-The Hindu Kochi: An artificial scarcity of drugs looms large with the new drug pricing regime, slashing prices for 348 essential drugs, set to prevail from July 29. Many retailers who stock medicines for a week are not picking up medicines and are keeping a minimum inventory. Some retailers said distributors were not making medicines available. It has sent medical retail stores into a tizzy about the fate of already available stocks. J.S....

-The Hindu That the Union Health Ministry takes critical decisions affecting a large number of people without any scientific basis does not portend well for public health in India. Neither the ban imposed on the oral anti-diabetes drug pioglitazone on June 18 nor its revocation a month later with a requirement that the medicine be sold with a boxed warning highlighting the adverse side-effect of bladder cancer was based on any...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: As patent wars heat up in the pharma space, mobile phone messages and Right to Information filings have emerged as potent weapons in the hands of multinationals keen to delay competition from low-cost generic versions of their patented products in India. Innovator drugmakers, who used to strike with patent suits after generic drugmakers released their versions in the market, have started gleaning information from text messages sent...

-The Times of India MUMBAI: It's widely known that a month's dose of cancer drugs can cost lakhs, but what isn't common knowledge is that Tata Memorial Hospital's doctors are working on alternatives that could cost less than Rs 1,000 a month. Dubbed the metronomic treatment protocol, it comprises daily consumption of a combination of low-dose medicines that are cheap because they have been around for decades. "There is no need to...

-The Business Standard Angelina Jolie has inadvertently highlighted a key question about patenting Angelina Jolies recent double mastectomy was obviously a very radical decision. It is unusual for a healthy person to opt for pre-emptive surgery to avert the probability, however high it may be, of getting cancer. The tests Jolie relied on are also at the heart of a legal battle, which could affect US biotech patenting norms. Since the US...