-The Hindu Business Line From maker of versions of drugs, India's pharmaceutical industry has turned a top innovator Twenty years ago, Ranbaxy was a home-spun drug-maker. The Indian Patents Act allowed companies to make chemically-similar versions of innovative drugs. Visionaries in the pharmaceutical sector, like Parvinder Singh (Ranbaxy's key architect and member of its promoter family) and Anji Reddy (founder of Dr Reddy's Laboratories), were alive. And the pharmaceutical industry did not have...

-The Hindu     Antibiotics are often used as an excuse for poor infection control Arjun (name changed) is an 8-year-old boy who was being treated for breathing difficulty in a hospital in one of the southern cities. He had suffered on and off with cough/cold since infancy and had been treated multiple times with antibiotics. His parents were not highly educated and hoped that he would get better as he grew older. This...

-Economic and Political Weekly While the Supreme Court decision in the recent Novartis case has cleared the way for production of generic drugs in India, doctors have to prescribe cheaper alternatives to costly brands if patients with limited means are to benefit. What is being hailed as a victory in the struggle for affordable medicines in the country will actually be one only when there is a pro-patient slant to the...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Supreme Court judgment on the Novartis-Glivec case is remarkable because it has gone beyond the specific technical and legal issues surrounding patents and has put the matter in a much larger political and economic perspective. The deeper implication of the judgment is that it is not only justified to deny patents when incremental innovation is trivial as in the Glivec case. The judgment has linked the...

-The Times of India As many as 2,644 people, called subjects, died during the clinical trials of 475 new drugs on human beings in last seven years and only 17 of the medicines were approved for marketing in India, the Centre has informed the Supreme Court. Responding to allegations by NGO, Swasthya Adhikar Manch, in its PIL that Indians were used as guinea pigs by foreign pharmaceutical majors for human trial of...