Illinois Mandates Insurance Coverage for EpiPens
Illinois has become the first state to pass a law requiring health insurance companies to cover the cost of medically necessary EpiPen injectors. This is big news in an era when so many families face the daily threat of a potentially deadly allergic reaction. Signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker, the new law will take effect […]
Novartis Manipulated Data in FDA Biologics License Application
On Aug. 6, 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a statement saying that Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG submitted a biologics license application (BLA) for the spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) gene therapy Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi) with manipulated data and failed to inform regulators until June 28, 2019—more than a month after the […]
Pfizer Fined Again for Violating Drug Laws
Colombia’s national regulatory agency, the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC), has fined pharmaceutical company Pfizer $25,000 for allegedly inflating the price of several prescription drugs it sold in that country.1 2 On July 31, 2019, the agency stated: The decision was taken after verifying information related to PFIZER SAS’ commercial operations between July and December […]
Is Merck’s Measles Vaccine Monopoly a Cause for Concern?
First, how did Merck become the country’s sole supplier of these measles vaccines, and is that a problem? Well, is it a problem depends on who you talk to. But Merck became the sole supplier because the vaccine market is highly concentrated. It’s incredibly expensive to make vaccines. It takes a lot of time to […]
MMR Vaccine Sales Boost Merck’s 2019 Revenues
After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) publicized measles outbreaks in several states beginning in January 2019, on May 1 Merck & Co. announced that it had increased production of its live attenuated (weakened) virus MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine in response to an increasing demand for the product in the United States. […]
Pharmaceutical Fraud
The story I’m going to tell today begins just before the turn of the century. The year is 1999 and Merck has brought a new pain killer onto the market called Vioxx. According to a paper published in the British Medical Journal, since the early development of Vioxx some scientists at Merck were concerned that […]