-The Telegraph New Delhi: The rules for price caps on 348 medicines imposed by the central government last year provide drug companies "escape routes" and promise little relief to consumers, a report released today has warned. The report from the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), an academic institution, has also cautioned that the Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) rules will encourage the growth of irrational combinations of drugs that remain outside...

-The Business Standard But beef up safeguards for genetically modified crop trials Environment Minister M Veerappa Moily has made the right move by overturning the untenable position taken by his predecessors on field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops. Around 200 gene-altered varieties of different crops will now be allowed to be field-tested, subject, of course, to certain necessary conditions. This could, depending on the outcome of the trials, clear the way...

-IPS News PESHAWAR, Pakistan- They are contraband, yet a large number of Pakistanis have come to depend on drugs made in India and smuggled into Pakistan. Patients as well as doctors say these are cheap and effective, even as law enforcers look the other way. The two countries do not have a trade agreement on drugs, but markets in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the north of Pakistan do brisk business in India-made...

-The Business Standard The recent US-India friction over trade is being driven by Big Pharma Apart from the deterioration of the business environment generally, which impacts both domestic and foreign investors, retrospective taxation has figured most prominently in the media as the principal cause of growing scepticism among foreign investors. Entirely missing from the discourse has been an equally potent factor with wholly foreign origins: the hijacking of the economic policy...

-The Indian Express India's role in pharmaceutical patent wars has broadened access to healthcare. Recently, there were rumours that the United States Trade Representative (USTR) was getting ready to announce "trade enforcement actions" or sanctions against India over its intellectual property rights regime. The Obama administration has been under pressure from the US Chamber of Commerce and lobby groups, like the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, to take a tough stance...