drug failure. He stressed that this false economy was stalling development. 'All new compounds can make it to Phase II,' he said. 'Issues at this stage, such as solubility and kinetics, can easily be fixed.'

Earlier in the proceedings, Jackie Hunter from GlaxoSmithKline, also tackled the burgeoning issue of pipeline erosion. There was some light at the end of the tunnel here in her reference to the European innovative medicines initiative (IMI) as a 'timely' measure to help extract the industry from its predicament.

IMI was launched in 2004 by the European Commission and the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations. Its aim is to develop and fund research to identify and address the causes of bottlenecks in the drug development process.

Hunter pointed out that attrition could only be challenged by this level of public-private cooperation. 'At the pre-competitive stage, companies must work together to construct good methodology and improve the way medicines are developed,' she said.

'Industry-wide and Europe-wide we need to identify biomarkers, develop computational methods of predicting drug toxicity and set standards of 'pharmacovigilance' and risk prediction,' Hunter continued. 'We must also work with the regulators to design high quality trials.'

Despite current doom and gloom, it appears that those at the front line of R&D have not lost heart. Ian Lloyd from Pharma Projects, a UK pharmaceutical industry analysis company, wrapped up the event with a review of past trends and forecasts. He also took a small survey of 50 industry employees who, according to his presentation, remain relatively positive about the position of their sector. 64 per cent say that they would still recommend a career in ?

Merrill Goozner is having a good day.

http://www.gooznews.com/

paula

Bush just gave a brilliant, yes outstanding, speech to the Radio and TV Correspondents dinner. i register excellent.

OK watched the next skit- a funny one too! Too bad we expect them to be no more than gossips to believe them in print.

I thought for a minute there they were having fun, media will take care of that.


paula