Here is the full text of the article from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

You can download the editorial (pdf format) entitled, "Sponsorship, Authorship, and Accountability" from the New England Journal of Medicine web site.

September 9, 2001 - Recent articles about pharmaceuticals:

"Benefits of health care technology outweigh cost" - summary by the AHA

"Newer Drugs Cut Overall Healthcare Costs: Study" - story from Reuters Health/Yahoo. (link is no longer available)

August 23, 2001 - The Boston Globe is reporting that Brazil has given the OK to produce a generic version of an anti-AIDS drug currently under patent protection.

According to the article, "The announcement makes Brazil the first country in the developing world to say it would break international trade laws to protect the health of its citizens." (link is no longer available)

"If Brazil survives any challenges, it's a whole new world," said Paul Davis from ACT UP-Philadelphia.

August 22, 2001 - The Boston Globe is reporting that a new report by the National Institutes of Health is warning that the federal government should not attempt to recoup potentially lucrative royalties from the billions of dollars it spends to help develop such blockbuster treatments as the anemia drug Epogen™ and AIDS therapies. According to the report, such actions might discourage research. (link is no longer available)

Here is a 2000 story from Red Herring that shows that the biggest loser regarding EPO patents has been the University of Chicago. On the other hand, Columbia University collects 1% of all Epogen™ sales revenue due to its patent on a process that Amgen uses called cotransformation.(link is no longer available)

August 15, 2001 - The Chicago Tribune is reporting that Bayer, one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, is cutting Medicaid drug prices and is providing a $14 million payment to 45 states. (link is no longer available)

July 11, 2001 - Health and Human Service Secretary Tommy Thompson told members of Congress this week that safety concerns prevent him from implementing a law enacted last year to allow reimportation of prescription drugs. His decision matches one made last December by former HHS Secretary Donna Shalala. (Yahoo link no longer valid.)

The non-profit consumer group Families USA is charging that a classic argument used by the pharmaceutical industry to justify higher prescription drug prices is nothing more than a "scare tactic." Here is the story from WebMD.

June 19, 2001 - Congressman Tom Allen of Maine has released a new prescription drug price study that shows that US seniors pay on average 88 percent more than the price of the same drugs from the same manufacturers in Europe, Canada and Japan.

For this reason, many seniors make trips to Mexico and Canada to buy their prescription drugs. However, FDA representatives and health law experts warn that physicians who help patients buy prescription drugs at cheaper prices by mail from Canada are helping patients break the law. Here is an article on the subject of importing medications from American Medical News.

A new initiative announced this week by HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson will help community health centers and other safety-net providers develop new ways to expand their ability to buy drugs and improve access to prescription drugs for patients. Here is the HHS press release.

Abbott Laboratories has lowered prices on dozens of drugs and medical treatments amidst investigations of alleged pricing abuses in the pharmaceutical industry. As an example, Abbott's wholesale price for 20 mls of the cardiac drug Dobutamine was cut from $54.11 to $9.26. (Yahoo link no longer valid.)